ModernJeweler.com |

As part of a husband-wife team that owns Treasures Custom Jewelry, an independent retailer located in a suburban Phoenix, Arizona, strip mall, Scott Bohall never anticipated attracting many customers shopping on-line. That all changed, however, when he received an unusual call from a man who claimed to be from Iowa and wanted to know a dizzying array of details about the diamonds available in the store—everything from price and stock to size and certification.

Bohall politely answered each and every question—and the same man called back a few days later, identifying himself as the owner of a web site called FindMyJeweler.com. “I almost hung up on him because we get a million phone calls from solicitors,” says Bohall. “But when I remembered the original call from the ‘customer’ from Iowa, I decided to talk to him a little longer.”

He found out that the man was Robert Hensley, a former diamond dealer and diamond retailer who has run FindMyJeweler.com, an on-line jeweler referral service, for the past seven years. “We are a web site that attracts highly informed, discriminating, value-conscious customers looking for a good value on a high-quality diamond,” says Hensley, who explains that his site recommends jewelers in a customer’s local area when the shopper fills out an on-line profile. However, only those jewelers who pass several rigorous secret-shopper screening tests, usually including calls from Hensley pretending to be a prospective customer, are invited to appear on the site.

FindMyJeweler.com is just one example of what has become a trend of alternative on-line retailing. Instead of attempting to compete with large e-commerce retailers such as Blue Nile, independent retailers are finding ways to showcase their brick-and-mortar stores and personalized service by marketing on-line. “The trend is towards customers buying on-line,” says Hensley, “but the majority of customers still prefer buying locally, in person.”

To that end, Hensley believes his site offers independent retailers some much-needed on-line attention—but no one need fill out an application. “Inclusion in FindMyJeweler.com is by invitation only, so we can maintain a high level of integrity,” he says. “We look for jewelers that carry GIA or AGS certified stones, which are competitive in price, that do a good volume, and answer all the technical questions I ask exactly correctly.” If jewelers make a sale from someone who has arrived at the store at FindMyJeweler.com’s recommendation, Hensley receives a small cut. But since Hensley doesn’t keep rigorous track of sales, the honor system prevails.

For the few who make it onto the FindMyJeweler.com recommended list, such as Bohall, the benefits can be well worth it. “It’s been very good for me. I wish I could get 10 people a day from them,” Bohall says, adding that he’s probably received about ten customers so far. “It hasn’t been necessarily because it’s a huge financial windfall but these are customers for whom I would have had to spend a lot of money on advertising. Instead, they just show up at my store, sometimes from as far as 80 miles away.”

DRIVING TRAFFIC

Other on-line ventures also offer consumers brick-and-mortar referrals on-line. GemFind.net, which has served as a business-to-business network for the jewelry industry since 1999, is about to launch a new business-to-consumer component at GemFind.com. The new site will help retail “affiliates”—jewelers who join the site for a fee—connect with consumers searching for jewelry on-line. “We’ll have the advertising dollars we need to buy the keywords that jewelry shoppers use when they shop on-line,” says Neal McCartney, GemFind’s marketing director. “Our sponsored results on search engine pages will allow those shoppers to connect with brick-and-mortar jewelers in their local areas. It is on-line marketing, but it’s in harmony with supporting the independent stores.”