Picture this. You are living in the middle of the worst financial crisis the world has ever seen. You are wealthy and almost overnight, you see your wealth disappear. Morale is bad, public is desperate and politics is chaotic.  No, we are not talking about October 2008.The year was 1930 and this really happened to Matthew Rosenheim’s grandparents. In our days of large retail chains, it is becoming hard to find successful and independent businesses that have been around since the 1930s. When we found The Tiny Jewel Box, we immediately jumped at the chance to interview the owners and learn about their secret sauce. We think that we can all learn a lot from their success story.
We immediately jumped into the guts of the current issues.
Murat – Matthew let me get to the point immediately, how is business?
Mathew – Our sales are off slightly from a very strong first half 2008 highs. We continue to maintain a very strong high-end business, but we also experienced degradation in sales of lower-end products.
Murat– What are the changes you see in the buying habits of your customers?
Mathew – Discretionary purchasing outside of special events is on a downward trend. We see that professional women who used come in for what we call “self purchase” are holding back on their shopping. We see a slight up tick in sales of special events jewelry for birthdays, anniversaries and bridal. They tend to be more emotion driven purchases.
Murat– Matthew, your company has been around for 78 years, it has seen numerous financial
crises. How has it persevered?
Mathew – We have a very capital intensive business. We have to maintain a very expensive inventory. So we have always been keen on managing and controlling our inventory levels and capital expenses.
Murat– Do you cut your marketing and advertising budget?
Mathew – Advertising and marketing is theonly area where we do not reduce our spending. Advertising is our link to our customers as it is our first step in customer relations. We never
wait for the economy to get better before we start advertising.
Murat– Cutting advertising is usually the first instinct of small businesses during tough economic
times. You seem to think otherwise.
Mathew – We would not have survived for 78 years if we had not advertised during bad times and good times.
Murat – Pew Research Foundation found that in households, women make 43 percent of major decisions vs. men with 26 percent. 31 percent of decisions were made together. Do you see a similar trend? If so what do you do to take advantage?
Mathew – Women drive the decisions, men come in to make the purchase. We established a client program that we called “Wish List.” We throw women only parties and invite women to our store for no-pressure events. We provide hors d’oeuvres and cocktails while ladies walk around the store and try out our jewelry. We complete a wish list for them and e-mail it to their loved one, complete with pictures of the items. Men then come in to the store and purchase a beautiful piece of jewelry that they know their lady will like. Another nice part of this business is that we donate percentage of our sales to children’s charities.
Murat – It is great that you are leaving a charitable legacy behind. What is the age group of your female customers?
Mathew – Our customers start with us while in their mid 20s with bridal purchases. Our core customers start in their mid 30s up to their 60s. We turn our bridal customers into life long  patrons through honesty, no pressure sales and personal relationships. Our sales people are not
paid commissions so they can keep the best interest of our customers above everything. We
also constantly re-assess our processes and provide continuous training to our sales team. We really operate as an old fashioned business set in modern surroundings and times.
Murat – What about word of mouth? Do you consciously make an effort to generate it?
Mathew – We concentrate on making our customers happy and kindly ask them to recommend
us. The rest is up to them. So far it worked for us.
Murat – What sets you apart from your competitors?
Mathew – Doing business with us is easy. For repeat customers, we clean their jewelry for free while they wait. We offer a program to make it easy to for our customers to bring their stone purchases to us for an upgrade. We put no financial parameters. We want to encourage repeat business. That’s what keep us around through good and bad times.
b y m u rat aksu