In the Loupe
In the Loupe
Vendor Roundtable: Gold Prices, Tariffs, and JCK Prep ft. Ostbye & Brevani
Michael hosts a LIVE Vendor Roundtable at the 2025 Punchmark Client Workshop, featuring Jordan Peck from Brevani and Craig MacBean from Ostbye jewelry to discuss how they're navigating current market challenges and preparing for the upcoming buying season.
Ostbye: https://ostbye.com/
Brevani: https://brevani.com/
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Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
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Welcome to In the Loop for a vendor roundtable, which is the first time I'm doing this and I'm joined by an all-star cast. I'm joined by Jordan Peck, the head of operations at Brevani I've had him on In the Loop in the past as well and Craig McBean, president of Auspy, and we're talking all about everything that vendors are thinking about. You know, how are tariffs and gold prices impacting their business? What are their plans for JCK? We also talk about what makes a good retailer partnership, as well as how they can better service their clients. It's a really cool conversation. They're both very transparent and they also tease some of their upcoming releases ahead of JCK and, I hope, if you carry their lines you get a chance to kind of see what's coming up soon.
Speaker 2:Anyways, please enjoy. Platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmarkcom. Slash go.
Speaker 1:And now back to the show. So to give you guys an idea, in case you don't know who I am, my name is Michael Burpo. I'm the director of user experience at Punchmark and I'm also the host. There we go. I'm the director of user experience at Punchmark and I'm also the host. There we go. I'm also the host of our weekly podcast In the Loop. In the Loop is tailored specifically to retail jewelers like yourself, and I try my hardest to tailor this, so much so that it would be the perfect podcast for you all to listen to when you're driving to work or if you're in the process of working at the bench or whatever, and my whole goal is to provide information that is what a jeweler kind of needs to know that is going on in the jewelry industry.
Speaker 1:We created this podcast back during 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, under the name the Jeweler's Survival Kit, and that was all about how can you navigate having your online storefront shut down, and we were giving them tips on e-commerce and things like that. The one thing we learned very quickly is that talking about the pandemic was kind of a bummer every week, so we pivoted a little bit more and we switched into specifically talking about jewelry retail and e-commerce and marketing advice. Since then, we started to kind of adapt a little bit further and now I have on what we call roundtables, and that's what this is going to be. So I'm joined by Jordan from Brevani and Craig McBean from OSPI. How are you guys doing today? Doing great, doing great. So excited to get a chance to speak with you, craig. You were here last year and so I'm assuming we did well enough to have you come back.
Speaker 3:Good enough, just good enough.
Speaker 1:Okay, good, you know what?
Speaker 4:That's high praise for me.
Speaker 1:I was a B student for a while, so you know what it got me, where I am today and Jordan first time here. Yep First time in Charlotte.
Speaker 4:No, not first time in Charlotte, first time here for Punctuorm, very cool yeah.
Speaker 1:So you guys are also, what you have in common together is both next generation vendors, and I guess I kind of quickly wanted to ask I actually did an original podcast with Craig about two years ago at this point and you were talking about the process of working with I think it was your father at the time and what that navigation was like. Is that something that is continuing to develop along the way, like working with your family on this big family business?
Speaker 3:Well, good question. So my father retired in 2007 and he did a sabbatical where he was going to leave for a few months and then come back in a different role, so it was going to allow me to kind of take over the leadership of the company. But I knew when he left that he wasn't coming back because he was pretty checked out at the time. So when he retired in 2007,. He's been gone. He comes in for copy paper on occasion and we still charge him for that, but what's scary is that I'm now getting to the point where I need to start thinking about the next generation, thinking about the next one.
Speaker 3:And I've got a 24-year-old daughter who I don't think we could work together. I've got a 22-year-old son who's going into cybersecurity and I've got a 17-year-old son. So I'm still a ways from anyone from say, a fifth generation being ready, but thankfully we've got a good team in-house that could run the business, and I've got to figure some things out.
Speaker 1:Hopefully you've got some time with that. And Jordan, we actually did an episode relatively recently a couple of months ago and you were talking about working with your sister, but also navigating what it's like working with your parents. Yeah, just in a summation. You guys can go back and listen to the episode, but what is it like having to navigate, dealing with family and sibling matters as well as, you know, business matters?
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean it's a challenge If there's anyone here that works with family. You know, you understand that it's kind of difficult to separate the two. So you know, what we've tried to do is kind of create boundaries and have family time being family time, business time being business time, which I think helps a lot. You know, our mom was getting pretty angry when every dinner we were just sitting and talking about work. So we had to kind of find that balance.
Speaker 4:I think my sister in my case it's good, because things I'm good at she's not necessarily as good at, and vice versa. She's great at design, marketing and, you know, brand direction, whereas I'm much more focused on back end and sales operations, things like that. So we have a really good balance and work well together in that respect. And then we share the commonality of trying to convince my father to take a step back and, you know, let go of the reins a little bit. But you know just the type of person he is. I don't know if he's ever going to be fully out and just come in for paper. I think that he's someone who's probably going to be there for and just come in for paper. I think that he's someone who's probably going to be there for the long haul. We are just kind of adapting to how that looks and you know how we're going to go about taking over and stepping into his role, while he still maintains some sort of involvement there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is one of the topics that I've been covering quite often is family dynamics and kind of, you know, business relationships, because you know businesses aren't like this cold, heartless sort of corporate being. For all of you, as independent jewelers, there's a lot more at play sometimes. You know we have to balance those things, and I do want to talk especially about current events, and so this is one of the things that In the Loop especially covers and focuses on. The one topic everybody has on their mind is the price of gold, and just currently I had it pulled up right now it is at $3,200, $3,231. In case we're all interested, I wanted to ask you guys how is the price of gold being at an all-time high impacting your businesses? Is that something that you're first of all? Is that something you're paying attention to, like I am? I look at it like a, like a stock, yeah, um, are you paying attention every day or do you have to just make jewelry no matter what the price of gold is?
Speaker 3:well, I mean a couple things. First, all we do look at it every day, but we don't play it like the stock market.
Speaker 3:I'm not that smart, so if I was, then I probably wouldn't be here, but no, we, so we don't change a lot based on where the metal market's at. You know, for us to really just impacted on how well our customers are doing, and our customers continue to do well right now, and so we continue to manufacture a lot of jewelry. I mean we do. We have been developing a couple of platinum collections and things like that that I remember us doing, I don't know, 15, 18 years ago when gold kind of spiked, but I think in general, I mean it's a little bit like when the stock market's doing well and everyone's talking about it, people that are investing more. I think, even when gold is high, people are talking about a lot, which I think is great for our industry, and so I think because of that, it's bringing hopefully bringing traffic into our stores, because we're all so plugged into to gold and sometimes I talk to my friends that are not in the industry and suddenly it's like, oh, they have no idea what's going on.
Speaker 1:I wanted to ask is that something you have to train your, your jewelers on? Is like, how do you convey that no, gold is just expensive, no matter what, and it's you shouldn't be like afraid to be like bulking or stocking up, or how can you can, how they can, convey it to shoppers? Is that something that you think is part of your responsibility to educate retailers, or is it they kind of convey that themselves?
Speaker 4:I mean, I think I think most of the retailers, I think most people in this room keep a pretty close eye on gold as well, so they know what the impact will be. Right, you know, I think that it's up to us to be transparent, obviously, and how we go about pricing or how gold changes will impact the way that they receive product, and so this way then they're able to adjust it as needed for their customer and communicate things properly. But I think that it's really just an open conversation. It's one of the first things that comes up in any conversation that anyone's having right now is oh, price of gold, how's it impacting? And then I'm sure you're going to go into tariffs too, but I think that it's working as a partnership with the retailer to find a way that makes the most sense to bill that. This way we don't lose money on gold as it rises, and vice versa.
Speaker 4:This way, everyone can still make the money that they need to and be able to be transparent and offer the best product that they can to customers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you have a with gold going up? I always wonder does that actually just a peek behind the curtain? Does that make your gold jewelry less popular and people buy alternative metals? Or do you find that it doesn't really have an impact because all metals are getting more expensive?
Speaker 4:I think I don't typically do anything in really alternative metals. I mean, there's definitely a bit of a spike in general where people are looking for alternative metals and different materials in their jewelry, but I think that it takes a lot longer for that trend to shift in the consumer mindset of oh well, gold is high, Now we need to shift to something else. I think by that time it's kind of normalized and the consumer is aware that the price is what it is and they're either willing to pay that or they're not. They're going to go to something else. That doesn't really impact the way that we go about our production, because I'm not going to necessarily change everything that I'm doing because that gold could drop all the way back down tomorrow and then everything I'm doing is not Like Craig is talking about doing some platinum and hedging it.
Speaker 4:That makes a lot of sense. He's already done that and platinum is still a popular metal that people will buy, so there's no real downside to that.
Speaker 3:I see, and gold is up but diamonds are down and you're going to see a lot more lab-grown diamonds.
Speaker 1:there's different things you can do to to control costs or keep different price points available to consumers yeah, and I guess you know we're still talking about money and we do apologize, because that's not what it's all about. It's about the, the beautiful jewelry.
Speaker 1:But the value yes, the value, um, I guess I kind of want to bring up the this topic of of terrace. So terrace, um, actually it's kind of funny. I've been trying to do an episode about terrace for about uh, three months now and every time I schedule one, something changes and then I have to cancel the episode. I actually had one all set up with, uh, michelle graff, who's the editor-in-chief at National Jeweler, and I was about to have it and we had to cancel it because it was pushed back a couple of months. It is now scheduled, I believe, to resume at the end of next month, which happens to be shortly after JCK. Does the impending aspect of these looming tariffs, do they? Are they weighing on your mind? Do they alter what you are? Do you have contingency plans if they were going to affect, or is there? You know, business as usual, we have to steer through the storm, kind of thing.
Speaker 3:Well, tariffs? Now we do. We do a lot of manufacturing in Minnesota, and even that, though, is impacted by tariffs, because none of our diamonds are coming from Minnesota or the United States. And then we do some manufacturing in India, and we were doing some in China, but most of that has moved over to Thailand. Now I wouldn't say that I am.
Speaker 3:I was concerned when tariffs originally hit and they were quite high, especially because my biggest concern was because, again, we do a lot in-house and we do a lot of and we can make almost anything we do in-house. My biggest concern over tariffs were the impact it was going to have on our retail jewelers and their appetite to bring in jewelry and consumers and whatnot. So I was quite relieved when the duties or the tariffs became more reasonable. I am cautiously optimistic. We won't go back to that point of where we were, but I have no reason to say that. But, again, it's hard to have contingency, it's hard to have contingency plans when even your product that you manufacture domestically, um, is impacted significantly. So hopefully it doesn't go back to that.
Speaker 1:Not a lot of uh diamond mines in Minnesota. So I guess uh is that something that you guys are looking at, because, um, there's also like a whole like spreadsheet and flow chart of like, uh this was mined in this place but then it was cut in this place and then it was imported and then it was uh put in set in a piece of jewelry in this, this um country. Do you have a go-to source for news when it comes to jewelry news? Is there something that is keeping you up to date on, uh, what you should be paying attention to? Because sometimes I like feel like jewelry kind of gets lost in the whole world.
Speaker 3:I don't think anyone knows, sometimes even like because, like we manufacture our displays in china and trying to figure out how to get those over here, and yeah you, you don't know really what the tariff's going to be until you see the bill to some degree. I mean, and everyone's got these things that they want to try sending castings over or whatnot, and I'm not sure anyone really has the answers. It changes everything so fast, so um and Jordan.
Speaker 1:You, uh, are very involved with, uh, responsibly sourcing. Uh, you know your jewelry and and and parts of your jewelry, and one of the parts of tariffs that I feel like is being really slept on amidst the the focus on, like, the actual price of the goods, is what might actually happen to some of these. You know smaller nations that, uh, their main export is these precious stones that are actually coming from them. There's a lot of thought that, while there are not very many diamond mines in Minnesota, they might just forego certain you know countries altogether, because you know some of these places have tariffs that are in excess of 60%. Is that something that you and responsibly sourcing gemstones are focusing on or thinking about?
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, I think, like Craig said, it's a moving target, so no one really knows kind of the right way to go about it, I think.
Speaker 4:On the responsible sourcing side of things, though, I think the tariffs are a big negative impact on that, because I think that there's going to be plenty of people that are going to try to get around and do things in a way that obviously doesn't stick within the chain of command or the supply chain right, so you don't necessarily know where it's going to be coming from at this point or how it's going to be stamped, because they want it to go under a lower tariff than maybe the country of origin that it's actually in or the country that it's cut in.
Speaker 4:So I think that it will create a little bit of chaos on that side in terms of, you know, I think the jewelry industry has done a really good job of kind of taking steps forward and having more traceability, more, you know, accountability and more responsibly sourced product, and I think that this will probably create a bit of a backslide in that, not that people won't still source responsibly and do things the right way, but that I think that there will be some that will try to just mark things differently and it'll kind of negate the whole point of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, when times are good and things are cheap, it's easier to be responsible, right, but when things start pulling at your purse strings, well, suddenly it's easier or it's. I can see the rationale for, yeah, skirting the kind of responsibility and the um you know, I guess, being reasonable about it all. But you know, I guess being reasonable about it all, but you know to go into things we're about to go into, like the biggest, the real buying season of the year, the second buying stint. So we have JCK coming up in just a couple of weeks. This will air next on Tuesday and that will be only about two weeks before JCK. And I guess I wanted to ask, going into this you guys are with the plum club is discussions about how to approach jck? Is this something that you, uh, discuss as a group, or do you discuss amongst yourselves internally and then kind of approach it and it's like, hey, what did you bring? What did you bring, or is that like a group?
Speaker 1:approach in terms of, in terms of like the tariffs and things or just, or just design like what are you going to bring to to market?
Speaker 4:uh, no, I think every company is handling it. You know themselves, everyone's trying to focus on what they got to do. To, you know, make sure that their customers have what they need and that they're prepared for their show. I think that throughout the year we do a lot of different things collaboratively to, you know, help make that show go better. You know we'll talk about tomorrow. You'll see, I'm talking about, like our Plum Club research report and certain other things that we do as a club. But I think, when it comes down to like the product itself and what everyone is going to be bringing, you know that's. You know that's something that you got to keep kind of close to the chest until you're in Vegas and make sure that you know you're, you're there to. You're there to sell and work with your customers and make sure that your product is is going to work for them.
Speaker 3:So yeah, yeah, no, I mean it's when it comes to the actual show itself.
Speaker 4:We're all focusing on our own stuff, what makes us good, and there's no benefit for us to trying to be developing the same type of product well, I didn't know, maybe, like you say, like hey, I'm coming out with a awesome line of whatever drop earrings, I mean like we have those conversations like we're, we're friendly competitors, like we can have open discussions about things that we're doing, and you know, neither of us are going to say, oh well, that's a great idea, let me go do it better, right, you know, but uh, but still, it's just like anyone where you know you don't necessarily want to let your competition in on exactly what it is that you're doing. Just, you got to focus on what your business is, not what others are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I think for both of us too. You know the JCK show is important, but IJO is just as important for us and the type of customer that we sell RJO I mean. So we've got a lot of big shows this summer that we're working towards yeah.
Speaker 1:And I guess I'm a big fan of the fashion aspect of jewelry and sometimes I feel like it's not talked about enough. I'm always very interested because jewelers are buying their jewelry now for in six months, for the upcoming Christmas season. And I guess are you paying attention? Do you guys pay attention to fashion, Is that? Or are your people paying attention to fashion? Like watching? Oh like, when Cuban links became had their big moment, oh like, this is going to be the next big thing. Are you paying attention to that?
Speaker 4:Me personally. That's not something I'm very good at doing. I'm not the most fashionable human being, but my sister who, like I said, does all of our design and product direction she's constantly on top of it. I mean, she's watching that like a hawk and she's really good at it. That's again something she's very good at that I'm terrible at. So, yeah, her and my production team are definitely watching it, whereas she'll just kind of bring me in the loop, be like, hey, here's what, here's what's hot right now and here's the direction we're going to go, and I just kind of say, okay, that sounds good, let's, let's head in that direction, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:We have the same thing. We have a product development team. Yeah, a lot of good feedback comes from our customers too. Um and uh, yeah, and I. I get out and travel the country and I always chuckle because it seems like wherever I go, they always say they're two years behind. Even when I go to california or new york, they say they're two years behind. So I'm so I'm not sure yet where in this country they're.
Speaker 1:Where is the current we're setting up?
Speaker 3:I don't know the deal, but um, yeah, we've got, we're working on that stuff and I think we're trying to develop product that has broad-based consumer appeal. So we're not trying to be on the bleeding edge per se of product development, but we want to be on the leading edge, for sure.
Speaker 1:If a retailer was to say to you, hey, like a group of retailers were to say to you, hey, you know, we need this from you. We need a um. When halos were really popular, we need more halo options. Or when, uh, cuban links were popular, we need cuban link options. How long would that take of a lead time before you're able to actually produce something and offer them that solution? Is that that like six months, or is that like four years? What is that?
Speaker 3:No, I'll tell you a funny story.
Speaker 3:We develop a lot of collections. I'm going to tell her to listen to this Matika, who's got conference jewelry, every year she comes to me in January with an idea. She's a very smart marketing person super smart Like and we learn a lot from her and she always comes with ideas of a new collection that she wants to do for Valentine, and we've done it every year for like 10 years. So a few years ago she was running late and we were I'm telling you, we're only like three weeks away from Valentine's and I'm like Monica, I'm just going to be just gonna be honest, I'm not sure we can pull this off. And she said that she prayed about it all night and she was confident that I could pull it out. That's great, and I told her I know what she prayed about, but I also know what I think and give her credit.
Speaker 3:We pulled it off and we got, so I mean we we've done stuff in a couple weeks and that's the benefit of having Minnesota-based manufacturing. But we prefer a little more time if possible.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's similar. For us it kind of depends on the product type. We do a good amount of manufacturing here too. So if it's something that is within our wheelhouse, that we can pretty easily just shift to, then yeah, we can produce it in a couple weeks. That we can pretty easily, like you know, just shift to, then yeah, we can produce it in a couple of weeks. But if it's something that really requires you know, okay, we got to go back to the drawing board and kind of reinvent then it may take a little bit longer. But yeah, I guess it's all product dependent.
Speaker 1:And I guess that it ties very nicely. I was going to ask you about retailer partnerships and, just before we even start, I want you to know that this is going to be the exact same question I ask tomorrow when we have the retailer roundtable, like how can they have better vendor partnerships? But when it comes to retailer partnerships, what is it that makes a good retailer for you? So it's not just you know, oh, they sell like a million pieces of our, of our collection all the time, all the time. What is it that actually establishes them, as you know, not just successful, but also helpful and help push your respective?
Speaker 4:brands forward. For me it's transparency and collaboration. I think you know, if you're able to just have an open conversation with me and say, hey, here's what's working, here's what's not, here's, you know the way that your sales rep did it, here's the way that we expect it, and allow me kind of the grace to make the changes that are needed, right, then that's the most important thing, because we're here to support you guys and we don't know if something's working, not working, or you know, if something's going wrong unless, unless we're told about it, necessarily right. So we want to, we just want to promote that transparency and create a good, open conversation. So this way, if there's room to fix, we can, or if things are going great, we get that feedback as well. I think that's, to me, the most important thing, because we can try a million different things. We can offer marketing materials, we can offer displays, you know, and that's what we think will work. But unless you're telling us that's what's working, then we don't know that for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. So this is an important topic for us and we've just had our sales meeting a couple weeks ago, where we had our 12 reps and we literally had a whole conversation of retailer who's a partner, what are the characteristics of a partner, and there's a lot of things that I think are important to us.
Speaker 1:And it's, and it's interesting.
Speaker 3:Tomorrow I'm going to talk a little bit about our core values, which is who we are, and we found that our best retailers have the same core values we do and value the same things that are important to us. Um, you know openness, um, um, being healthy with us. You know we're very aggressive when it comes to, like, stock balancing, for example. So when someone makes it just about stock balancing and not about reordering fast sellers, that usually will be an unhealthy relationship.
Speaker 1:So it's like a push and pull sort of thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean for us to have stock balancing really work for us, you have to be reordering your best sellers. I see that's just critical to us Open, sharing ideas, taking advantage, you know, using our resources to help move our product. You know we have our 12 reps that are all employees of our company, dedicated um letting them come in, train the staff um work with the staff um making sure they're up to speed on all of our products.
Speaker 1:Um If there's a, if there's a retailer that is successful, because I'm sure, if you're anything like us, we look across all of our clients and we can see that there are some people that man, they just get it, they just know how to do whatever it is. Is that something? Would you reach out to them and ask like, hey, how are you selling so much of this? Is that like a question or is that kind of? It's not really my business. I, like you know as long as you keep on?
Speaker 3:No, all the time. We're always trying to learn, and and I get out all the time because that's where I learned too, and I have learned over the years that I don't know that much. But also I've learned that there's just a lot of different ways to be successful too, and so it's successful for one person, might not be successful for somebody else, but you know I there's just so many different things. But like I was at a store last year and it was. It was during the fall, and I asked him if he was buying different because of the election coming up, oh, and he replied no, I don't participate in recessions.
Speaker 2:And I thought to myself.
Speaker 3:I'm like God, I got to write that down.
Speaker 2:I'm not participating ever again.
Speaker 3:And he's like well, I heard it from another store. Another store said to them like I don't. And they thought, well, if they don't participate in recessions, why do I have to participate in recessions? I do think sometimes in this industry we can make things a kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, um, you know, whether it's product or marketing or pain that's going on. You know we're learning all the time from from different successful retailers and we're working with, I think, arthur's duelers came up and, um, you know, we were, as, like, number third or fourth supplier said hey, I'd like to do an auto reorder program with you, which we set up through the edge. Wow, so we did it and now we're his number one supplier. But again, that was something, again that we learned from a successful retailer.
Speaker 1:Fascinating. It's one of those things I look quite a bit at what makes a successful retailer. Granted, my view is very narrow because I'm focusing on e-commerce orders. Every single month, in case you guys are all interested, I get a report sent to me, uh, by our system, where I look at every single e-commerce order that came through. I also look at the the total orders for each uh retailer as well, and I see who's doing the most.
Speaker 1:And there's two jewelers that are running away with the most sales I've ever seen, and they are it's not even, it's not even close. And I reached out to them and I said like hey, how are you selling so much jewelry? Well, one of the things that one of them said was we are not selling. You know 3000 different engagement rings. They're selling a lot of charms and they're selling a lot of you know very low price point items hoops and fashion jewelry and stuff like that and what's fascinating is there's still sales. But what I also notice and so I go through, I'm looking through every single one of their sales, trying to figure out how are they making so many sales and why are they making so many sales and why is their total increasingly going up.
Speaker 1:Well, they go in and every like 15th sale they make, they also sell like a. They also sell like a lab-grown diamond stud set of studs and it's just like, oh, they also they sell the charm and then they sell the studs. And then it's because they are bundling things and they're building up connections and people who, when you have your credit card already saved, you can buy a lot easier. And it just had me thinking a lot more about, like that relationship in that, I guess, Feeling of trust for a store and for a business, and I was starting to think about that a lot more. From reverse. It's like why do I have certain retailers that I really trust? And like, why do I value their opinion more as opposed to someone who is maybe just starting out? It's because, ah, they've done it so many times that they figured it out. You know, I think it's really a cool kind of thing to look into and see why certain people are really successful.
Speaker 3:I think they all do a good job, though, of taking care of their customers. Some might discount, some might not discount, some might be focused on this collection or that, but the successful ones all just passionately take good care of their customers, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So we always do this one, and then I'll open it up for any questions that people might have though you can always just ask them because they're going to be around. But I wanted to ask about leading up to JCK. Is there anything that you guys are working on? I always joke about it's exclusive. Give us the in-the-loop exclusive. Craig, is there anything that you guys are working on ahead of JCK that you're really excited about that retailers should be excited about too? Sure.
Speaker 3:So I was at that's putting you on the spot.
Speaker 1:I wasn't sure if I could share it yet, because we're announcing it on Wednesday but I'll do it early.
Speaker 3:So I was at and, again, I always learn from our customers and so I was at um the ijo next gen and um tim l from zarell.
Speaker 3:So if you've had a chance to hear him speak, he's like a marketing genius, very smart guy. We all want to be like him, and he was just talking about some of the different marketing programs that he does, and so, um, one of the things that he has had a great deal of success with is trip promotions, and it was interesting. He just he was talking about how he was at a poker game and right after Christmas and the Best Buy manager was talking about how January was their best month of the year and he was like how in the heck is that possible? January is my worst month of the year. They always sell so many flat screens for the Super Bowl, so he went and bought all the flat screens in town and started giving them away for every diamond that he sold. And it was funny because he was getting the guys to get the gal to pick out a bigger diamond so they could get a bigger flat screen.
Speaker 3:it was really it was really a fantastic deal. So he was talking about these trip promotions that he does, yeah, and so I said I'm gonna try it because it works for him. He always says do the things you're not supposed to do when it comes to marketing. So at jck this year, when people come by and write an order with us, we're giving them a cruise. A cruise, wow. There's a minimum purchase not crazy, and there are more details, but you have to come by the booth. Does that apply to vendors?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah minimum purchase.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're.
Speaker 1:We're giving away um and again, another thing we learned from we were given a cruise if you come by our booth man, what a really novel idea, especially because I wonder if it has something to do with like psychology of it all, where if it's a trip, then it's bigger than an actual object. It's more aspirational. Jordan.
Speaker 2:Well we're not giving away a cruise.
Speaker 4:But no, we've got a lot of really cool new diamond fashion product that we're excited about. A lot of it's actually manufactured in house in New York, so we're really excited about that, especially, obviously, with everything going on. And, yeah, we're just we always have new stuff coming out. That's the thing in Vegas is always like our our launch of new collections and anyone in here who knows us knows that. You know we have thousands of product and you can come to our booth and find anything that you really need. So, yeah, we, we just kind of picked, picked a piece, picked pieces out and added them throughout. So there's a lot of good new stuff coming up is.
Speaker 1:I always just from a personal matter, just because, you know, with punch mark, a lot of times we we make something and we're so excited for people to use it, like with Page Builder 3, we launched it. We didn't even really tell everybody that we were going to launch it, because we were just so excited. We really wanted people to try it out. And is that something that you guys are thinking about? It's like oh, I want to keep it a surprise, like you were saying, but also you want to build up some maybe like user testing or something like that, and showing it to people.
Speaker 4:Is that? Do you have people that you might share different things with, just to try it out? Yeah, we have some retailers that we work with that you know. If they've been successful with a certain product and we have something that maybe is a good like, you know, like sister piece to that or something, we'll send it in and say, hey, give us, you know, give us some feedback on it, or things like that. But I think really it takes time in the market just to really test it. So what we want to do is just get it in their store, see how it works and give us the feedback on what is again isn't working, and you know any any one of our retailers is able to give us that feedback. We trust the opinions of pretty much all of them in you know, some way, shape or form. So any feed. So we're not like particularly like, oh, this one has to get it in order to test it. Very cool yeah, we're.
Speaker 3:I mean, we're only making money when the store sells it to some degree, because otherwise it's coming back at some point. So, um, yes, we bring product to shows to get feedback on quickly, um, but at the same time we won't know if it's successful until we see the sell through, and that's why we partner with edge retail to see sell through. But that's all that really matters.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and also like not for nothing. You can tell by how people react when they walk up to your booth, right, they see, if you have a brand new piece and you're showing it to everyone and everyone and no one is jumping at it, you're all saying I don't think this is for my customer, I don't really like the way this built, then you know that it's probably not going to be something that they in their store then going to go try to push to their customer, right, so you can get that reaction pretty, pretty quickly man, I guess that is such an interesting dynamic.
Speaker 1:Something I haven't thought about at all is, like with what you just said, you're really only making money if they are selling and then making money, otherwise it's going to be coming back I can only imagine sitting there.
Speaker 4:What that?
Speaker 1:must feel like you know, oh, I'm so excited about this piece is going to be a showstopper.
Speaker 3:And then you know, maybe it flops, but well, you do this long enough, you learn that usually the ones you're most excited about tend to be the ones that flop and then the last piece you introduce you know, that's the one that goes crazy yeah, the one that's been your inventory for 20 years.
Speaker 4:It's time to scrap. It's like, oh, all of a sudden that's coming back ah yeah, fascinating guys.
Speaker 1:I wanted to open it up for any questions you might have for these vendors, both members of the Plum Club.
Speaker 3:Yeah, boots are like 10 feet apart, so if you come to Bay, you can see both of us. You can see both at the same time.
Speaker 1:And they have a purple carpet. That's pretty cool. Any questions that people might have, leave it open. So when you come up with a new product.
Speaker 4:What's your turnaround? So when you come up with a new product, what's your turnaround? When you're coming up with developing a new product, what's the typical time from start to launch? So for us we do typically two collection releases. We typically do.
Speaker 4:Centurion is when we start at the beginning of the year, so typically we'll start around like October, november on developing that and then we'll release it at the end of January at Centurion or you know the RJO and IJO shows really, because those are typically right in line with each other.
Speaker 4:So that's where we start with it. And then in between that and basically JCK is when we're coming up with like our bigger releases and kind of testing and seeing what works and we'll get feedback on that type of product. Then we'll either choose to expand it or contract it. And then basically Vegas is where we do like our big release of like all new, of really all new product, and then if something like little comes up in the meantime, like afterwards, we'll put it into the line. Meantime, like afterwards, we'll we'll put it into the line. But really it's the first like six months of the year is where we're putting out product testing and then wait and then basically pushing for vegas, for the, for the release of, like our newest stuff very cool yeah, we do three releases a year january one, may one, september one and our merchandise team's usually working three months out before the release to really get it finalized.
Speaker 3:I guess a follow-up question for you, craig, because you guys have a lot of collections.
Speaker 4:Yep, and every so often there's a new one that comes up. How do you come up with a new collection?
Speaker 3:Usually if it's from a store that tells us about an idea and whatnot. I mean, most of our ideas come from our good customers and we come up with a few. On occasion you take a little credit. Yeah, not a lot, but yeah, usually it's feedback. It could be market-driven. You know, we recently came out with a silver and like diamond collection because we had had a couple customers tell us that they were having a hard time hitting some certain price points and they literally developed the whole collection. So it was by a retailer. Yep, oh, wow, it was great. We sent them sketches. They picked from the sketches wow and uh that's super cool, yeah.
Speaker 1:Is it tempting to try to chase these, um, these trends that are going on, for example, permanent jewelry? Is it just tempting to come out with a line or to cater directly to people who want to have a starter kit for permanent jewelry? Is that something that it's like you see these trends and then you see how big they are.
Speaker 3:It's like, oh, we need to get on that, or do you see, that is, and as a typical visionary, I tend to chase all these things that mess up the rest of the company. So I'll talk a little bit about EOS tomorrow, which kind of puts me in my place. So we don't do those things. But yeah, because we want to have a broad offering. But also you don't again I mentioned you don't want to. You can't be everything to everybody. Yeah, you got to be.
Speaker 4:It's always very tempting, but if it's something like that's within your wheelhouse, then great. It's something that is relatively easy to go after, but if it's something that's completely on the opposite spectrum, you've got to recognize if the juice is worth the squeeze and how long is that going to last for, and is it worth your time and effort to not only produce it but promote it, sell it and spend your time focusing on that? That may not work as well as, let's say, your core product.
Speaker 1:Yeah, more questions, any takers? All right, everybody. So to give you an idea, just to wrap things up, I want to tell you that our podcast In the Loop we release one every Tuesday. It's available on Spotify, apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. The whole goal, like I've said before, is I want to make the episodes that retailers want to listen to.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of podcasts out there that might be more tailored specifically to fashion or specifically towards just like the nerding out about jewelry. For me, it's like I want exactly what you guys are looking for and I think that so far, we're 250 episodes in, or 265 at this point, and we've been going for about five years and I'm still excited. I still enjoy speaking with people. I feel like I've learned more from this podcast and learning, uh, from speaking to people than I have from a million books combined. So if you're interested, you have ideas. Like these guys have mentioned, I get all my best ideas from the people I speak with. So if you have any ideas for episodes we could cover, or trending topics or things like that, or best practices, I'm definitely all ears. This episode will be released on next week, tuesday, and that's the kind of stuff I'm gonna hopefully have more of, as well as a vlog of this entire event. So maybe stop by, give it a listen. I'd love to talk to you as well, and I think that's what we'll call it.
Speaker 1:Thanks everybody, I really appreciate your time. Cheers, and thank you very much. My guests Enjoying them. I really appreciate you all. You'll hear more from them, I believe, tomorrow. Thanks everybody, and yeah, I think we have like 10 minutes until the next one, so cheers. All right, everybody. That's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. My guest this week was Craig McBean, the president of OSPI, and Jordan Peck, head of operations at Rivani. Thanks so much. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Roz Cockrum. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave us feedback on punchmarkcom slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E. Thanks. I'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers, bye.
