It is a story of tradition with a modern twist. Long’s Jewelers was founded in Boston 130 years ago by Thomas Long. In more recent times, the store went through a number of owners, until 1991, when Bob Rottenberg bought the store from then-owner Birks, of Canada. The Rottenberg family was no stranger to the jewelry business, having owned Ross Jewelers, also Massachusetts-based, for two generations. After Bob purchased Long’s, the Ross store names were changed to Long’s Jewelers. Today, along with a downtown Boston branch, there are four stores circling the city — in Peabody, Burlington, Natick and Braintree. Bob Rottenberg is chief executive officer (CEO), his older son, Craig, president and younger son, Judd, is the diamond buyer and manager of the Burlington flagship.
The brothers have used energy and ingenuity to build the business, blending old-time customer service and modern communications to capitalize on the company’s long history and established reputation in the community. While the retailer sells a wide range of items, from status timepieces and estate jewelry to Boston Marathon–themed giftware, diamonds are unquestionably king. Styles include big-name designer collections and classic diamond jewelry, as well as engagement and wedding rings, the latter of which contribute 30 percent to 40 percent of the business.
The stores’ clientele, which varies with location, is a broad mix of incomes and lifestyles. Customers range from young couples to mature shoppers, hourly wage earners to corporate executives. Overall, says Craig, Boston is a fairly conservative audience, and most shoppers opt for classic styles such as three-stone rings and other “nonfunky” jewelry. Designer brands, however, still have clout, and featured names include David Yurman, Penny Preville, Roberto Coin, Mikimoto and Ivanka Trump.
Wedding Bells
“We focus a lot of time on the diamond engagement ring,” says Craig, “and it’s become the fastest-growing part of our business over the past three years.” Rings with a three-quarter-carat center diamond are the “bread-and-butter” of the sales, but rings of 2 carats and more have also shown marked growth. The range is VS, S1 to SI2 clarity and D through J color. The retailer does not offer branded diamonds, but does have a Long’s Signature diamond that is certified Triple 0 by the American Gem Society (AGS). Craig says this top-grade diamond is an “important part of the business, but not the most important.”
Over time, Long’s has carefully analyzed its approach to the diamond engagement and wedding ring market and has found that concentrating on selling wedding bands is a more lucrative approach. While the retailer sells a growing number of diamond engagement rings, it’s hard to target the pre-engaged male because there’s no commonality, says Craig. “The diamond engagement ring customer and the wedding-band customer have two different mentalities,” he observes. “For the engagement ring, the man is on his own. In wedding bands, they are a team and she leads.”
To take advantage of that important opportunity, Long’s created its annual Wedding Band Weekend, in which most regular merchandise is put aside and the store is filled to capacity with wedding bands from a huge range of suppliers. Held for the past ten years, the event has been an unqualified success. The most recent weekend attracted more than 2,000 couples.
To attract the widest number of engaged women to register to attend the Wedding Band Weekend, the retailer partners with bridal magazines. It is a festive event: There is food and music, prizes are awarded in various merchandise categories and customers are dazzled by what is likely to be the biggest selection of wedding bands they have ever seen. The focus is clearly on selling wedding bands, but also on view is a selection of watches for the brides to choose as possible grooms’ gifts. Prizes include shopping sprees in local furniture and electronics stores and dinners in local restaurants. The idea, says Craig, is to have the prizes focus on after the wedding, “the second half” of the couple’s life together, rather than on the wedding-day necessities, such as gowns, photographers or musicians.
Community Outreach
Other community and civic events are a constant on Long’s calendar and a listing of Long’s charities and benefits fills an entire page of its website. One of its most visible efforts, however, concerns the Boston Marathon. For this annual race, the retailer acts as the official award supplier, and codesigner of the Boston Marathon Champions’ Trophy. Additional commemorative items include charms, rings, pendants and watches in sterling silver and gold, retailing from $40 to more than $1,000.
One of the jeweler’s latest — and most successful —marketing innovations is its interactive catalog, developed in the spring of 2010 and unveiled in time for that year’s holiday sales. Long’s has always done a booklet-style print catalog, says Craig, but decided to change its format from direct mail to online. The site provides a friendly introduction to the jeweler’s background, experience and merchandise assortment and invites customers to email what they’d like to see and to make an appointment for a personal showing of desired items. For the initial launch, Long’s sent postcards to its customers that included the web address and they had a really strong response.
“We’ve made lots of appointments through the website because we can give an immediate response,” explained Craig. “We ask the customers for their email address and phone number so we can do follow-up later. The appointments keep rolling in.” There are plans to revamp and fine-tune the interactive catalog in the future, but for holiday 2010, it was a big success.
Craig explains it this way: “Many retailers have a ‘tech barrier.’ Instead of feeling threatened by the internet and modern technology, you have to find a way to use it to your advantage to get you closer to your customer.”
Article from the Rapaport Magazine - February 2011. To subscribe click here.