The jewelry industry has an image problem. Younger consumers find the jewelry store environment intimidating. More importantly, these same consumers, who spend much of their time with digital media, find websites from retailers, designers and manufacturers equally imposing.
Innovation online has largely come from outside the industry, such as website Blue Nile. However, the Blue Nile model with its focus on jewelry and diamonds as a commodity seems to be losing ground as the digital landscape has again dramatically changed with the wide acceptance of social and mobile media.
To address this new reality, two websites (again founded by people outside the industry) have launched that are working to bridge the gap among e-commerce, social media and bricks-and-mortar retail: Adornia and Stone & Strand.
Adornia co-founders Becca Aronson and Moran Amir met at Wharton and didn’t wait to leave the business school before starting their own company. Both are scheduled to graduate in May but launched Adornia in September 2012 out of their apartments. They plan to return to New York to set up a permanent home for their business. Aronson was the former Lucky accessories editor and Amir handled retail operations for Catherine Malandrino and Diesel. Their experiences are complementary with Aronson the creative person while Aronson handles much of the business. “She’s Photoshop and I’m PowerPoint,” Amir says.
The website sells affordable fine fashion jewelry at a price range from approximately $75 to $2,300. Their customer is very specific: fashion-forward, professional, urban women from the ages of 25 to 45 who have a strong sense of personal style. This site’s main customers are women who buy their own jewelry (the self-purchasing woman).
Aronson and Amir purchase all of the jewelry themselves. In addition to curating the pieces, they organize them in separate collections with names like “Heavy Metal,” “Deco After Dark” and “Darkest Jungle.” The idea is to make personal jewelry shopping easier for women who know their own style. While the site is geared for women, they say that this presentation also makes it easier for men and friends to purchase gifts. They also discuss fashion trends through their blog, “The United States of Adornia.”
The co-founders take their brand to the people, holding trunk shows from San Francisco to Shanghai, China. One of their plans is to do a cross country bus tour.
Meanwhile, Wharton grad Nadine McCarthy Kahane launched her website, Stone & Strand, April 18. A former strategy consultant, she has traveled extensively for work and pleasure and has lived in Singapore, London and Buenos Aires before settling in New York.
Instead of curating the jewelry collection like Adornia, Kahane is curating a group of jewelry designers. She opened the site with a group of 24 designers. The result is a broad jewelry collection that ranges in material from wood to high-karat gold and in price from $115 to well over $20,000. For now all of the designers reside in the U.S. (although several are from other countries) but Kahane said she will expand to include designers from around the world.
This is a site geared toward a clientele who love the search for original adornment almost as much as they love wearing the pieces. “People want things they can fall in love with,” Kahane says. It’s really nice to be able to tap into that passion.”
On this website, the focus is totally on designers. Their works and their stories are presented front and center. They provide access to designers’ studios through personal meetings and special events.
For Kahane the inspiration to start this site was personal. First, she discussed the difficulties of learning about jewelry on her own (such as style, materials and cost). Then she said she has two friends who are jewelry designers who were having difficulty finding an online home for their work.
“We in business are trained to spot opportunities and we feel jewelry is going through this transformation,” she said. “It’s been so conservative. A lot of the designers don’t sell online or they sell a very small portion of their collection online. We do see things changing quickly. We see people buying off Instagram these days. It’s all about access.”
Another thing both sites share is free shipping to U.S. and customer-friendly return policies. Of course both brands appear on all of the standard social media platforms.Please join me on the Jewelry News Network Facebook Page, on Twitter @JewelryNewsNet and on the Forbes Website.
 |
| Lorre White |
Lorre White lives and works in a special place in the world of luxury that she created for herself. To most people she is the “The Luxury Guru,” an international media personality who shares her expertise on the luxury lifestyle and luxury marketing.
However, White also works as a marketing consultant for companies who target Ultra High Net Worth consumers—the 2 percent of the population that controls half of the world’s wealth. Through her company, White Light Consulting, she provides a range of services that include branding, strategic planning and executive training.
It’s a combination that has worked for White for a number of years. As attitudes about luxury become more democratic and social media brings people closer to the brands, her formula for reaching UHNW individuals, luxury marketers and aspirational luxury consumers becomes even more powerful.
“My unique niche is reaching the world’s wealthiest demographic,” she says of her work as a luxury marketing consultant. “My clients are luxury brands that have products and services to sell that require a certain level of wealth to purchase them. Things like a $60 million yacht, or a $120 million private jet. In my consulting work it is not the buyer that I am working with; it is the companies that need to know how to reach and maintain this small and difficult demographic.”
This is also a changing demographic. White says that 92 percent of the world’s wealthiest individuals are self-made and 80 percent of them have had their substantial wealth only 10 years or less. “This means that the ones controlling most of the wealth globally are not brand aware,” she says.
This new reality requires a change in how companies market to these new wealthy consumers.
“Luxury brands that used to just be able to ride on their reputation must now aggressively educate these individuals about their brand,” she says. “These individual did not grow up with the old luxury brands.”
For companies that have an exceptional and valuable product or service, it’s a demographic that is worth pursuing.
“The combined Net Worth of the UHNW could pay off the United States deficit ($14 trillion) and still have Net Worth higher than the GDP of the U.S. and China combined and this amount is controlled by less than 200,000 people,” she said.
White’s interest in luxury marketing began more than 20 years ago at Simmons College in Boston when, on her own, she began studying the specific motivations of the wealthy. At the time it was an unknown field of study. She continued to pursue this market by first forming an events marketing and planning agency for wealthy clients that included the NFL and American Express.
White soon found even more success in the private aviation business, first with SeaGate Travel, helping it to become the 10th largest travel company in the U.S. with a private charter division. She followed this by becoming head of global marketing for private aviation partnership, NetJets/Marquis Jets BBJ program, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway. This is a short list of her experience and accomplishments.
As “The Luxury Guru,” she spreads the world of luxury to a much broader audience through broadcast media, online videos, a number of social media platforms, magazine columns and articles in publications throughout the world, and on her blog (www.LuxGuru.Typepad.com). Primarily through social media her popularity has grown organically from the U.S. to Europe to the U.A.E.
The way luxury is viewed has changed greatly over the past few years and White, in her dual roles, is able to benefit. The snobbish appeal has largely disappeared and White says that’s a good thing. “Snobbery by definition is not being luxurious.” In addition, digital media has redefined how consumers and luxury brands communicate with one another.
White knows that most low price point luxuries like fashion, perfumes, skin care, cosmetics and candles rely on 80 percent of their sales from aspirational consumers. So when presenting to general audiences, she often talks about these more affordable items.
“My information to the consumer is free. If people cannot afford a yacht, they can still watch a video or read an article I wrote on it,” she says. “It does not hurt anyone to share in the education, the advertisers and sponsors of low price-point luxuries like fashion…. I supply positive educational entertainment.”
For luxury professionals, she provides free research and tips for companies on attracting and marketing to luxury consumers.
“The articles I write and share for free help many small companies that cannot afford to hire an expert,” she says. “I get letters of gratitude all the time from small companies that say they turned their businesses around by following my advice and articles. I think it is great that I have been able to help so many.”
Finally, for those who have made it and are inexperienced at enjoying their wealth to the fullest, White's blog and other online activities provide a safe, secure source of inside information about luxury. Her followers are predominantly UHNW (private jet owning) individuals that sign up to get information from her blog daily. They include royals, billionaires and other very noteworthy names. White says there are very few media sources that have this reach. "This is why companies like Rolls-Royce had me do the very first personal (not about cars) interview with their global CEO. Because they want to reach my audience. This is something very rare."
She added, “I offer ego friendly ways to learn about the best luxury brands from private jets, to yachts, to watches, to fashion designers, to wines. Most UHNWs grew up in poor or middle class homes and are more likely to know mass brands like Nike than luxury brands like Brioni. This is a group of people that do not have to pick and choose what luxury they can partake in. They can do it all and they are thirsty for trustworthy information. Trust plays a very key role. This group does not respond to traditional advertising. The power of the personality (my brand) brings trust. There is accountability as to who is saying it.”
However, there is another reason she is so ubiquitous.
“I am a marketer. To ask me to not market is like asking me not to breath.” Please join me on the Jewelry News Network Facebook Page, on Twitter @JewelryNewsNet and on the Forbes Web site.
