By Glenn A. Beres

 

By focusing on a strategy of offering customers high-quality products, a large selection, aggressive advertising and comprehensive customer service, Wixon Jewelers of Bloomington, Minn., has built the largest independent jewelry store in the state - and one of the largest in the country.

 

Tucked into the Minneapolis suburbs only a few miles from Mall of America, the nation’s largest retail and entertainment complex, Wixon’s has capitalized on its advantageous location and now does in excess of $10 million in jewelry and watch sales annually.

“We get quite a bit of tourist overflow from the mall,” said Dan Wixon,

store owner and general manager. “Many shoppers find that the mall jewelers can’t handle their needs. In fact, a lot of the mall store employees are kind enough to direct those shoppers to us. The mall makes this area more vital.”

 

Despite the soft economy in 2003, Wixon’s enjoyed a double-digit sales increase. With an improving economy this year, the retailer is already up 34% - including a 60% gain in its watch business.

The store’s success is all the more impressive considering that Wixon was relatively new to the industry when he opened the store from scratch in 1988. Wixon is almost an anomaly in the jewelry world: he is a rare first-generation jeweler who had been handling diamonds, watches and estate pieces while working in the antiques business when he sensed that selling those pieces full-time was a better venture to pursue.

 

Wixon said he decided early on that he wouldn’t try to compete with the many jewelry chains and other mass marketers that dominated the Minneapolis-St. Cloud region. Instead, he focused on high-end designer lines, better Swiss watch brands, estate pieces, custom design and in-store repair. Wixon’s sells an impressive range of diamonds, colored gemstones, pearls, estate jewelry, timepieces, platinum and gold jewelry. On its web site, the retailer displays a number of pieces in the $25,000 to $75,000 range and a few that are well in excess of $100,000. 

 

By focusing on the concept that “service sells,” this AGS jeweler has built a reputation as one of the region’s premier guild operations and commands a customer base that extends well beyond the Twin Cities metro area. According to Wixon, the store strives to take care of “all the details” that its customers could possibly want, from superior product knowledge to on-site repairs to custom work to appraisals and everything in between.

 

“A lot of our customers are small business owners that don’t want to spend half the day in the mall,” he said. “They can pull up here and be in and out in 30 minutes and get the height of service. We’re as full-service as you can get; we’ll do everything we can for our customers.”

 

Although Wixon’s stocks many high-end, one-of-a-kind pieces, the owner acknowledges that the business relies heavily on reordering fast sellers. This is why, unlike many other large retailers, the store doesn’t buy a lot of products directly from foreign sources.

 

“When you factor in the price of customs and the time it takes to ship an item, it really isn’t worth it,” Wixon said. “You have little control over the process. It’s hard to deal with someone on an 8-10 hour time difference. They often don’t speak English very well. And it’s very difficult to change anything on your initial order. We like to sell things we can replace quickly.”

 

Besides, as one of the nation’s largest independent jewelry operations by volume, the store is big enough where many overseas sources come knocking on its door. “If they have an agent here in the United States, and you can find a way to make the process faster, it’s a much more attractive, effective strategy,” Wixon said.

 

Another way that Wixon’s gains an edge over its competition is through prolific marketing. Wixon aggressively uses newspaper, radio, magazine and billboard advertising, and is a well-known sponsor of charitable and cultural events in the community. The retailer also emphasises developing strong relationships between its sales force and their customers. Wixon noted that his salespeople are required to write follow up letters to customers to try to get them back into the store as repeat business. “Once we get you as a customer, we’ll never let you go,” he said.

 

Wixon’s has also invested in technology to better manage inventory and improve profitability. The company has been using GIA’s Advanced Retail Manage-ment Systems (ARMS) support programs for the past four years, and Wixon said he has seen the store’s sales increase dramatically during the period.

 

With the existing 6,000 square-foot store “bursting at the seams,” Wixon has acquired property adjacent to it, and plans to build a new, 20,000 square-foot jewelry superstore. Although Wixon’s has been planning to expand for several years, the company decided to wait until the economy improved. According to Wixon, they will “try to break ground next year,” but realistically, it probably won’t happen until February 2006, he added.