From Venice to the Metro New York area, tourism is exploding. Enticed by cheaper airfares and bargain-rate cruises, the number of travelers is growing, and many will buy fine jewelry. But vacation-location retailing is prone to the same ups and downs as retailing back home, and on top of that, it comes with a few issues of its own.
For jewelers who have decided to open a store where others open a book and a beer, a combination of careful buying, smart marketing and location-focused merchandising can make doing business in vacation spots a great way to make a living.
John Pimentel of Conch Jewelers in Key West, Florida, loves doing business in this city at the tail end of the Florida Keys. The trailing group of small islands at Florida’s southernmost end has a Bohemian atmosphere that draws tourists from around the world. Pimentel opened his store — which specializes in pearl, gold and gemstone jewelry — almost 20 years ago, and it’s still going strong.
“I cater to tourists. And Key West has a lot of them,” he says.
There are challenges, however, to running a business by the sea. Pimentel is careful to sell jewelry that will turn but won’t be copied by others vying for a slice of the vacation pie.
“I look for merchandise that is ours exclusively for the area,” he says. “Because if something sells well, it will be knocked off and carried by the store down the street within minutes.”
For Pimentel, this has meant selling branded pearl jewelry from designers such as Kabana, and Galatea: Jewelry by Artist, as well as treasure coin jewelry — one-of-a-kind antique coins found in shipwrecks. Galatea, known for its hand-carved pearls, also created a bespoke series of carved pearl beads for Conch Jewelers that include the initials “K W” for “Key West,” and a sea turtle. They’ve sold extremely well, he says.
Like other successful retailers, Pimentel actively markets his business. But rather than using hit-or-miss local print ads or television, he works with the major cruise ship lines for pre-packaged print and video opportunities. With dozens of mega-ships docking in Key West, Conch Jewelers ads appear on stateroom televisions, on shopping maps and in buyer’s guides. The cost? It isn’t cheap — somewhere in the five-figure range, he says — but it’s effective.
Of course, people don’t always take their holidays in warm locations. Ski resorts are also havens for the traveling masses, and like jewelers in warmer locales, these stores sometimes need creative marketing to lure tourists to the counter.
Retailers can build excitement with event marketing, which frequently means exclusive trunk shows. In vacation locations, the designer collection selected for the trunk show is often a reflection of the store’s own brand, but it may also serve to remind customers of their time at a specific place, or the lazy, hazy days of summer.
Wolfgang Mockel, owner of KWM Exclusives in Miami, Florida, has been creating exceptional trunk shows for leading luxury jewelry brands at vacation locales for many years. In the air more than he is on the ground, Mockel averages two shows a week at high-end stores from San Francisco to Barbados and Nantucket. Fun, colorful jewelry sells extremely well in resort towns, he says.
“People want to remember how happy they were when they were on vacation,” he says. So colorful, understatedly elegant pieces from German designer Tamara Comolli, one of the brands Mockel has marketed for many years, fits the bill nicely.
Though Mockel says ski resorts can be challenging in winter (skiers like to ski, not shop), Taz Akkad, owner of Tesoro in Aspen, Colorado, says location has made all the difference for keeping his store busy year-round. With a shop on Aspen’s pedestrian mall — and a product mix that’s half jewelry and half fossils and minerals — Akkad says his wide-open windows and intriguing displays work wonders for getting people in the door.
“We have a lot of repeat customers, and we treat them well,” he says.
Image (left to right): Lotus Arts de Vivre Scarab necklace with diamonds; Mia Nardi Primrose earrings with sapphires and diamonds mianardi.com; Scarab cluster earrings with pearls lotusartdevivre.comArticle from the Rapaport Magazine - September 2017. To subscribe click here.