The Jewellery Industry and Hybrid Financial Models

In Part Three of this Essay, we take a look at hybrid models in the jewellery industry which utilize both, the conventional retail model as well as the internet as their financial models. Through the vicissitudes of the past 15 years the internet and public interaction with it has transpired into an interdependant coexistence. There is no doubt that the internet is here to stay and has become part of a lifestyle as well as an economic and financial model.

Shopping behaviour has greatly been influenced by the impact of the internet which transmits “memes” as Richard Dawkins defines as a “unit of cultural transmission” or a “unit of imitation”. In the jewellery world consumers are now able to go “web shopping” as opposed to “window shopping”. This in turn has an impact on “walk-in- traffic” in a
the brick and mortar traditional retail jewellery stores. The internet allows “web shopping” from the comfort of the home or office. Some early adopters and innovators shop online as they have been habituated to the internet and therfore opt for online shopping.This does not necessarily have to be a negative impact on the brick and mortar models. This is where jewellery stores which have a hybrid or combination financial model have the potential to succeed.

The key question which traditional jewellery stores are addressing is, how can one guide “web shoppers” to make a detour to their local jewellery stores and spend their money locally. How does one use the ongoing traffic of shoppers on the web and in the real world shopping malls to generate the local economy? The target audience that any traditional stores seeks must be defined. Are you local, national or international in your level playing field? Is there a primary culture of your target audience or is it diverse and are there dominant cultural groups, religious groups where jewellery plays an important part in their lives? You need to address the cultural norms or the various lifestyles of your defined target audience when you profile your inventory. There are differential tastes and styles based on lifestyle patterns and relationships among consumers. Is your jewellery store situated within or near a tourist attraction? There are means to generate local tourist population into an ongoing walkin traffic into your jewellery store.

Once you define whether your retail store wants to be playing at a local, national or international level your next step is to be found. Traditional advertising via the newspapers, radio and television can be extremly expensive and with difficult economic times the budget may not stretch that far. Advertising on the internet is by far more economical. This is where your local business can have a web presence increasing your advertising power and reaching a wider population.

A traditional retail jewellery store in the real world which also has a virtual web presence is a hybrid model. The web presence may be simply a one web page business card outlining the company objectives and contact information with their own domain as their web address.Tthis however is rare, most jewellery stores show atleast a few of their products.
The second hybrid model may consist of more detailed web presence business card outlining pictures with or without pricing of some or all their various categories of their inventory and utilizing their own domain to show case this.
The third hybrid model may consist of company details as well as a catalogue or graphic images of few or all their main inventory with pricing as well as shopping cart to actually purchase the inventory online using their own domain as the web address.
The fourth hybrid model may consist of just a business card or with a sample of their best sellers with graphic images with or without pricing utilizing not their own domain but a well search engine optimized directory.

This brings us to the key question, how can your company be found on the internet? The web site has to be well search engine optimized which is the key to be found so that when a consumer googles keywords in the search engines you are found. If you are just entering the internet today this would be difficult to compete with stores like www.bluenile.com

that have had a virtual precence for over a decade. Nevertheless web precence is important today for any retail store even if it is just a virtual business card as it shows that the company is “legitimate” and is adaptable, and tuned to the needs of “modern” consumer behaviour. With a legitimate domain address any customer that already knows about your store can find you on the internet by just going to your web address. If you have regular customers they can be notified of your web site and look at a greater collection of inventory than you can handle in your store via email newsletters. If you have your own domain address just the address can be advertised on your shopping bags, newspapers, radio, providing a more economical advertising tool allowing the consumer to go there at their own leisure. By employing a good proven search engine optimizer as part of your staff,you can strengthen your company’s abilty to capture key search words pertaining to your business. If you have many jewellery stores acoss the nation, a good technique to boost individual stores is geo-marketing. By being part of a well search engine optimized directory in the store’s geographical area, the store can be found via the directory. A directory that is well search engine optimized will be capable of getting consumers in your region to access you through keywords in a search engine.

Let us showcase examples of hybrid jewellery store models

1.Hybrid model with a business card and its own domain precence with graphic images of their brands or inventory and no shopping cart or pricing. An example is Design Jewellers
www.designjewellers.com located in west edmonton mall in canada and has its own domain precence as well as graphic images in their gallery of their custom designed jewellery as well as basic information about the company,services and their wide selection of canadian polar diamonds. Design jewellers pops up as top on the google search engine today with key words” design jewellers” and “designing jewellery”

2.Hybrid model with its own domain precence, display of inventory, pricing and shopping cart. An example is Lugaro Jewellers retail store located in 4 locations in British Columbia, Canada of which one being in West Vancouver British Columbia. The store features the canadian diamond with the ideal cut hearts and arrows diamond as well as other gemstone and fine jewellery. There is pricing on each item as well as the opportunity to shop online. Google search engine keywords “hearts and arrows canadian diamond’ shows Lugaro diamonds as featured in an article in Digitalism Magazine
“jewellers in north vancouver british columbia” as key words comes up in weblocal.ca, a directory. The site http://www.lugaro.com/ needs further search engine optimization to be recognized and direct traffic back to its store. A consumer should be able to find the store without having to know the store’s name but rather by consumer search needs.

3. Hybrid model not using its own domain address but in a well search engine optimized directory.
This is ideal for a store that has multiple retail stores in various geographical areas. If constructing a website is finacially restrained, a more economical venue is to geotarget the store by location and cross marketing. For instance a business in Canada within the Guelph, kitchener ,Waterloo and Cambridge area can maximize its prominence by being featured in a search directory for the region such as www.guelphwellington.ca which allows the business to feature graphic images of products, pricing , sell online if it wants as well search engine optimize for key words. When you go to the directory looking for pizza for instance you also see other products such as auto products with their featured product. This cross marketing is highly profitable as it brings traffic from one shopping venue into another. These are constantly rotated so there is always a mix of cross marketing which is at the sametime geotargeted and search engine optimized.