Located in Pensacola, Florida, Bere’ Jewelers has two store locations, including a just-completed freestanding flagship store that owner Barry Cole designed to appeal to his community.
Pensacola, Fla.--In 50 Jewelers/50 States, National Jeweler interviews one retailer in each of the 50 U.S. states to find out how they are meeting the challenges of the changing retail environment.
Florida’s Beré Jewelers was founded in 1985 in Pensacola by Barry Cole and Ray Jones, friends who met while working together at a major jewelry retail chain.
When they set out on their own, they combined their first names to come up with Beré Jewelers.
“It was goofy but we were goofy back then,” Cole explained.
Jones died in 2005 leaving Cole the sole owner of Beré Jewelers’ two locations, one in Gulf Breeze, Florida, and the other in Pensacola.
Cole recently upgraded the Pensacola flagship location, constructing a new 7,350-square-foot freestanding location complete with a bar featuring beers on tap.
He chatted with National Jeweler about understanding his community and making a traditional jewelry store man-friendly.
This is Bere’ Jewelers new flagship store in Pensacola, Florida. It’s 7,350 square feet, while the retailer’s Gulf Breeze location is 2,400 square feet. The company employs nine full-time workers and four part-time workers.
National Jeweler: What’s the biggest challenge your store is facing?
Barry Cole: Probably making sure that we stay relevant to the younger bridal customer, the millennial customer.
You know the landscape has changed in the jewelry industry so much and you can’t just continue to do things the way you’ve always done. You have to think outside of the box and stand out in a crowd basically.
There are a lot of great stores that have beautiful jewelry, wonderful customer service and fair pricing, but it’s what you do for people that they don’t expect that they remember.
I think that’s a big thing that we really tried to concentrate on with building our new store, just doing some things that people would come in and say, “Wow, this is a cool place to come.”
National Jeweler: What have you done to set the new flagship store apart?
BC: A lot of fun stuff.
Pensacola is a big military community; we’re the home of the Blue Angels and we’re the home of naval aviation so I wanted to sort of compartmentalize our store into zones.
One zone--which houses a lot of our watch brands like Breitling and TAG Heuer and many others--we’ve made into a more masculine area. It’s got a full bar in it, which is really cool. It’s got two
beer taps on it so guys come in and they’re like, “This is cool, I could come in here.”
We did the whole back wall behind Breitling and behind the bar in aluminum panels with rivets to look like an old airplane. Then we hung these big giant wooden props from World War I on the brick columns in the store--just a lot of stuff on that end of the spectrum to really stand out to a male customer and to make it more masculine.
“It’s what you do for people that they don’t expect that they remember.” --Barry Cole
We’ve got big 65-inch LED TVs throughout the store and one right behind the bar that always has ESPN on. So the guys can sit back there and kind of chill and have a beer and kind of say, “OK, I didn’t expect that.”
We also built a community table, which is about 15 feet long and made out of granite quartz with 12 leather stools where people can come and charge their iPhones and Android phones.
We’ve got two iPads that have our various brands’ apps on there. So if they want to look at Breitling and see what else Breitling makes, or if they want to look at John Hardy and see what else John Hardy has, they can.
Here is a view of Bere’ Jewelers’ bar with beers on tap at its new flagship store. To the right is the “community table,” where customers can charge their phones, or even fill out credit applications on the store’s iPads.
Another view of the bar
If they want to fill out a credit application, the application is right there, and they just fill it out and it uploads directly to our system so it’s all done kind of privately at the community table, rather than having to yell out their personal information to you to type into a computer.
We have the second branded interactive Forevermark zone in North America. The first one was in Oregon earlier this year and they just finished ours a few weeks ago.
It’s pretty cool; it has this new technology where it looks like a chess set and the customer can move the pieces of the chess set. For example, if one of the squares on the board says “responsible sourcing” on it, they can move the chess piece onto that area and up pops a 30- or 40-second spot on the monitor about responsible sourcing.
Basically, it’s teaching the customer about the brand Forevermark without us having to do anything. And the customers are kind of doing it on their own without us sitting there and telling them something they may not believe anyway.
Just including a lot of technology in the store really kind of helps appeal to that younger customer base.
NJ: Describe your regional customer.
BC: It’s military and medicine primarily.
Pensacola has a huge history obviously with the military. They just found the remains of the de Luna settlement in Pensacola, so it’s like the oldest settlement in the United States.
Then we’re also a huge regional medical area so we have three really big hospitals with all level 5 critical care units; one has a big children’s hospital.
Pensacola has a lot of tourists but I would say that probably 90 percent of my business is local people.
Barry Cole
NJ: What’s the top-selling category and brand at your store?
BC: The top-selling brand is Forevermark. The top-selling watch brand would be Breitling right now, but TAG Heuer is right on its heels.
We just picked up John Hardy, and we’re doing wonderfully with it. Another brand that we’re doing amazingly with is Shy Creations. It’s not expensive; it retails from about $300 to $1,500.
We’re in the Continental Buying Group and we were at the CBG show and Shy Creations was there and my wife saw it and said, “Oh my God, all of the high school girls are going to love this, all of the young moms are going to love this,” and all of her tennis girlfriends would love it because it’s a self-purchase price point.
The challenge after the recession was having to completely revamp inventory to find things that people could afford because I think customers that might have spent $5,000 or $10,000 still wanted to spend but it might be more in the $500 to $1,500 range.
I would say that Forevermark, Breitling, TAG Heuer, John Hardy and Shy Creations are probably five of the brands we carry that are on the upswing.
Bridal is our top-performing category overall.
NJ: What’s the most popular style of engagement ring with your clientele?
BC: It’s still vintage and halo settings. We’re seeing a little bit of a stirring away from the halo to solitaires but still with a touch of that vintage flair in the band, whether it be pavé diamond or milgrain.
It’s still consistently white metals and it’s still halo. If you look at any Instagram post from anybody or any Facebook post, it still seems like halo is the hot thing.
Round and cushion diamonds are popular and oval is pretty hot right now too.
NJ: Do you have e-commerce on your site?
BC: We do have e-commerce. It’s not a real driving force in our business because we haven’t promoted it much but that will be something we address at JCK this year.
This is the Forevermark interactive zone of the store.
Another interior shot of Beré Jewelers’ new Penscaola flagship
NJ: What’s your social media presence like? What accounts do you have or actively use?
BC: Facebook and Instagram are the biggest. I’d say we have about 128,000 fans on Facebook. And Instagram is right at 3,000 followers. We just started working on our Instagram.
Pinterest, not so much, and Twitter, not so much, but we do have a presence there. Instagram and Facebook for sure are our biggest platforms that we actively use.
NJ: What’s the best piece of advice you’d offer to other independent jewelry stores?
BC: Make yourself different than the rest of the people in your market.
You know, we have a lot of friends around the country who will serve a cold beer or a glass of wine out of a fridge in the kitchen (at their stores) but having that visible bar with the taps coming out of it, people look at that, especially guys, and they’re like, “That’s pretty cool. I think I can go back to that place.”
I think it’s also important to find out what the driving force is in your community, whether it be medicine or military or tourism or whatever and try to make your store stand out a little bit in that way. That’s why we instated the military “zone” concept in our store.
You’ve got to deliver an experience for people now. Otherwise they can just buy online. They would rather buy online, truth be told, but if you give them a reason to come into the store then I think that’s what you’ve got do to stay competitive.
Another thing I would say is if you can afford it, try to find a marketing agency that knows about your business and knows about the jewelry business. There’s a lot of local agencies, but they don’t necessarily know what makes a jewelry store tick.
We found an agency at the Continental Buying Group show last year, Bottomline Marketing, and they’re all 25 to 35 years old and they think outside of the box and they have some phenomenal accounts around the country.
I think it’s important to find somebody who can help give you those ideas to make you relevant.
NJ: What’s a fun fact about you we can share with our readers?
BC: I was born on Valentine’s Day so I was probably destined to be in this business because of that, but seriously, I love to hunt and fish; I’m pretty much a redneck I would say.
People will see me selling diamonds wearing blue jeans and a Carhartt vest sometimes. I’m not a traditional three-piece suit and tie guy. I’ll wear a blazer and blue jeans and boots pretty much every day. And I think people realize that’s me, and they like the fact that I’m not real stuffy.
That’s just how I roll.
Ashley Davisis the senior editor, fashion at National Jeweler, covering all things related to design, style and trends.
