Ellen Hertz did not want to wake up one day and realize her dream of opening a jewelry store had passed her by. Stepping away from a successful consulting career, she opened Max’s, which specializes in two things she has always loved: fine jewelry and artisanal chocolates.
Hertz, who had been a partner at the consulting firm Accenture, was feeling burned out after 21 years with the company, she says. Newly married and tired of spending so much time on the road, she decided give in to the “retailing bug” she had caught years before.
Hertz had worked in retail while in college and graduate school. And she proudly recalls helping to sell her first pair of earrings at about age six. “My grandfather owned Max’s Jewelry Company in Michigan. Over the holidays, my mother would help out, and I would tag along. She was assisting a customer looking for earrings, and I pointed to a pair in the case, which the customer bought.”
While her retail experience provided a foundation in customer service, her corporate skills proved to be the most transferable. Knowing how to read a balance sheet, deciphering a profit and loss statement, understanding contracts and selecting computer hardware were especially valuable in establishing and operating her business. Another important skill from her previous life was her recruiting experience. “I know how to look for talent,” Hertz declares.
Focus on women
The store, which opened in 2006 and is named for Hertz’s grandfather, is located five minutes from downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, in a mixed-use (retail and residential) development that appealed to Hertz as an “interesting and attractive spot,” she explains. However, the timing was not auspicious: It was just on the cusp of the 2008 recession, and Hertz witnessed a lot of turnover in stores.
Yet Max’s became a destination spot, which Hertz attributes in part to “a combination of a massive, massive advertising spend as well as word of mouth. Right now, we’re well-enough established that people make their
way to us.”
The store’s prime market has stayed the same since day one. “We sell significantly more to women self-purchasers than we do to men purchasing for women. Our number-one target market is the woman who has her own money and who can and likes to buy for herself,” Hertz explains.
The bridal business has been the biggest surprise for Hertz, especially since she admits it was never on her radar. “It wasn’t our thing. However, over the years, our wedding business has grown quite significantly. We started seeing customers buying what would be described as ‘alternative bridal’ — a band with a little sapphire sprinkle. Then word spread. Now we promote the store as a great place for wedding jewelry.” She notes that bridal accounts for 20% of her business.
Telling Artists’ stories
Inherent in Hertz’s selling philosophy is the belief that both customers and staff should understand the backstory of the designers, to whom she refers as artists. Conveying to customers what is special about each artist’s aesthetic is key to that story.
“We want every customer to understand [that] what we are doing is representing and celebrating the art of designing and the art of crafting the piece. Every designer might not be on the bench, but they control the process, and their jewelry is not sent overseas to be mass-produced,” she says.
“Usually I’m walking a trade show floor and waiting to be drawn in,” Hertz continues, describing one of her criteria for selecting new artists. “I also need to see what differentiates this collection from another that I already sell. And this means eliminating designs that might be really pretty but don’t fit in with our aesthetic.”
And while she prefers to select designers she has met personally, a notable exception is Jamie Joseph. Hertz remembers a customer coming
into the store “in the very early days” wearing a Jamie Joseph ring. “She told me that I had to carry these rings and promised that she would send all her friends to the store because they all wanted to buy her ring.” While Hertz still hasn’t met the designer, “her rings are top sellers,” she says.
Hertz also cites Erica Molinari, Anne Sportun, Ray Griffiths and Yasuko Azuma Jewelry as being among her strong performers. Earrings are the best-selling category, followed by rings, necklaces and bracelets.
The sweet life
Hertz describes Max’s first and foremost as a jewelry store. But this chocoholic, who would take fine chocolate on the road with her as a “special snack,” sees a natural link between the two: “Both are luxury and giftable items that are also perfect for
self-purchase.”
Hertz defied naysayers who told her she couldn’t sell both. “The truth of the matter is that you can come into the store and purchase chocolate far more frequently than you walk into the store and purchase jewelry. So it is a way for customers to keep returning. Even if they are not buying jewelry, chances are reasonably good that their eyeballs are falling on the jewelry.”
Selling chocolate and keeping samples in the store reinforce the ambience Hertz set from the start. “I told the architect that I wanted to emulate the Cheers bar feeling — a place where ‘everyone knows your name’ and a place where customers just want to hang out,” she says, referring to the popular ’80s TV show.
She firmly rejects the belief that brick-and-mortar stores are dead. “The key for the retailer and the designer, [as well as] the end customer, is to determine the right point of intersection between the retail store and the internet. People will continue to search online to do their homework, but for the most part, I think people still want to see something before they buy it,” she says. “The challenge for all of us is to continue to hone and focus our storytelling to be very specific about what we do and why we do it.”
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Image: ShutterstockArticle from the Rapaport Magazine - April 2020. To subscribe click here.