How Dropshipping And Tariffs Are Reshaping Jewelry Retail and Other Hot Topics

Mike is solo this week while everyone’s at RJO and IJO, so he's running through five jewelry industry topics that have been on his mind. I talk about faster fulfillment through dropshipping, the real-world ripple effects of tariffs, and why seemingly small website choices can make or break sales. 

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Transcript

Welcome And A Solo Week

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome back everybody to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop. And this week I'm doing a little quick episode. Everybody and their mother are out at RJO and IJO, and as a result, I get all left on my lonesome in upstate New York. And I'm talking about five jewelry industry topics that are of interest to me. This is everything from stuff working at a punchmark and things that affect me on a day-to-day, as well as things I've been talking about, because as I spend more time around my hometown, people start to learn that I work in jewelry, and when they have questions about jewelry, sometimes they ask me, which is kind of cool. And so these are five that I've been thinking about. I hope you enjoy.

Punchmark Sponsor Message

SPEAKER_00 0:56

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SPEAKER_01 1:50

Okay,

Five Topics On My Mind

SPEAKER_01 1:51

like I said in the intro, here are five Julia industry topics that have me thinking. Some of them are personal, some of them are industry specific, and some of them are more or less uh global. So without further ado, let's get into this episode.

Stuller Dropshipping For Three-Day Shipping

SPEAKER_01 2:07

We're rolling out Stellar dropshipping as an option. Uh, it's actually gonna probably go out literally on the day this episode goes out, and that's kind of a big deal. Dropshipping is one of those buzzwords that I have heard literally since I have gotten into the industry, and I don't know, I feel like no one has ever been able to live it up. It's always been like one of those white whales, and one of those funny things that we've talked about doing it, and we have done it with uh, for example, Revelation and CarrotWise with their ring builder. We set up a um a drop shipping system for them, and then we were able to expand it to um use Stullar. And Stular is obviously the on the forefront of the jewelry industry, and what this will do is allow people to buy stuff off of jewelers' websites, even if they don't have it in stock, and have it go, the order be sent directly to Stular, and then they would package it and print out a receipt with the jeweler's um, you know, logo and branding on the on the receipt, and then fulfill the the order, put it in a box, and then ship it directly to the uh shopper. Why is this a big deal? Well, the way that the premium vendor program works currently, one of the pitfalls has always been let's just say you order a pair of diamond studs from me, and they're very specific, uh, and they're from this great brand that I carry. And I don't have those specific ones because on the premium vendor feed that I carry, they're included, but I just might not have them in stock at my store when they're ordered. Well, uh, the you'd have to place the order with the vendor. The product would have to come in the mail to your store, you'd have to unpack it, inspect it, you know, uh repackage it, and then ship it out. That can take up to I always said seven days because I think that's about how long it takes. But that means that you have to build in that fulfillment period to accommodate for that. So that can be like, you know, uh buy today, get it in 14 to 21 days. And I gotta be so real, it's a bit of a turnoff for shoppers when they see 14 to 21 days or or even longer. Um, so seeing like buy today, get it in three days, that is so tantalizing, especially for like you know, jewelry can be a little bit of an impulse or a last-minute um, you know, gift idea. I'm hoping that when people turn this on, they'll be able to uh take this and then like have like a category on their page, which is probably just gonna be staller, a category on their page that's like um get it uh like one day shipping or get it within three day shipping, whatever the the the turnaround is gonna be, and basically market to that landing page. And I think that would be pretty, I don't know, pretty interesting and like a big leverage point. Uh it's something we've never been able to uh help with and and no one has. And now I think we're the first ones to the industry, a punchmark is uh to to bring really strong drop shipping to a website. Um, so I'm pretty excited about that. Okay, next.

Canadian Tariffs And Local Tourism

SPEAKER_01 5:19

Uh Canadian tariffs. I can't believe it. I'm having another episode about tariffs. I thought I had stopped. No, and these things age about as well as uh I don't I don't know, broccoli in your fridge. They go bad pretty quickly, but uh Canadian tariffs are they just rolled them out at 50%. And Brazil has like, I think it's at like uh 20%, at least that's what they were talking about. And but I mean by the time this comes out, it'll probably have changed, but still that is crazy. Um why am I bringing up that uh tariffs? That's nothing new, but for me, tariffs are uh especially impactful um because of like you know, Can Am. Um, so in Sarnak Lake, where I live, there is uh we're right on the border, essentially, of Canada um in the US. We're on like the northern border of New York. And we get a lot of Canadian tourism, especially in the summer, but also in the winter, they come for skiing, but in the summer, they come down here for events. This weekend uh is actually the Can Am Rugby Tournament. It's the biggest in the nation, it's the largest uh rugby tournament. Um, I think it's the oldest too. I think it's 51 years old, and it's very impactful. It's great for our economy. Like, literally, all of the bars and all of the hotels are about to have their best um, you know, one of their best weekends. And it's like four days long, and you know, ruggers are awesome. I I love them. And what I can tell though is with these tariffs, you can tell that in the last two years, there has been like a change in the flavor. Um, last year, I don't think that there were any Canadian teams that came for Canom Rugby, which is crazy because you know we market to the Canadians. Um, it was also at the height of that like whole like, you know, uh the relations weren't great um between the nations. And I think that people just went elsewhere. And I think that this year I would be surprised if we see that again. Um, you know, it's very easy to say these like oh uh tariffs, they don't really impact you, but it just is the feeling and the flavor in the air sometimes when you go and you start to have these like mixers between the the nations, and you can definitely tell that like um a lot of the Canadians didn't really appreciate uh some of the things said about them, and I definitely have noticed that there are fewer Canadians that have made the trek in the last two years as a result. Um, yeah, I won't get into it too much. Obviously, it's a little bit of a delicate subject sometimes, but uh I I can only imagine how it's gonna affect jewelry, especially with Canada's the country that we have the second most clients in, uh, after the US. So I don't know how um how that'll shake out, but it's something I've been thinking about. Alright.

Navigation Editor Freedom And Risk

SPEAKER_01 8:24

We are in the process of rolling out a feature that I am almost afraid for us to roll out. And let me explain. We're in the process of we internally launched navigation editor for our websites. Navigation editor, so in case you don't know what your navigation is, navigation is the top part of your website. There's the header, and the nav is usually the list of main links that are on your navigation. Um up until now, you've never been able to edit your navigation without opening up a ticket. If you open a ticket and tell us what you want, we'll do it for you. But until now, we haven't kind of given that control back to the retailer. I have sometimes thought, oh, we should do this. It's not like we didn't have the technical capabilities for it. It's just the quickest way to render your website absolutely unusable is by messing up the navigation. It's how you get everywhere. However, we built out this tool and it is super user-friendly. But navs are just inherently kind of complex. And it's one of those things in user experience design where it's you're not supposed to uh fear what can be done with your tool, but I sort of am afraid that people are going to use it and they're going to just make dumb decisions with their website. No offense to the retailers listening. I like think that maybe I know understand like the navigation better, but there's like no one stopping you from just adding a ton of nav navigation links, which is not good, or adding or removing a bunch of your navigation links, which is obviously not good, or uh renaming a whole bunch of stuff and making them really long words, which is not good. Uh, there's a lot of ways that this can go poorly when a retailer has or uh you know a user, you might say, has un I don't know, no real guardrails. But the thing is, it's like, okay, Michael, why don't you just build guardrails? It's not as simple as you think to say to do that. You're probably like, oh, just make it so that like there's a character limit on your um on your nav links, and it's uh to you know, so you can't put like shop engagement rings and bridal jewelry as one long nav link. That's obviously not good. But when you start putting in these guardrails, you start making things inflexible, and maybe we want the flexibility. It's I hope I'm wrong, but I could see people using this and going crazy with it, and then us like, I don't know, like turning it back off because uh I don't know. I'm I'm worried that you're gonna do something stupid with it. Um, no offense to anybody listening. You aren't the ones I'm talking about. But I just think that when you give people all the control, it's like we don't allow you to, I don't know, write your own database or something like that. Because like, is there one or two or three retailers that would probably like find a great and useful way to use that that tool? Yes. But like also one mistyped word or variable literally bricks your entire website, and suddenly you're like, Well, why hasn't anyone bought anything off my website in in six months? And then we pull it up, and it's like, oh yeah, you um you added this thing, and it makes the load times impossible. And it's like, oh, why didn't you stop me from doing that? And I'm like, I don't know, I didn't think you would do that. Uh, you see what I'm kind of discussing. We did something similar to that when we uh built our page builder tool, page builder. Uh so we built the second one. Me and Dan, um, that was actually my my big project. I I worked remotely back in 2019 from uh from Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and Dan assigned me a big project to work on when I wouldn't have service. Um, sometimes I'd be on trains. And my big project was designing um page builder. And it was, I think I consider myself, I I did a pretty good job. And what's funny about it is we gave so many features and tools in it that some one of like the pieces of advice or um feedback we got on it is like it's too comprehensive. And some people told us, like, I wish you would make it um you know more simple. And it's that's kind of just one of those feedbacks. One of the ways you can go is have it be um too complex, and sometimes you make it too um too simple and and and and straightforward. So it's a real balancing act, and I'm unsure about the nav editor. I'm hoping that I am going to be excited and pleased, and everyone's going to play really nice with their navs. Um you never know. I hope I hope it goes smoothly. Okay, next.

Gold Price Swings And Oil

SPEAKER_01 13:28

We're at gold at I don't know, have you checked the price of gold lately? Price of gold is at as of this recording. $4,071.20. And I looked for what the lowest it's been year to date, and from what I can see, the lowest gold got was $4,008. So it never, and that was on June 25th, so about one month ago. So in looking, oh no, I looked uh $3,994. That's the lowest it got. And it's so interesting. I did an episode at the start of this year back when gold was at $5,300. I I thought it was gonna go towards six. Um, and now it's down to four. I wonder what happens, especially with a lot of the things with uh with oil. Um, you know, in case you didn't know, oil is set to be really even more expensive, especially with all the different things going on at all of the different um straights, uh, at the three different straits. Um, they are they could contribute to the price of uh a barrel of oil pushing into like the 120s or 140s. That just seems really expensive, and everything runs on oil, it seems like. So definitely concerning. But I guess we're halfway through the year, a little more than halfway through the year, and I am definitely um interested in in following it closely. I don't think it'll go down to threes, but it could. I think it's more likely to go towards five than it is to three, but uh, you know what? I've been wrong in the past, and I could be wrong again. And then

What I Loved About AGS

SPEAKER_01 15:12

the last, I just want to say, I did an interview with Brian Moeller and Alexis Pattis as the episode before this one, and I thought it was so good. I uh sometimes I do an interview with a president, and I I've been very fortunate I've interviewed uh the president of several different uh major jewelry organizations, and I you know they're always really nice and they're always charismatic. Man, when I finished speaking with Brian uh Moeller, the new AGS president, I felt so optimistic. And it's like just watching someone who's like a natural leader, who is in the driver's seat, who is ready for the task, uh just crush it. I thought he did a really good job. It was so cool also having both of them on at the same time because we started with Alexis, and I'd had Alexis on twice before, and Alexis uh talked about her time with, you know, uh I had her on when it was announced she was the president. She was the, you know, the first um, you know, this this first female, I think first female president, and it was just a kind of like a like a really nice moment, you know. She talked about her goals, but she also said, you know, it's only going to be two years. And then I had a mid uh term check-in with her last year, where we talked about everything that she's been working on, what she still has to do. And then this year it was to wrap it up. And we spent the first, I don't know, probably 10 minutes of the podcast kind of like cat catching up with her. And Brian, you know, sat in the back and sort of, you know, listened and just let her have her spotlight. And then as the podcast shifted, Brian sort of stepped in and Alexis let the conversation shift to the future and letting him sort of uh you know take the lead. And it was, you know, really a special moment to watch them naturally cede where they are supposed to to the you know the correct person that should be speaking in that moment. And I just found it really uh, I don't know, fulfilling. Like I was doing a service to the industry, and like I uh had the privilege of getting a chance to speak to both of them. I thought that they were um, you know, are just very impressive people. So if you haven't checked that one out, I'd go check it out. It's the next episode after this one, so go do that. Okay. All

RJO IJO Plans And Farewell

SPEAKER_01 17:41

that to be said, RJO and IJO are taking place right now, and everybody is at that. All the vendors that I have uh recording appointments are are are there, so I'm gonna record with them afterwards. All my uh a bunch of my co-workers are there, everyone's having a great time. Um, so I can't wait to hear all the tales. And if you're there and you're listening to this or you're about to, make sure you go and uh check it out. I can't wait. Uh stop by the punchmark booth, check it out. Uh, we have a lot of exciting stuff. Mention the things I I said or that you listened in the loop, and I'm sure that they'll be uh pleased, but um, that's where I think we'll call it. Thanks everybody. Appreciate you listening. We'll be back next week, Tuesday, with another episode. Cheers. Bye. All

Credits And Rate The Show

SPEAKER_01 18:28

right, everybody. That's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. 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 Cochran. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and leave us feedback on punchmark.com slash loop. That's L O U P E. Thanks. We'll be back next week, Tuesday, with another episode. Cheers. Bye.