A unique experience
Growing up in a family business, my parents always encouraged the staff to offer good service to their customers. In fact, the tagline for our store, Andrew’s Jewellers in Calgary, was: “We sparkle with good service.” I always thought that was clever, since we were in the business of selling diamonds—but if you follow advertising, every company out there says its service is great. Now you really have to up your game or be at risk of getting a horrible review online.
If you have a Facebook account, then you probably make posts about how fabulous your life is, uploading pictures from your latest vacation, a new restaurant you recently ate at, or your kid’s special events. I even posted my first ‘Ikea hack’ the other day, when I added some mid-century modern legs to a bookcase for my new office. A few years ago, this DIY project would have been something I only mentioned to my sister, but now I am compelled to tell all my friends.
It seems everyone these days is in search of a great experience to post. Why not offer a great shopping experience at your store? This could be something as small as extending a little more kindness then you usually do, taking the time to demonstrate your expertise by explaining how jewellery is made, or showing off some new technology you purchased for the business.
You could share one of the latest apps, such as one that shows clients a diamond closeup they can spin around to see the inclusions. Walk them through the app and touch on the important points of what you feel makes a great diamond to help them make a good decision. Offering CAD and other new technology helps create a fun, engaging experience for the customer.
New technology
You cannot stock everything, but neither can the online companies—they just have a wide network of connections to help get the merchandise faster. But you could buy a small 3D printer and start printing models for your clients in a few hours. 3D printers have been around for some time, and it used to be if you had a rush job, you had your milling machine (computer numerical control [CNC] machine) cut the model from a block of wax. Depending on the job, that could take 45 minutes to two hours.
Recently, a few 3D printer companies have developed ‘continuous growing’ machines that cut down the printing time from nine hours to one or two. How have they been able to speed up the printing process so much? Well, some use oxygen to literally have the models print on a bubble of air so the machine does not need to pull the resin off the piece of glass in order to print another layer. The oxygen will push the first layer up for another layer to print, so it is constantly printing. Have your client go out to lunch and come back to view the model once it is complete.
Machines like this one cost about US$35,000. For around US$5000, you can purchase design software that has a library of models that can be slightly altered, then sent to the machine to produce your resin sample.
