Kirov Jewellery Studio – Service Concept
The service concept of Kirov Jewellery Studio has an avant-garde approach. It is based on three anchor points which differentiate it sharply from the main stream online and offline jewellery stores. These three points are:
• Personal approach
• Appearance based choice
• Value for money factor
The three points are interlinked in a system that delivers high quality product, tailored according to the customer’s specifications and budget, delivered on time at realistic, down-to-earth prices.
Personal Approach
While Personal approach is offered by many high end jewellers, very few are actually dealing with every customer from the first contact to the delivery of the piece. The customer is usually talking with a sales person who is passing the job to a designer, who is forwarding it to a goldsmith and then to the stone setter. Then is back to the polisher and it is reported ready for dispatch. In studio jewellery, this is done by one person. The designer is the sales person and goldsmith, gemmologist, and polisher responsible for every single step of the process. Ordering your jewellery in an online jewellery studio might lack the glamour and sparkle of prime position jewellery store but it has two major advantages, often overlooked by the excited buyer:
• If you go in a shop with ready inventory, they will always try to sell you what they have in stock rather than looking for the best deal that suits you. The lack of inventory makes every deal equally good, so the studio jeweler can afford to offer you the best options, tailored for your taste and budget without losing profit.
• The inventory you see on the windows has hefty, cost generating monthly interest. This, together with the heavy running cost of the brick and mortar store calls for serious mark up eliminated in a jewellery studio.
Appearance based choice of diamond (ABCD)
Jewellery is a feast for the eye. If your jeweller is telling you that buying piece of jewelley is a good investment, he is either not honest or ill informed. This marketing approach is mostly applied to diamonds in order to justify the extremely high prices of this gem. A diamond is an investment in beauty and pride of ownership, but not an investment upon which one can reasonably expect to make a profit. While some diamonds are having good appreciation, their percentage is negligible when assessing the South African and even the Global diamond market.
Only large diamonds with very high colour and clarity grade can generate proper returns, and they are hardly available locally. By rough estimation if your diamond cost less than R300,000 it will take many years just to cover the profit the dealer made by selling it to you. Heaving this in mind, I am eliminating factors increasing the value of the diamond without contributing to the appearance and offer the customer the optimum quality and size for their chosen price frame. Educated appearance based choice of diamond and metal can make enormous difference to the impact factor of a jewellery piece in given price bracket.
Value for money factor
Cheap and jewelry are two ends that never meet. I am referring to engagement rings made from precious metals and set with genuine stones. Fine jewelry is meant to be expensive; it is a form of concentrated wealth and statement of status. The materials involved in fine jewelry are promptly classified and their prices hardly negotiable, so if the price of a piece of fine jewellery is too good to be truth, it most probably is. It is good to figure out first how cheap is cheap, and since people have different buying power this term is far from objective. If you see price tag of R 2 000 for a diamond ring, you would think it is cheap and mentally pair it with bargain. This is a good marketing trick but is not entirely correct; cheap – yes, bargain – definitely not.
If you strip the mark up from the price you will most probably end up with cost of R 350 and this is not a bargain. Yes, you could get something that can be lawfully called diamond ring with cost price of R 350. Thin mass finished shank containing 1.2gr. of 9k gold set with 0.02ct. diamond of almost industrial quality and plenty of optical tricks to make it look substantial. Bargain is a ring with cost much greater than the mark up. It is all in the ratio between these two values and the price itself is irrelevant. The formula of Value for money factor (VFMF) is based on this concept and it is applied to every piece I quote in my jewellery studio and to every advice I give to my customers.