Rex Harris knew exactly what he wanted when he opened his own store nine years ago: choice – the unmatched choices available at the big jewelry shows. During his long tenure as manager of someone else’s store, Harris missed those market events while his boss attended without him.
“When you go to market, you get to choose what to bring home to the customers. We knew what our customers wanted, but we’d get no choice,” Harris says of that experience.
“I’m a creative person and a customer-attentive person. I like to get to know my customers’ tastes and find something at market for them.”
Now, as proprietor of Harris Jewelers in Lumberton, Texas, Harris prioritizes market trips. He goes to the big jewelry shows at least five times a year, and he brings staff with him. The group attended JCK in Las Vegas this summer and came home to introduce the PiYaRo line to store customers. They also regularly attend the spring and fall Atlanta shows, Texas Jewelers Association events, and the Jewelers International Showcase in Miami.
“Every time we go, we come home so pumped, so excited,” Harris says. “You can buy whatever you want. I buy only one of anything. I do not ever buy anything someone else has in southeast Texas. I also make sure if I pick up a new collection, that no one has it in my area, so I can have an exclusive!”
Over the years, he has accumulated lines such as Alamea, India Gems out of Dallas, Special Concepts out of Australia, Dinaro Creations, In Season children’s jewelry, and unbranded selections from Midwest Closeout and Janes Pearl World – outfits known in the industry but not so much by customers.
Market homecomings regularly give rise to in-store celebrations, such as the casino-themed Viva Las Vegas Reveal Party this summer introducing PiYaRo, or the Hawaiian-themed party introducing the Alamea line a couple of years ago.
Although he still considers himself “old school” regarding mined versus lab gems, Harris relented when even Chatham started offering lab emeralds. Eternal Fire is one of the lab-grown gemstone lines he offers.
Today he estimates about 75 percent of his diamond offerings are earth-mined, with the remaining 25 percent appealing to clientele who are definitely not old school.
“These 18-to-30-year-olds, they want lab-grown gems. They say they’re not going to resell them. … You’ve got to have both, or people who want lab-grown stones are going to go somewhere else.”
Like other jewelry retailers before him, Harris wandered into the industry and got hooked. After graduating from high school in 1982 in Buna, Texas, he worked laying telephone cable but quit to take an indoor job at Service Merchandise. He often ventured from his assigned post in housewares to admire the jewelry department, and he learned to engrave, but the store closed before he could build a career. He worked as a salesperson at Zale’s Jewelers for five years in Orange, Texas, and then that store closed after several robberies.
When he went to work for Mathews Jewelry in Orange, he fell in love with the jewelry business. He persuaded his boss to pay half the fee for him to learn watch repair, which he still offers at his store today.
Harris was 51 years old, a self-described late bloomer, when his husband of 25 years, Josh Nguyen, talked him into opening his own store. He bought a former church out in the country to house the operation. It was 2016.
“The first two years, no one in the area knew me,” Harris recalls. “But people I knew from Mathews Jewelers in Orange followed me, and that helped me stay afloat for the first three years.”
Harris became a father as well in 2016. He and Josh decided to adopt a newborn son to make his family complete, and he opened his store the following November. Son LeLanh is now nine years old.
“He’s my world,” Harris says.
Last summer, Harris introduced LeLanh to the jewelry business.
“I didn’t want him to sit around, so I had him come to the store with me. We decided to open a store called LeLanh’s Emporium inside Harris Jewelers. He ordered five hundred keychains and put them together in two weeks, and he sold all of them within four weeks, for $5 each! Then he bought wallets, women’s perfume and men’s cologne, a few purses, and a little bit of jewelry that he made. He works Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in his emporium inside my store.”
Working with Harris are his manager, Gracie Harley, the granddaughter of a good friend who started five years ago at 17 and became a jewelry-retail natural after her first year; Debbie Stansifer, a part-time salesperson; his trusted longtime freelance jeweler; and Josh Nguyen, a hairdresser who routes his clients through Harris’s showroom to get to his salon in the back of the store.
“Probably 50 to 75 percent of his customers this past year have bought jewelry from me,” Harris says.
Harris maintains a manageable web presence, with busy Facebook and Instagram accounts and a website hosted by Stuller. He continues to hold online auctions that became popular when he introduced them during the Covid shutdown in 2020. And between his frequent videos from his market trips and an active schedule of parties – including in-store bridal showers for women who get their engagement or wedding bands from him – Harris maintains a steady hum of excitement.
“You’ve got to be passionate about it,” he says. “It can’t be just a job. My favorite part of this is the customers – I came out of the womb screaming, and I talk, talk, talk. I love the excitement of meeting customers, getting to know them, and becoming part of the family.”
