April 28, 2026 • 34 mins
Recorded LIVE from the 2026 Punchmark Client Workshop in Charlotte, NC!
Mike sat down with Cole Rowland from Ware's Jewelers to unpack his jump from jewelry vendor to first-generation store owner at Ware's Jewelers. He transparent about what it takes to buy a jewelry store after running a going out of business sale, rebuild inventory and credit, and earn the trust of a community that already has sky-high expectations.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_01 (00:01):
Welcome back, everybody, to In the Loop.
What is up, everybody?
My name is Michael Burpo.
Thanks again for listening to Inthe Loop.
This week we are live from thePunchmark Client Workshop in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
This is our fifth year hostingour annual client workshop where
(00:21):
we bring in some of our clientsfrom all over the US to have two
days of educational seminars andwork sessions with the Punchmark
team and some of our partners.
It was a really fun time, andpart of the experience is I do
two live in the loop recordingsat the end of each day.
(00:42):
So one was this one with ColeRoland from Where's Jewelers.
We talk all about being a newretail jewelry store.
I have one more for you.
It'll be next week.
And this one was with Lenny fromthe Edge.
And uh that was a greatinterview as well.
So be on the lookout for thatnext week.
This episode is a really funtime because Cole is one of my
(01:04):
uh better friends in the jewelryindustry.
He uh we always affectionatelyrefer to him as uh Cole from
Inox and then Cole from Wares.
So uh his moniker has changed,but I wanted to document his
first uh couple months of beinga retail jeweler.
And you'll learn as you listento the episode that he went from
being a vendor and he uh slowlyum took over the leadership of a
(01:27):
uh retail jewelry store andeventually um was able to buy it
outright and is now the owner ofa new jewelry store.
It's a really cool conversation.
I want to talk a lot about uhwhat goes into a store purchase
and uh you know the thenitty-gritty of buying a
business, and I hope you'llenjoy following along as well.
Cheers.
We'll be back next week Tuesdaywith another episode.
(01:49):
Bye.
SPEAKER_00 (01:56):
This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the
jewelry industry's favoritewebsite platform and digital
growth agency.
Our mission reaches way beyondtechnology.
With decades of experience andlong-lasting industry
relationships, Punchmark enablesjewelry businesses to flourish
in any marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
(02:16):
been friends way before becomingclients.
Punchmark's own success comesfrom the fact that we have a
much deeper need and obligationto help our friends succeed.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
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Punchmark's website andmarketing services were made
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It's never too late to transformyour business and stitch
(02:38):
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Schedule a guided demo today atpunchmark.com slash go.
And now back to the show.
SPEAKER_01 (03:11):
I know because I was on vacation, I was in in
Colorado.
I came back and we had alreadydecided that we were gonna do a
podcast.
Uh at the time, our podcast wascalled The Driller Survival Kit.
That was all about how you canactually use your website to
make your business stay afloatwhen your brick and mortar is
shut down.
Uh that was happening toeverybody um around the world,
(03:33):
but especially our clients.
And I noticed um, I would neverpoint fingers, but I thought
that there was a real resoundingsilence in the jewelry industry
where no one was kind ofspeaking to what's going on and
offering help.
And that's where we stepped in.
So we ran uh a weekly podcastseries that was called Jewelry
Survival Camp.
One thing we learned, if you goback, you can actually find all
(03:55):
the episodes, they're the firstseven episodes.
We learned it was uh kind of abummer talking about COVID all
the time.
So I took it over and I made alittle pivot.
Now we're called In the Loop,it's but O U P, of course, and
we now uh interview differentpeople.
It used to be more aboute-commerce and digital
marketing, it still is, but nowit's a lot more about the
(04:17):
industry.
And I've really enjoyed gettinga chance to speak with so many
people.
And uh I have a lot of these uhthese series.
Another one was um I do breakingdown the best, which is where we
talk about um these suites ofproducts that I'm a big fan of.
I have a background in userexperience design, and uh things
that work really well are reallyexciting to me.
(04:38):
So I've talked about um theGoogle Suite, which is what
Punchmark builds their uh ourinfrastructure on.
Um if you're a Microsoft person,go kick rocks.
I hate that.
Uh we also I just did one umactually last week on uh
communication systems, which isuh if you use Slack or Microsoft
Teams or group chats or Discord,show of hands.
(05:00):
Who uses a group chat for theirbusiness?
Oh guys, guys.
Check out Slack or Discord,we'll we'll we'll talk
afterwards.
But uh the coolest thing is alsois I interviewed Cole for the
first time.
Uh you appeared, I look back,you're on season three, episode
seven.
Yeah, way back.
I was at uh uh RJO in SanAntonio, and I got a chance to
(05:21):
speak with you.
So, Cole, maybe could you justum kind of introduce yourself
first as how I knew you and nowwho you are today?
SPEAKER_02 (05:30):
Uh so originally um I used to work for Inox Men's
Jewelry, but I don't know ifthere's anybody here who sells
Inox, but good for you.
Uh still love it, still sell itin my stores today.
Um I was uh rep for them forfive or six years, um, and then
ran into Bob and had theopportunity to move over to the
retail side.
Um and my wife and I bought ourstore in January, so we are
(05:52):
first generation owners again.
SPEAKER_01 (05:54):
First generation, and but where'd you where'd you
run into Bob?
SPEAKER_02 (05:57):
Uh here.
Actually at the PunchmarkSeminar, I believe 2000 had to
be 2023.
Yeah.
Um we were sitting down at Finand Vino, which is a great
place.
We're all gonna go to dinnerthere.
You'll love it.
Um, it's incredible.
Um he sat down next to me andjokingly said, I'm I'm gonna
sell my business.
And I was like, haha, sell it tome.
And uh he did.
Uh it took it took two years umof me working in the store, but
(06:21):
um we had my wife and Icontribute a lot of our start on
the retail side to this uhseminar itself because we've
been doing it for I've been hereat every single one, um, and I
planned to attend every singleone going forward.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (06:34):
So you've seen the industry from both sides, which
I don't know if there's like aton of people that have done
that.
Uh only one of the remarkableones is um my bosses uh uh
started out in the jewelryindustry.
Uh Lenny, who is is gone.
He's gone.
Uh Lenny um also has experiencein a jewelry store.
And um I think if you look atsome of the leaders in the
(06:55):
industry, you find that there isa background in jewelry, but not
always.
What is being a vendor, how didthat kind of contribute to your
your perspective on theindustry?
SPEAKER_02 (07:06):
I think it gave me a lot of perspective on how the
other side works and how theyview every day for a retailer,
and then it's a little bit ofvice versa too.
Like I get the margin side foryou know your vendors and where
they're trying to come from andhow they're trying to contact
customers consistently, but Ialso hear from my side now what
I need from vendors, so it'svery easy for me to go back and
(07:26):
forth and have conversationswith Craig and other you know
vendors and Jordan and Bravani,people like that, in order to
learn and get better, and thatway we can provide for our
customers quicker and moreefficiently.
It's it's nice to see bothsides, um, and it makes it just
easier, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (07:42):
You I feel like do you think that there is there uh
a difference in the you knowwhat I mean by like the tone of
the sale?
Because before you were sellingto retailers, yeah.
And it was like a little bitmore jovial, like kind of like,
come on, why can't you just takea risk?
SPEAKER_02 (07:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (07:56):
Now, what is the what's the difference you think?
SPEAKER_02 (07:58):
So we you're used as a vendor used to selling to
salespeople.
Um so your sales pitch is a lotdifferent.
It's gotta have a lot ofdifferent technicalities to it,
it's gotta have margin-based,it's gotta have some some
interesting perspectives.
But when you're selling to aconsumer, most of the time it's
just the price point and howquick they need it.
Um so you're you're pitching theromance of the product more so
than the technical side.
(08:19):
As a vendor, you're really,really pitching.
Like at Inox selling a men'sbrand, we are really focused on
hyper margin for people becauseit's a very good margin product,
but my consumers obviously don'tcare or need to know what the
margin is.
Uh so it makes it a lot easierwhen you're just talking to them
on a personal level.
It's way less business focused.
SPEAKER_01 (08:38):
So I wanted to kind of sort of gear this one into
like a lot of people areinterested in in being becoming
a retailer, from jumping fromone side to the other.
And I've even had people in myday-to-day life be like, Oh,
I've always like wanted to openup a jewelry store.
So let's take it back to thebeginning.
So you started having thisconversation with Bob, and what
(09:02):
was the conversation then?
You bring that home and starteddiscussing it with your wife.
I'm assuming that's probably thenext step.
SPEAKER_02 (09:07):
Basically, we weren't married then, um, so
thankfully she still likes me tothis day, which is nice.
Um so we had the conversation.
Obviously, it's a huge um shiftfrom working on the B2B side and
being on the road 20 weeks outof the year to completely
changing where you're living anduprooting and going from we were
living in Pensacola at the timeall the way to Bradenton, and
then you gotta find a house, yougotta find, you know, all those
(09:28):
things to to start your businessin general, but it really came
down to us having a conversationwith Bob about what and how we
were going to do this and howlong it was going to take.
Uh, it went from five years tothree years to two years very
quickly.
So um, once you're in there,things change rapidly.
You just have to be willing tohave a conversation with the
person that's there and reallybe flexible on what is
(09:50):
necessary.
And thankfully, my wife does theopposite side of what I do every
day, so that helps.
Uh, because I can never do herportion of the business, no
shot.
SPEAKER_01 (09:59):
So yeah, I guess uh a lot of times it's portrayed in
in media that's like you go frombuy it all out and then it's
just like now you're the guy,now you're the captain.
Um what is uh what what was theprocess behind that?
You said it uh the timelineshortened and were you like
getting trained?
Is that like what you what thetime needed?
SPEAKER_02 (10:19):
Or I mean essentially, um you don't really
sell from a B2B B2C perspectiveis very hard to train the
difference there, but it'smostly understanding like how to
order findings and how to ordera head for a ring and make sure
that we're setting the diamondcorrectly and making sure we're
who I'm buying from and wherewe're buying from and when we
buy and the different individualquarters that work out, so it
(10:43):
makes it very difficult to youknow have that conversation a
lot of the time.
I don't know, it just it justmakes things a lot easier when
you're able to work togetherwith the person you're running
the business with.
You have to really understandwhat kind of transition it is,
if it's a retirement sale or ifit's going out of business sale
or if it's a you're gonna workfor him for 10 years and then
(11:04):
eventually buy the business.
Like you really have to havethat hammered out up front
because if you don't, uh thingscan get blurry, you know.
So you have to have an idea ofwhat you want to do.
SPEAKER_01 (11:14):
Yeah.
So I guess to put the questionto the crowd, um, show of hands,
who has their significant otherinvolved in the business?
If you're a store owner, onlyonly one.
So I wanted to kind of ask aboutthat.
I know I didn't put this on thescript, but I hope you might
jump off this one.
What's it like working with yourwith your spouse?
SPEAKER_02 (11:32):
Uh I couldn't do it without her.
Um I think most people in theroom know Michaela.
I think she's incredible at whatshe does.
She's not the talking person ina relationship.
That falls to me, unfortunately.
Uh, but she does all the adminon the backside, so it's all
admin professional, allaccounting, all receiving, all
invoicing, like this stuff thatmakes me just sick to my
stomach.
She does that every single day.
(11:54):
Um, I do the sales and themarketing, so it makes things a
lot easier.
Now keep in mind if I sellsomething at a lower margin,
she's like, Why did you sell itat a lower margin?
Um, but I'm like, you weren'tout there, you don't know.
You don't understand.
So, you know, we have our wehave our give and takes there,
but we've always workedtogether.
Um we worked together at INOX.
So um she's been telling me whatto do for seven or eight years
(12:17):
now.
So I'll just keep listening.
She's pretty smart.
SPEAKER_01 (12:19):
Nice.
So did you have like a moment,was there like a real like pivot
point where you got to like lookat the books?
I don't know where that part ofthe relationship is in a
business buy.
SPEAKER_02 (12:31):
So yes and no.
Um the transition is a littlebit different when it's a going
out of business sale because thecorporation completely
dissolves.
So I don't need to know whattheir business was doing.
Like I knew obviously the salesnumbers and what we were buying
and what the profit looked likeand things like that, but the
internal like gist of thenumbers, I guess, for lack of a
better term, is not somethingthat we really discussed most of
(12:53):
the time because once it was agoing out of business sale, it
truly didn't matter.
SPEAKER_01 (12:57):
When you like so you say like they they dissolve the
the corporation, uh technicalquestion, like does that mean
like your JBT rating like kindof just like resets?
Oh, yeah, it's gone.
Everything just resets.
Gone.
What about your like standingswith like um vendors?
SPEAKER_02 (13:12):
So that is a that's a different question entirely
coming from the vendor side.
I had a lot of really goodrelationships, Jordan, Craig,
people that I worked withbefore, um, and they knew me as
a vendor, understood the personI was as or was hopefully going
to be as a retailer.
Yeah, so we had connectionsthere.
Um when you do a going out ofbusiness sale, you have
absolutely no product.
(13:33):
So we opened January 14th withuh two cases full of jewelry,
uh, which is not a lot ofjewelry.
So we we had memo people uh sendus in a bunch of different
product from being a you knowpartners with them and and
friends with them in the past.
And thankfully Steven allowed usto stay within IJO because the
store had been in IGO foreverand it's a 55-year-old business.
(13:54):
So without IJO's help, I reallydoubt I'd be here.
To be honest, it was justwouldn't be that way.
So because it's impossible forme to go any vendor and get any
kind of information or them sellme anything with no JPT rating,
like in my own credit score.
Like that's not gonna it's notgonna work out.
So um yeah, I mean IJO is a bigportion of why we were able to
(14:16):
do that.
SPEAKER_01 (14:17):
Because I mean, Craig alluded to it in his
presentation.
Um the biggest trend I'mstarting to see across the
industry when it comes to buyingis it's fewer relationships but
deeper relationshipsincreasingly.
Um I actually just had aconversation with uh with
Stephen Barnes when we did ouryearly checkup, uh, and he was
talking about like one of thesymptoms of uh of a business um
(14:41):
not doing as well is they havelike a hundred vendors that they
have a line with and they'reonly selling, you know, they I
think the statistic is you do80% of your business with 20% of
your vendors and then theremaining amount in reverse.
Um did you have to kind ofstrategically pick and choose
your partnerships and like whichvendors you're going to work
(15:01):
with in that front and kind ofbuild your business in one solid
kind of uh sweep almost?
That's a super good question.
SPEAKER_02 (15:09):
Um Yeah, I mean we definitely had an idea of who we
wanted to work with um and whowe had the store had already
worked with in the past.
Oh, okay.
And uh going to shows comingfrom the vendor side, I knew a
lot of people obviously at theshows.
So when we were probably a lotof pressure, too.
SPEAKER_03 (15:23):
Yeah, a little bit.
There's a little bit there.
SPEAKER_02 (15:25):
Uh that when the transition was happening, um, we
were having conversations oflike, look, like when the going
out of business sale happens,I'm going to need X number of
product at terms or whatever isnecessary.
So we we worked with vendorsthat were willing to work with
us, um, which was really nice.
Um, and it made things a loteasier to have that
conversation.
Like if I was friends withsomebody for 10 years and they
(15:46):
were just like, no, we can't domemo, then that's just how it
is.
And that's okay.
That's some and did the memopart of the business is very,
very difficult because comingfrom the other side, memoing is
a bad word.
You know, but as to a retailer,it's great.
Like I want it as much as I canup to a certain point.
You just don't want to takeadvantage of those vendors long
(16:06):
term.
So with most of them, we'veworked out a 30, 60, 90 day
payment program or whatever itis specifically in order to get
us started, because I can'tupfront do that with the with
the cost of starting a business.
So a lot of it we had a plan,but we kept working with a lot
of our vendors that were alreadydoing well in the store.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, so you said thatwhere is this kind of like
legacy business?
55 years, that's prettyestablished.
Yeah.
Like, I don't know how manybusinesses in my hometown are
have been around 55 years.
So the fact you're keeping it.
Yeah.
But there's that conversation,like, I'm not as familiar with
where.
So like, I don't know if youguys were like the bridal
destination.
Is there uh did you have todecide uh with your uh your wife
(16:48):
if you wanted to continue thatway?
Because very easily you couldhave like changed course and
just been something else, youknow, been more fashion jewelry,
have been more um, you know,everyday kind of approachable.
SPEAKER_02 (17:00):
Yeah, I think I think you have to stick with
what works.
Our store's always been known asa repair shop for a very long
time.
Uh Bob, our previous owner, is amaster jewelry, he's been on the
bench since he was 17, 18 yearsold.
Um can, you know, one of thoseguys who can size a ring in five
minutes type of person.
So the store's been focused onthat for a very, very long time.
Um I was brought in primarily tochange and shift that.
(17:21):
Oh um and kind of get us out oflike, oh, it's a rep it's a
repair shop, like I'll get mywatch battery changed.
And I know all retailers lovewatch batteries, but um, so
yeah, no, it's it's it's thebest.
Um but no, we we we reallyfocused on the repair portion to
get us started, and that's kindof what's been keeping us going
for now.
We do a lot of custom.
(17:41):
Um shout out to to Craig overthere who's paying a ton of
attention.
We do we do a lot of customthrough Ospie um and we work
with him primarily on that kindof stuff.
So we focus on the repair andthe custom and we're slowly
transitioning into doing alittle bit more sales, but it
really is hard to do that aftergoing out of business sale
because the greater number ofyour population bought a ton of
(18:01):
jewelry over the Christmasseason, they're not gonna come
in and buy more jewelry inFebruary.
Yeah.
So it takes a little while toget to that point, but that's
the that's the process.
SPEAKER_01 (18:10):
What about like is there anything that you wanted
to add on?
Like, did you want to becomewell yeah, we're gonna be
repairs, we're gonna do somecustom, but we also want to be
known as like the place withlike like great diamonds or
something like that.
Is there anything that youwanted to add on to your
business to like make it yourown sort of thing?
SPEAKER_02 (18:28):
I mean, yeah, I I mean we would love to be known
for more engagement rings, um,but Bradenton is just not the
market for that.
I don't know if anybody'sfamiliar with Bradenton, but
it's not necessarily theyoungest population of place.
So it's hard to kind of shiftthat and we with us only owning
it to technically for three orfour months, that we've really
just kind of hyper focused onwhat we do well um and then
(18:48):
we're gonna build off of thathopefully going forward.
But we didn't really make anydrastic changes immediately, you
know.
SPEAKER_01 (18:54):
Yeah, it's uh it's such an an interesting thing
because like on the one hand youreally want to like put your
stamp on it.
You know, I guess uh do you whenyou when you take over I mean
you said that some of itdissolves, do you also include
the employees?
I don't do you buy the employeesin the purchase of the sale, you
know?
SPEAKER_02 (19:12):
Um well we're a very, very small shop.
Uh there's only four of us,technically.
Um, obviously my wife and I, andthen our sales associate, and
then we have um Bob is the benchjeweler, but um our sales
associate just stayed on staff.
Um we just paid him through thetransition um because the store
never technically closed formore than two weeks.
Um so um that's what's weirdabout it going out of business
(19:33):
sale.
It's going out of business, butit's not, so then you gotta
explain it to everybody, sothat's kind of a little bit of a
problem.
But yeah, we just paid him withstartup capital to start, and he
just stayed with us onto uh thenew store.
SPEAKER_01 (19:44):
Yeah, did was there anything like surprising that
you get with the purchase of abusiness?
Like uh you get in the you getin the location, yeah, you get
in the sign.
Are you getting like the you getthe vaults?
SPEAKER_02 (19:55):
Yeah, I mean we get ever we get everything you want,
essentially.
Um like we got the cases, we gotum we paid for we paid for all
of these things, we didn't justget them, unfortunately.
But um you so we didn't buymerchandise, we purchased hard
assets.
So by that I mean the lasers,the benches, all the tools in
the back, um, all the watchrepair stuff, everything, the
(20:16):
the steamer, the polisher, allthose things we bought.
Um and then the merchandise,obviously there was none left.
Um and that was all Bob's, so itwas either scrapped or he kept
it and did what he wanted to dowith it because it was already
paid for.
Um but yeah, that's what you buythat and uh headaches.
You've had a lot of headaches.
SPEAKER_01 (20:33):
But other than that, it's it's uh yeah, it's good.
This isn't what happened foryou, but it's pretty
interesting.
I do all the exit interviews forPunchmark when uh when a
client's either going out ofbusiness or moving on.
And one of the the craziestones, a guy um was closing up
shop and he was not selling thebusiness as a jewelry store, he
was selling the business um itwas going to turn into something
(20:54):
else.
I don't know, like a drycleaner.
And one of the things heincluded in the sale is he
wanted the carpet, and he soldthe store, um, but he said that
the carpet was not included.
He took the carpet, he uhwhatever, what did he do with
it?
He refined it.
He refined it, probably got thegold out of it, yeah.
He got so much gold out of it.
(21:15):
And they didn't even they didn'tuh question.
Apparently there's so many, somuch gold flake in it, because
it was like a 70-year-old store.
It's an insane amount.
Yeah, and it was the samecarpet.
Yeah, and apparently he um and II was doing the interview over
Zoom with him, and uh he held upuh a jar and it was like it was
like a full jar of gold flake,you know, from just a carpet.
(21:35):
Pretty crazy.
But um, okay, so you guys had aclose-out sale.
Um did you like learn anythingabout what got sold during the
closeout sale?
Was there like anything like,wow, this was still hanging
around?
I thought for sure this wouldhave sold earlier.
SPEAKER_02 (21:49):
Yeah, so that was part of the issue with the going
out of not the issue, but partof the reason why going out of
business sale made sense for Bobwas he um had a lot of product
that a lot of jewelers have.
A problem with they keep itforever.
Yeah no matter what.
It's their favorite piece.
They love it.
They'll never mark it down.
They'll sell it at the same timethey'll never change the gold
pricing.
It's just been the same piecefor 10-15 years.
(22:12):
So there was a lot of stuff inthere that was still uh there
from when I was there and thenbefore I was there that just
didn't sell.
So either it was just not it wasnot priced right or it was just
not uh a pretty enough piece, Iguess.
But Wilkerson helped us with thetransition and they bring in
supplemental product too.
So the the case is just, I mean,jam-packed with jewelry.
(22:33):
And a lot of the time we'rewe're not gonna say, well,
that's not our piece, that'sWilkerson's piece.
So like you kind of just havethe conversation with customers,
and the hour pieces are markeddown less than the Wilkerson
piece would be.
Oh yeah.
So you you end up selling moreWilkerson at some point in time,
depending on where your storeis.
Yeah.
But you don't really get a agood gauge of what works and
(22:54):
what doesn't, because when youdo a going out of business sale,
depending on the volume of yourstore, you do uh I mean a
ridiculous amount of money inlike the six-week period, like
to the point where we see fiftyor sixty people a day every day
for six weeks.
And it was during Christmas, soit was even doubled.
So it's just you don't reallyknow what's happening.
Bring in supplemental product?
You don't have to, but you can.
(23:14):
Oh yeah.
It just it just gives customersmore options.
That's so interesting.
SPEAKER_01 (23:18):
I would love to like speak with them.
That that sounds reallyfascinating, that whole strategy
behind it, because at the sametime, it's like jewelry stores.
I mean, it's a real it's a realtrend.
Is you know, there are fewerjewelry stores opening than
there are uh going out ofbusiness.
No doubt.
They're all consolidating.
But uh the fact that they have abusiness behind that, is it
merchandise that was from adifferent store?
Not to get too much.
(23:39):
I have absolutely no idea.
SPEAKER_02 (23:41):
Um that portion was completely handled with Bob and
Wilkerson because it was hisbusiness.
So I was just there to sell it.
Essentially, I didn't reallyknow what they were bringing in,
why they were bringing in, orhow.
Um it just showed up.
SPEAKER_01 (23:53):
So just to compare, like, so now you're this vendor
that has switched into becominga retailer.
It's a really interestingstoryline.
Is there anything that you wouldlike that you've learned in like
uh the short period of being,you know, being a guy now?
You're four almost almost fourmonths into into being a store
owner.
What have you learned so far?
SPEAKER_02 (24:14):
I mean, that's a super good question.
There's so many things.
Um I think the biggest thing is,and I said this I think on one
of the pod one of the interviewswe did, I think it's the
accountability of owning abusiness, is now it's like it's
completely and a hundred percentyour problem.
You're the top guy.
Yeah, and like at INOX, I couldalways be like, it's Sebastian's
fault, he'll handle it.
Um but here it's like it's 100%meaning every product we buy,
(24:36):
every product we sell, everywatch battery we change, if the
watch doesn't work, it's all ofa sudden it's my fault and not
the fact that it's 58 years old.
So you really, really, reallygotta understand the
accountability you take thefirst day.
Because as soon as you cut theribbon, do whatever you're
doing, and your name's on thethe checks, as you say, it's
it's it's your problem.
So that's probably the biggestthing that I've had to and not
(24:59):
that I didn't know that wasgonna happen, it's just like
it's so it's overwhelming atfirst when you first deal with
it, but the the longer you doit, it's it's not so bad.
SPEAKER_01 (25:07):
Did the skills transfer though?
So we talked about like thedifferent types of like selling
process.
Um like the I'm sure that thesoft skills transfer, but like
the jewelry knowledge, um Craigjust gave a uh talk about um you
know the best salespeople andthe best people in jewelry don't
always come from jewelry.
Um do you feel like you broughtin some like a like a leg up on
(25:29):
the competition sort of thing?
SPEAKER_02 (25:31):
Yes and no.
Like I started um in theindustry at Jared.
I know I don't want to hear it,I'm sorry.
Um didn't last didn't I didn'tlast very long there because um
you know it is what it is there,but um and then I traveled with
Ivy Goodman for a little bit andI learned a lot of tactical like
jewelry knowledge in that point,like prongs and heads and
diamonds and all those things,and then I shifted completely to
(25:52):
Inox, who does none of that.
Um it's just all well they dothe lab ground diamonds and
things like that now, but therewasn't a ton of like individual
grading of diamonds.
There wasn't a whole lot of likeyou need to order this head for
this particular ring, andthere's a peg head, and there's
this and there's that.
So that was what I had to learnvery quickly.
And thankfully, Bob being abench guy for a very long time,
(26:13):
was was very good at teaching usthose skills.
But a lot of it you just haveto, it's just a repetitive every
single day portion that you youhave to learn very quickly.
So I don't know if I translatedit as much on the technical
side, as much as like talking tocustomers is talking to
customers, no matter who it is,you just have to adapt your
pitch to who's in front of youas opposed to it being a
(26:33):
salesperson or uh normalconsumer.
SPEAKER_01 (26:36):
Man, and uh at the same time, it's like you came
in, so you have like you havethat moment first day, you sit
down.
Were there any priorities foryou?
Like, no, now that I'm this guy,we're gonna wear florals on
Fridays.
Was there anything like thatthat you wanted to kind of push
into?
SPEAKER_02 (26:52):
Uh not necessarily.
I just think the biggest thingfor for Michaela and I was to
make sure our culture was waswhat we wanted it to be every
day.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:00):
Was that a cog like cognizant decision?
SPEAKER_02 (27:02):
Yeah, that was something we talked about a lot,
um, because we want it to be anopen environment, not
necessarily for our employees,but like for the customers that
come into.
Like we want the culture to befun and be inviting and like not
so like, oh my god, I'm going toa jewelry store, they're gonna
do this, they're gonna do that.
Like we don't, like I dress inwhat I'm dressed in now.
I don't wear anything over thetop.
(27:23):
I just think it was ofestablishing a culture that we
both wanted to be a part of andwe could live in every single
day.
That was the biggest thing wetried to do immediately.
SPEAKER_01 (27:31):
Man, it's it's that's a really uh something
I've never had to um like thinkabout, really, is I've always
come into predeterminedcultures.
Um with Punchmark, it's adaptedand shifted throughout the years
as you add more people.
Yeah, it's kind of like a like abig stew.
You know, as you add in moreflavors, it really does kind of
shift and adapt.
(27:51):
But to start from from scratch,um, I can only find that to be,
I'd find that very daunting.
SPEAKER_02 (27:57):
But I mean, it definitely was.
Um I mean, Bob had anestablished culture there.
It was just he's he's been ajeweler for for 50 plus years,
so his way is the way that'sgoing to happen.
Um so you have to be flexible tothat.
But there was some things thatwe immediately wanted to change
that like uh this is this isfunny.
We used to listen to 60s and 70smusic in the store every single
(28:20):
day.
I mean, I can I can tell youevery lyric, every lyric of
every song of that.
It's not that at all.
It's it's we've we changed theplaylist completely, which is
nice because now I don't hearthe same 15 songs every day.
But that was like the culturethat was there, so we knew that
we had to change that if webecause like just to put a small
imprint immediately, somethingthat was like effective that we
could do quickly.
SPEAKER_01 (28:42):
Yeah.
I think like clothes and likeyeah, the sounds, and I I know
that some places even do like uhsense.
SPEAKER_02 (28:49):
Yeah, we did we do that too.
SPEAKER_01 (28:50):
Yeah, like you can really shift, like you can make
it feel different.
Like yours.
Yeah, yeah.
That's super cool.
So, like, I guess to you know,summate the last uh bit of the
conversation, was it what waslike the moment when you like
kind of sat down and you'relike, okay, this is this is my
store, and it's not just like,oh, I'm taking over the store.
When when did it feel like yourstore instead of Bob's?
SPEAKER_02 (29:13):
I think when the lawyer told me it was.
Really?
It sunk in the It was probably,yeah, because it like it it'd be
different if like I had neverworked in the store, but I was
there for two years and like ourcustomers knew it was happening,
Bob knew it was happening,Michaela, Aiden, everybody knew
it was happening.
So it wasn't like it was like abig shock to me that it
happened, it was more so likewhen the lawyer was like, All
right, it's you now have thisattached to your name.
(29:35):
It was kind of like okay, likewe're here now.
Um and that happened well beforethe open date because we had a
bunch of things to change.
So I think it happened like the27th or 28th of December was
effectively the date that itbecame our problem.
Yeah.
Um, but we didn't open until Ithink the 15th or 16th of
January.
So we had to do a lot ofrenovations in the source uh to
get it going.
SPEAKER_01 (29:55):
Man.
Well, it's been it's super expinspiring because I know that uh
I I find the story of of nextgeneration jewelers to be like
very inspiring right now.
It's it's something about thefact that it's not an easy
business to get into.
Um it's like, you know, like Isaid, more stores closed than
(30:15):
open these days.
And when you hear the story ofsomeone starting, I find it to
be like very much like um like abright light off in the distance
where it's like, oh, someone isactually endeavoring upon this.
And it's not because they'vebeen around for a hundred years
already.
Uh at the same time, like I'msure that brings on a a whole
nother set of responsibilitiesand and um like you know yeah,
(30:40):
yeah, responsibilities, asopposed to now you come in and
and though you dissolved likethe yeah, the LLC, it is um, you
know, has some history, but it'snow it's your your kind of uh
story you're writing.
SPEAKER_02 (30:54):
Yeah, and it's it's it's interesting because it's
where's has been there foreverto the point now where people I
think they would they didn'teven realize it going at a
business sale happened, likethey just showed up and they
were like, Where's Bob andCheryl?
And we're like, oh well, theystill work here part-time, and
like still work here, what doyou mean?
And I was like, Well, my my wifeand I bought the business, and
they were like, What do you meanyou bought the business?
So it's very interesting thatsome people like will always be
(31:16):
Bob and Cheryl's customersforever, no matter what, and I
100% respect that, and I hopethat that happens to us at one
point in time.
But you kind of have to have youkind of gotta walk the fine line
of like that customer expectedthis type of service.
SPEAKER_01 (31:28):
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02 (31:28):
So you have to give that type of service no matter
what, or you run the risk oflosing.
And sometimes it's okay to firea client um or a consumer, it's
not exactly what you want to do,but um, it can be done that way
if it's going to affect yourbusiness to a point where like
if they have friends that havebeen in the store and they've
been their mom's mom bought fromBob, like they've said that to
me.
(31:48):
Like, I'm you're I'm the fourthgeneration in my family to buy
from this store, and you'relike, that's insane.
That's wild.
Uh that could that that thatcould happen.
So like those customers aregonna get deferential treatment
no matter what, like they'regoing to get something
different, but you can't makethat a reality for all your
customer base, and that's whereyou gotta walk a line that's a
little bit tough to dosometimes.
SPEAKER_01 (32:10):
Yeah, I never even would have thought that you do
have to kind of reach into theold bag of tricks for like
certain clients customers.
So if someone's like listeningto this and you know, maybe
they're interested inapproaching a store, maybe
they're you know, working fromum inside of a store and they
want to be the the next in line.
Do you have any advice to themabout about how to go about it
(32:30):
and to position themselvesproperly?
SPEAKER_02 (32:33):
Uh I think learn as much as you can.
Um I never I mean, I alwayswanted to to to buy a business
and and run one or start my ownor whatever um situation would
have arose.
But I think a lot of time it'sjust being in the rooms with
people who are willing to teachyou um and are willing to have
serious conversations with youand like not just tell you
everything's gonna be okay, youknow.
(32:53):
Um and I think you gotta reallyalign with either a business
partner or someone who's willingto do everything you're willing
to do to do it, because it'snot, I mean, as everybody in
here knows, it's not easy owningor operating or even managing a
business in general.
So you kind of have to youreally gotta work exceptionally
hard to get to that point.
And like don't don't be don't beshy about working that hard.
(33:17):
Like it's okay to work hard, andI think a lot of people think
it's kind of out of fashion orwhatever, but um, don't know,
just work hard and be in therooms with people that you can
learn stuff from.
SPEAKER_01 (33:26):
That's awesome.
Well, Cole, thanks so much foruh for joining me.
I really appreciate it.
And thanks everybody for uhbeing here as well.
I really appreciate it.
Uh that's gonna be the end ofthe show.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll be back Tuesday withanother episode, and uh cheers.
Thanks.
Thanks, Mike.
I appreciate the benefits.
Thanks so much, guys.
(33:53):
All right, everybody.
That's the end of the show.
Thanks so much for listening.
My guest this week was ColeRowland from Where's Jewelers?
And thank you very much forjoining.
And we were live at thePunchmark Client Workshop in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
This episode was brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
hosted by me, Michael Burpo.
This episode was edited by PaulSuarez with music by Ross
(34:15):
Cocker.
Don't forget to rate the podcaston Spotify and Apple Podcasts,
and leave us feedback onpunchmark.com slash.
That's L-O-U-P-E.
Thanks, and be back next weekTuesday with another episode.
Cheers.
Bye.
Welcome back, everybody, to In the Loop.
What is up, everybody?
My name is Michael Burpo.
Thanks again for listening to Inthe Loop.
This week we are live from thePunchmark Client Workshop in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
This is our fifth year hostingour annual client workshop where
(00:21):
we bring in some of our clientsfrom all over the US to have two
days of educational seminars andwork sessions with the Punchmark
team and some of our partners.
It was a really fun time, andpart of the experience is I do
two live in the loop recordingsat the end of each day.
(00:42):
So one was this one with ColeRoland from Where's Jewelers.
We talk all about being a newretail jewelry store.
I have one more for you.
It'll be next week.
And this one was with Lenny fromthe Edge.
And uh that was a greatinterview as well.
So be on the lookout for thatnext week.
This episode is a really funtime because Cole is one of my
(01:04):
uh better friends in the jewelryindustry.
He uh we always affectionatelyrefer to him as uh Cole from
Inox and then Cole from Wares.
So uh his moniker has changed,but I wanted to document his
first uh couple months of beinga retail jeweler.
And you'll learn as you listento the episode that he went from
being a vendor and he uh slowlyum took over the leadership of a
(01:27):
uh retail jewelry store andeventually um was able to buy it
outright and is now the owner ofa new jewelry store.
It's a really cool conversation.
I want to talk a lot about uhwhat goes into a store purchase
and uh you know the thenitty-gritty of buying a
business, and I hope you'llenjoy following along as well.
Cheers.
We'll be back next week Tuesdaywith another episode.
(01:49):
Bye.
SPEAKER_00 (01:56):
This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the
jewelry industry's favoritewebsite platform and digital
growth agency.
Our mission reaches way beyondtechnology.
With decades of experience andlong-lasting industry
relationships, Punchmark enablesjewelry businesses to flourish
in any marketplace.
We consider our clients ourfriends, as many of them have
(02:16):
been friends way before becomingclients.
Punchmark's own success comesfrom the fact that we have a
much deeper need and obligationto help our friends succeed.
Whether you're looking forbetter e-commerce performance,
business growth, or campaignsthat drive traffic and sales,
Punchmark's website andmarketing services were made
just for you.
It's never too late to transformyour business and stitch
(02:38):
together your digital andphysical world in a way that
achieves tremendous growth andresults.
Schedule a guided demo today atpunchmark.com slash go.
And now back to the show.
SPEAKER_01 (03:11):
I know because I was on vacation, I was in in
Colorado.
I came back and we had alreadydecided that we were gonna do a
podcast.
Uh at the time, our podcast wascalled The Driller Survival Kit.
That was all about how you canactually use your website to
make your business stay afloatwhen your brick and mortar is
shut down.
Uh that was happening toeverybody um around the world,
(03:33):
but especially our clients.
And I noticed um, I would neverpoint fingers, but I thought
that there was a real resoundingsilence in the jewelry industry
where no one was kind ofspeaking to what's going on and
offering help.
And that's where we stepped in.
So we ran uh a weekly podcastseries that was called Jewelry
Survival Camp.
One thing we learned, if you goback, you can actually find all
(03:55):
the episodes, they're the firstseven episodes.
We learned it was uh kind of abummer talking about COVID all
the time.
So I took it over and I made alittle pivot.
Now we're called In the Loop,it's but O U P, of course, and
we now uh interview differentpeople.
It used to be more aboute-commerce and digital
marketing, it still is, but nowit's a lot more about the
(04:17):
industry.
And I've really enjoyed gettinga chance to speak with so many
people.
And uh I have a lot of these uhthese series.
Another one was um I do breakingdown the best, which is where we
talk about um these suites ofproducts that I'm a big fan of.
I have a background in userexperience design, and uh things
that work really well are reallyexciting to me.
(04:38):
So I've talked about um theGoogle Suite, which is what
Punchmark builds their uh ourinfrastructure on.
Um if you're a Microsoft person,go kick rocks.
I hate that.
Uh we also I just did one umactually last week on uh
communication systems, which isuh if you use Slack or Microsoft
Teams or group chats or Discord,show of hands.
(05:00):
Who uses a group chat for theirbusiness?
Oh guys, guys.
Check out Slack or Discord,we'll we'll we'll talk
afterwards.
But uh the coolest thing is alsois I interviewed Cole for the
first time.
Uh you appeared, I look back,you're on season three, episode
seven.
Yeah, way back.
I was at uh uh RJO in SanAntonio, and I got a chance to
(05:21):
speak with you.
So, Cole, maybe could you justum kind of introduce yourself
first as how I knew you and nowwho you are today?
SPEAKER_02 (05:30):
Uh so originally um I used to work for Inox Men's
Jewelry, but I don't know ifthere's anybody here who sells
Inox, but good for you.
Uh still love it, still sell itin my stores today.
Um I was uh rep for them forfive or six years, um, and then
ran into Bob and had theopportunity to move over to the
retail side.
Um and my wife and I bought ourstore in January, so we are
(05:52):
first generation owners again.
SPEAKER_01 (05:54):
First generation, and but where'd you where'd you
run into Bob?
SPEAKER_02 (05:57):
Uh here.
Actually at the PunchmarkSeminar, I believe 2000 had to
be 2023.
Yeah.
Um we were sitting down at Finand Vino, which is a great
place.
We're all gonna go to dinnerthere.
You'll love it.
Um, it's incredible.
Um he sat down next to me andjokingly said, I'm I'm gonna
sell my business.
And I was like, haha, sell it tome.
And uh he did.
Uh it took it took two years umof me working in the store, but
(06:21):
um we had my wife and Icontribute a lot of our start on
the retail side to this uhseminar itself because we've
been doing it for I've been hereat every single one, um, and I
planned to attend every singleone going forward.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (06:34):
So you've seen the industry from both sides, which
I don't know if there's like aton of people that have done
that.
Uh only one of the remarkableones is um my bosses uh uh
started out in the jewelryindustry.
Uh Lenny, who is is gone.
He's gone.
Uh Lenny um also has experiencein a jewelry store.
And um I think if you look atsome of the leaders in the
(06:55):
industry, you find that there isa background in jewelry, but not
always.
What is being a vendor, how didthat kind of contribute to your
your perspective on theindustry?
SPEAKER_02 (07:06):
I think it gave me a lot of perspective on how the
other side works and how theyview every day for a retailer,
and then it's a little bit ofvice versa too.
Like I get the margin side foryou know your vendors and where
they're trying to come from andhow they're trying to contact
customers consistently, but Ialso hear from my side now what
I need from vendors, so it'svery easy for me to go back and
(07:26):
forth and have conversationswith Craig and other you know
vendors and Jordan and Bravani,people like that, in order to
learn and get better, and thatway we can provide for our
customers quicker and moreefficiently.
It's it's nice to see bothsides, um, and it makes it just
easier, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (07:42):
You I feel like do you think that there is there uh
a difference in the you knowwhat I mean by like the tone of
the sale?
Because before you were sellingto retailers, yeah.
And it was like a little bitmore jovial, like kind of like,
come on, why can't you just takea risk?
SPEAKER_02 (07:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (07:56):
Now, what is the what's the difference you think?
SPEAKER_02 (07:58):
So we you're used as a vendor used to selling to
salespeople.
Um so your sales pitch is a lotdifferent.
It's gotta have a lot ofdifferent technicalities to it,
it's gotta have margin-based,it's gotta have some some
interesting perspectives.
But when you're selling to aconsumer, most of the time it's
just the price point and howquick they need it.
Um so you're you're pitching theromance of the product more so
than the technical side.
(08:19):
As a vendor, you're really,really pitching.
Like at Inox selling a men'sbrand, we are really focused on
hyper margin for people becauseit's a very good margin product,
but my consumers obviously don'tcare or need to know what the
margin is.
Uh so it makes it a lot easierwhen you're just talking to them
on a personal level.
It's way less business focused.
SPEAKER_01 (08:38):
So I wanted to kind of sort of gear this one into
like a lot of people areinterested in in being becoming
a retailer, from jumping fromone side to the other.
And I've even had people in myday-to-day life be like, Oh,
I've always like wanted to openup a jewelry store.
So let's take it back to thebeginning.
So you started having thisconversation with Bob, and what
(09:02):
was the conversation then?
You bring that home and starteddiscussing it with your wife.
I'm assuming that's probably thenext step.
SPEAKER_02 (09:07):
Basically, we weren't married then, um, so
thankfully she still likes me tothis day, which is nice.
Um so we had the conversation.
Obviously, it's a huge um shiftfrom working on the B2B side and
being on the road 20 weeks outof the year to completely
changing where you're living anduprooting and going from we were
living in Pensacola at the timeall the way to Bradenton, and
then you gotta find a house, yougotta find, you know, all those
(09:28):
things to to start your businessin general, but it really came
down to us having a conversationwith Bob about what and how we
were going to do this and howlong it was going to take.
Uh, it went from five years tothree years to two years very
quickly.
So um, once you're in there,things change rapidly.
You just have to be willing tohave a conversation with the
person that's there and reallybe flexible on what is
(09:50):
necessary.
And thankfully, my wife does theopposite side of what I do every
day, so that helps.
Uh, because I can never do herportion of the business, no
shot.
SPEAKER_01 (09:59):
So yeah, I guess uh a lot of times it's portrayed in
in media that's like you go frombuy it all out and then it's
just like now you're the guy,now you're the captain.
Um what is uh what what was theprocess behind that?
You said it uh the timelineshortened and were you like
getting trained?
Is that like what you what thetime needed?
SPEAKER_02 (10:19):
Or I mean essentially, um you don't really
sell from a B2B B2C perspectiveis very hard to train the
difference there, but it'smostly understanding like how to
order findings and how to ordera head for a ring and make sure
that we're setting the diamondcorrectly and making sure we're
who I'm buying from and wherewe're buying from and when we
buy and the different individualquarters that work out, so it
(10:43):
makes it very difficult to youknow have that conversation a
lot of the time.
I don't know, it just it justmakes things a lot easier when
you're able to work togetherwith the person you're running
the business with.
You have to really understandwhat kind of transition it is,
if it's a retirement sale or ifit's going out of business sale
or if it's a you're gonna workfor him for 10 years and then
(11:04):
eventually buy the business.
Like you really have to havethat hammered out up front
because if you don't, uh thingscan get blurry, you know.
So you have to have an idea ofwhat you want to do.
SPEAKER_01 (11:14):
Yeah.
So I guess to put the questionto the crowd, um, show of hands,
who has their significant otherinvolved in the business?
If you're a store owner, onlyonly one.
So I wanted to kind of ask aboutthat.
I know I didn't put this on thescript, but I hope you might
jump off this one.
What's it like working with yourwith your spouse?
SPEAKER_02 (11:32):
Uh I couldn't do it without her.
Um I think most people in theroom know Michaela.
I think she's incredible at whatshe does.
She's not the talking person ina relationship.
That falls to me, unfortunately.
Uh, but she does all the adminon the backside, so it's all
admin professional, allaccounting, all receiving, all
invoicing, like this stuff thatmakes me just sick to my
stomach.
She does that every single day.
(11:54):
Um, I do the sales and themarketing, so it makes things a
lot easier.
Now keep in mind if I sellsomething at a lower margin,
she's like, Why did you sell itat a lower margin?
Um, but I'm like, you weren'tout there, you don't know.
You don't understand.
So, you know, we have our wehave our give and takes there,
but we've always workedtogether.
Um we worked together at INOX.
So um she's been telling me whatto do for seven or eight years
(12:17):
now.
So I'll just keep listening.
She's pretty smart.
SPEAKER_01 (12:19):
Nice.
So did you have like a moment,was there like a real like pivot
point where you got to like lookat the books?
I don't know where that part ofthe relationship is in a
business buy.
SPEAKER_02 (12:31):
So yes and no.
Um the transition is a littlebit different when it's a going
out of business sale because thecorporation completely
dissolves.
So I don't need to know whattheir business was doing.
Like I knew obviously the salesnumbers and what we were buying
and what the profit looked likeand things like that, but the
internal like gist of thenumbers, I guess, for lack of a
better term, is not somethingthat we really discussed most of
(12:53):
the time because once it was agoing out of business sale, it
truly didn't matter.
SPEAKER_01 (12:57):
When you like so you say like they they dissolve the
the corporation, uh technicalquestion, like does that mean
like your JBT rating like kindof just like resets?
Oh, yeah, it's gone.
Everything just resets.
Gone.
What about your like standingswith like um vendors?
SPEAKER_02 (13:12):
So that is a that's a different question entirely
coming from the vendor side.
I had a lot of really goodrelationships, Jordan, Craig,
people that I worked withbefore, um, and they knew me as
a vendor, understood the personI was as or was hopefully going
to be as a retailer.
Yeah, so we had connectionsthere.
Um when you do a going out ofbusiness sale, you have
absolutely no product.
(13:33):
So we opened January 14th withuh two cases full of jewelry,
uh, which is not a lot ofjewelry.
So we we had memo people uh sendus in a bunch of different
product from being a you knowpartners with them and and
friends with them in the past.
And thankfully Steven allowed usto stay within IJO because the
store had been in IGO foreverand it's a 55-year-old business.
(13:54):
So without IJO's help, I reallydoubt I'd be here.
To be honest, it was justwouldn't be that way.
So because it's impossible forme to go any vendor and get any
kind of information or them sellme anything with no JPT rating,
like in my own credit score.
Like that's not gonna it's notgonna work out.
So um yeah, I mean IJO is a bigportion of why we were able to
(14:16):
do that.
SPEAKER_01 (14:17):
Because I mean, Craig alluded to it in his
presentation.
Um the biggest trend I'mstarting to see across the
industry when it comes to buyingis it's fewer relationships but
deeper relationshipsincreasingly.
Um I actually just had aconversation with uh with
Stephen Barnes when we did ouryearly checkup, uh, and he was
talking about like one of thesymptoms of uh of a business um
(14:41):
not doing as well is they havelike a hundred vendors that they
have a line with and they'reonly selling, you know, they I
think the statistic is you do80% of your business with 20% of
your vendors and then theremaining amount in reverse.
Um did you have to kind ofstrategically pick and choose
your partnerships and like whichvendors you're going to work
(15:01):
with in that front and kind ofbuild your business in one solid
kind of uh sweep almost?
That's a super good question.
SPEAKER_02 (15:09):
Um Yeah, I mean we definitely had an idea of who we
wanted to work with um and whowe had the store had already
worked with in the past.
Oh, okay.
And uh going to shows comingfrom the vendor side, I knew a
lot of people obviously at theshows.
So when we were probably a lotof pressure, too.
SPEAKER_03 (15:23):
Yeah, a little bit.
There's a little bit there.
SPEAKER_02 (15:25):
Uh that when the transition was happening, um, we
were having conversations oflike, look, like when the going
out of business sale happens,I'm going to need X number of
product at terms or whatever isnecessary.
So we we worked with vendorsthat were willing to work with
us, um, which was really nice.
Um, and it made things a loteasier to have that
conversation.
Like if I was friends withsomebody for 10 years and they
(15:46):
were just like, no, we can't domemo, then that's just how it
is.
And that's okay.
That's some and did the memopart of the business is very,
very difficult because comingfrom the other side, memoing is
a bad word.
You know, but as to a retailer,it's great.
Like I want it as much as I canup to a certain point.
You just don't want to takeadvantage of those vendors long
(16:06):
term.
So with most of them, we'veworked out a 30, 60, 90 day
payment program or whatever itis specifically in order to get
us started, because I can'tupfront do that with the with
the cost of starting a business.
So a lot of it we had a plan,but we kept working with a lot
of our vendors that were alreadydoing well in the store.
SPEAKER_01 (16:24):
Yeah.
Well, I mean, so you said thatwhere is this kind of like
legacy business?
55 years, that's prettyestablished.
Yeah.
Like, I don't know how manybusinesses in my hometown are
have been around 55 years.
So the fact you're keeping it.
Yeah.
But there's that conversation,like, I'm not as familiar with
where.
So like, I don't know if youguys were like the bridal
destination.
Is there uh did you have todecide uh with your uh your wife
(16:48):
if you wanted to continue thatway?
Because very easily you couldhave like changed course and
just been something else, youknow, been more fashion jewelry,
have been more um, you know,everyday kind of approachable.
SPEAKER_02 (17:00):
Yeah, I think I think you have to stick with
what works.
Our store's always been known asa repair shop for a very long
time.
Uh Bob, our previous owner, is amaster jewelry, he's been on the
bench since he was 17, 18 yearsold.
Um can, you know, one of thoseguys who can size a ring in five
minutes type of person.
So the store's been focused onthat for a very, very long time.
Um I was brought in primarily tochange and shift that.
(17:21):
Oh um and kind of get us out oflike, oh, it's a rep it's a
repair shop, like I'll get mywatch battery changed.
And I know all retailers lovewatch batteries, but um, so
yeah, no, it's it's it's thebest.
Um but no, we we we reallyfocused on the repair portion to
get us started, and that's kindof what's been keeping us going
for now.
We do a lot of custom.
(17:41):
Um shout out to to Craig overthere who's paying a ton of
attention.
We do we do a lot of customthrough Ospie um and we work
with him primarily on that kindof stuff.
So we focus on the repair andthe custom and we're slowly
transitioning into doing alittle bit more sales, but it
really is hard to do that aftergoing out of business sale
because the greater number ofyour population bought a ton of
(18:01):
jewelry over the Christmasseason, they're not gonna come
in and buy more jewelry inFebruary.
Yeah.
So it takes a little while toget to that point, but that's
the that's the process.
SPEAKER_01 (18:10):
What about like is there anything that you wanted
to add on?
Like, did you want to becomewell yeah, we're gonna be
repairs, we're gonna do somecustom, but we also want to be
known as like the place withlike like great diamonds or
something like that.
Is there anything that youwanted to add on to your
business to like make it yourown sort of thing?
SPEAKER_02 (18:28):
I mean, yeah, I I mean we would love to be known
for more engagement rings, um,but Bradenton is just not the
market for that.
I don't know if anybody'sfamiliar with Bradenton, but
it's not necessarily theyoungest population of place.
So it's hard to kind of shiftthat and we with us only owning
it to technically for three orfour months, that we've really
just kind of hyper focused onwhat we do well um and then
(18:48):
we're gonna build off of thathopefully going forward.
But we didn't really make anydrastic changes immediately, you
know.
SPEAKER_01 (18:54):
Yeah, it's uh it's such an an interesting thing
because like on the one hand youreally want to like put your
stamp on it.
You know, I guess uh do you whenyou when you take over I mean
you said that some of itdissolves, do you also include
the employees?
I don't do you buy the employeesin the purchase of the sale, you
know?
SPEAKER_02 (19:12):
Um well we're a very, very small shop.
Uh there's only four of us,technically.
Um, obviously my wife and I, andthen our sales associate, and
then we have um Bob is the benchjeweler, but um our sales
associate just stayed on staff.
Um we just paid him through thetransition um because the store
never technically closed formore than two weeks.
Um so um that's what's weirdabout it going out of business
(19:33):
sale.
It's going out of business, butit's not, so then you gotta
explain it to everybody, sothat's kind of a little bit of a
problem.
But yeah, we just paid him withstartup capital to start, and he
just stayed with us onto uh thenew store.
SPEAKER_01 (19:44):
Yeah, did was there anything like surprising that
you get with the purchase of abusiness?
Like uh you get in the you getin the location, yeah, you get
in the sign.
Are you getting like the you getthe vaults?
SPEAKER_02 (19:55):
Yeah, I mean we get ever we get everything you want,
essentially.
Um like we got the cases, we gotum we paid for we paid for all
of these things, we didn't justget them, unfortunately.
But um you so we didn't buymerchandise, we purchased hard
assets.
So by that I mean the lasers,the benches, all the tools in
the back, um, all the watchrepair stuff, everything, the
(20:16):
the steamer, the polisher, allthose things we bought.
Um and then the merchandise,obviously there was none left.
Um and that was all Bob's, so itwas either scrapped or he kept
it and did what he wanted to dowith it because it was already
paid for.
Um but yeah, that's what you buythat and uh headaches.
You've had a lot of headaches.
SPEAKER_01 (20:33):
But other than that, it's it's uh yeah, it's good.
This isn't what happened foryou, but it's pretty
interesting.
I do all the exit interviews forPunchmark when uh when a
client's either going out ofbusiness or moving on.
And one of the the craziestones, a guy um was closing up
shop and he was not selling thebusiness as a jewelry store, he
was selling the business um itwas going to turn into something
(20:54):
else.
I don't know, like a drycleaner.
And one of the things heincluded in the sale is he
wanted the carpet, and he soldthe store, um, but he said that
the carpet was not included.
He took the carpet, he uhwhatever, what did he do with
it?
He refined it.
He refined it, probably got thegold out of it, yeah.
He got so much gold out of it.
(21:15):
And they didn't even they didn'tuh question.
Apparently there's so many, somuch gold flake in it, because
it was like a 70-year-old store.
It's an insane amount.
Yeah, and it was the samecarpet.
Yeah, and apparently he um and II was doing the interview over
Zoom with him, and uh he held upuh a jar and it was like it was
like a full jar of gold flake,you know, from just a carpet.
(21:35):
Pretty crazy.
But um, okay, so you guys had aclose-out sale.
Um did you like learn anythingabout what got sold during the
closeout sale?
Was there like anything like,wow, this was still hanging
around?
I thought for sure this wouldhave sold earlier.
SPEAKER_02 (21:49):
Yeah, so that was part of the issue with the going
out of not the issue, but partof the reason why going out of
business sale made sense for Bobwas he um had a lot of product
that a lot of jewelers have.
A problem with they keep itforever.
Yeah no matter what.
It's their favorite piece.
They love it.
They'll never mark it down.
They'll sell it at the same timethey'll never change the gold
pricing.
It's just been the same piecefor 10-15 years.
(22:12):
So there was a lot of stuff inthere that was still uh there
from when I was there and thenbefore I was there that just
didn't sell.
So either it was just not it wasnot priced right or it was just
not uh a pretty enough piece, Iguess.
But Wilkerson helped us with thetransition and they bring in
supplemental product too.
So the the case is just, I mean,jam-packed with jewelry.
(22:33):
And a lot of the time we'rewe're not gonna say, well,
that's not our piece, that'sWilkerson's piece.
So like you kind of just havethe conversation with customers,
and the hour pieces are markeddown less than the Wilkerson
piece would be.
Oh yeah.
So you you end up selling moreWilkerson at some point in time,
depending on where your storeis.
Yeah.
But you don't really get a agood gauge of what works and
(22:54):
what doesn't, because when youdo a going out of business sale,
depending on the volume of yourstore, you do uh I mean a
ridiculous amount of money inlike the six-week period, like
to the point where we see fiftyor sixty people a day every day
for six weeks.
And it was during Christmas, soit was even doubled.
So it's just you don't reallyknow what's happening.
Bring in supplemental product?
You don't have to, but you can.
(23:14):
Oh yeah.
It just it just gives customersmore options.
That's so interesting.
SPEAKER_01 (23:18):
I would love to like speak with them.
That that sounds reallyfascinating, that whole strategy
behind it, because at the sametime, it's like jewelry stores.
I mean, it's a real it's a realtrend.
Is you know, there are fewerjewelry stores opening than
there are uh going out ofbusiness.
No doubt.
They're all consolidating.
But uh the fact that they have abusiness behind that, is it
merchandise that was from adifferent store?
Not to get too much.
(23:39):
I have absolutely no idea.
SPEAKER_02 (23:41):
Um that portion was completely handled with Bob and
Wilkerson because it was hisbusiness.
So I was just there to sell it.
Essentially, I didn't reallyknow what they were bringing in,
why they were bringing in, orhow.
Um it just showed up.
SPEAKER_01 (23:53):
So just to compare, like, so now you're this vendor
that has switched into becominga retailer.
It's a really interestingstoryline.
Is there anything that you wouldlike that you've learned in like
uh the short period of being,you know, being a guy now?
You're four almost almost fourmonths into into being a store
owner.
What have you learned so far?
SPEAKER_02 (24:14):
I mean, that's a super good question.
There's so many things.
Um I think the biggest thing is,and I said this I think on one
of the pod one of the interviewswe did, I think it's the
accountability of owning abusiness, is now it's like it's
completely and a hundred percentyour problem.
You're the top guy.
Yeah, and like at INOX, I couldalways be like, it's Sebastian's
fault, he'll handle it.
Um but here it's like it's 100%meaning every product we buy,
(24:36):
every product we sell, everywatch battery we change, if the
watch doesn't work, it's all ofa sudden it's my fault and not
the fact that it's 58 years old.
So you really, really, reallygotta understand the
accountability you take thefirst day.
Because as soon as you cut theribbon, do whatever you're
doing, and your name's on thethe checks, as you say, it's
it's it's your problem.
So that's probably the biggestthing that I've had to and not
(24:59):
that I didn't know that wasgonna happen, it's just like
it's so it's overwhelming atfirst when you first deal with
it, but the the longer you doit, it's it's not so bad.
SPEAKER_01 (25:07):
Did the skills transfer though?
So we talked about like thedifferent types of like selling
process.
Um like the I'm sure that thesoft skills transfer, but like
the jewelry knowledge, um Craigjust gave a uh talk about um you
know the best salespeople andthe best people in jewelry don't
always come from jewelry.
Um do you feel like you broughtin some like a like a leg up on
(25:29):
the competition sort of thing?
SPEAKER_02 (25:31):
Yes and no.
Like I started um in theindustry at Jared.
I know I don't want to hear it,I'm sorry.
Um didn't last didn't I didn'tlast very long there because um
you know it is what it is there,but um and then I traveled with
Ivy Goodman for a little bit andI learned a lot of tactical like
jewelry knowledge in that point,like prongs and heads and
diamonds and all those things,and then I shifted completely to
(25:52):
Inox, who does none of that.
Um it's just all well they dothe lab ground diamonds and
things like that now, but therewasn't a ton of like individual
grading of diamonds.
There wasn't a whole lot of likeyou need to order this head for
this particular ring, andthere's a peg head, and there's
this and there's that.
So that was what I had to learnvery quickly.
And thankfully, Bob being abench guy for a very long time,
(26:13):
was was very good at teaching usthose skills.
But a lot of it you just haveto, it's just a repetitive every
single day portion that you youhave to learn very quickly.
So I don't know if I translatedit as much on the technical
side, as much as like talking tocustomers is talking to
customers, no matter who it is,you just have to adapt your
pitch to who's in front of youas opposed to it being a
(26:33):
salesperson or uh normalconsumer.
SPEAKER_01 (26:36):
Man, and uh at the same time, it's like you came
in, so you have like you havethat moment first day, you sit
down.
Were there any priorities foryou?
Like, no, now that I'm this guy,we're gonna wear florals on
Fridays.
Was there anything like thatthat you wanted to kind of push
into?
SPEAKER_02 (26:52):
Uh not necessarily.
I just think the biggest thingfor for Michaela and I was to
make sure our culture was waswhat we wanted it to be every
day.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01 (27:00):
Was that a cog like cognizant decision?
SPEAKER_02 (27:02):
Yeah, that was something we talked about a lot,
um, because we want it to be anopen environment, not
necessarily for our employees,but like for the customers that
come into.
Like we want the culture to befun and be inviting and like not
so like, oh my god, I'm going toa jewelry store, they're gonna
do this, they're gonna do that.
Like we don't, like I dress inwhat I'm dressed in now.
I don't wear anything over thetop.
(27:23):
I just think it was ofestablishing a culture that we
both wanted to be a part of andwe could live in every single
day.
That was the biggest thing wetried to do immediately.
SPEAKER_01 (27:31):
Man, it's it's that's a really uh something
I've never had to um like thinkabout, really, is I've always
come into predeterminedcultures.
Um with Punchmark, it's adaptedand shifted throughout the years
as you add more people.
Yeah, it's kind of like a like abig stew.
You know, as you add in moreflavors, it really does kind of
shift and adapt.
(27:51):
But to start from from scratch,um, I can only find that to be,
I'd find that very daunting.
SPEAKER_02 (27:57):
But I mean, it definitely was.
Um I mean, Bob had anestablished culture there.
It was just he's he's been ajeweler for for 50 plus years,
so his way is the way that'sgoing to happen.
Um so you have to be flexible tothat.
But there was some things thatwe immediately wanted to change
that like uh this is this isfunny.
We used to listen to 60s and 70smusic in the store every single
(28:20):
day.
I mean, I can I can tell youevery lyric, every lyric of
every song of that.
It's not that at all.
It's it's we've we changed theplaylist completely, which is
nice because now I don't hearthe same 15 songs every day.
But that was like the culturethat was there, so we knew that
we had to change that if webecause like just to put a small
imprint immediately, somethingthat was like effective that we
could do quickly.
SPEAKER_01 (28:42):
Yeah.
I think like clothes and likeyeah, the sounds, and I I know
that some places even do like uhsense.
SPEAKER_02 (28:49):
Yeah, we did we do that too.
SPEAKER_01 (28:50):
Yeah, like you can really shift, like you can make
it feel different.
Like yours.
Yeah, yeah.
That's super cool.
So, like, I guess to you know,summate the last uh bit of the
conversation, was it what waslike the moment when you like
kind of sat down and you'relike, okay, this is this is my
store, and it's not just like,oh, I'm taking over the store.
When when did it feel like yourstore instead of Bob's?
SPEAKER_02 (29:13):
I think when the lawyer told me it was.
Really?
It sunk in the It was probably,yeah, because it like it it'd be
different if like I had neverworked in the store, but I was
there for two years and like ourcustomers knew it was happening,
Bob knew it was happening,Michaela, Aiden, everybody knew
it was happening.
So it wasn't like it was like abig shock to me that it
happened, it was more so likewhen the lawyer was like, All
right, it's you now have thisattached to your name.
(29:35):
It was kind of like okay, likewe're here now.
Um and that happened well beforethe open date because we had a
bunch of things to change.
So I think it happened like the27th or 28th of December was
effectively the date that itbecame our problem.
Yeah.
Um, but we didn't open until Ithink the 15th or 16th of
January.
So we had to do a lot ofrenovations in the source uh to
get it going.
SPEAKER_01 (29:55):
Man.
Well, it's been it's super expinspiring because I know that uh
I I find the story of of nextgeneration jewelers to be like
very inspiring right now.
It's it's something about thefact that it's not an easy
business to get into.
Um it's like, you know, like Isaid, more stores closed than
(30:15):
open these days.
And when you hear the story ofsomeone starting, I find it to
be like very much like um like abright light off in the distance
where it's like, oh, someone isactually endeavoring upon this.
And it's not because they'vebeen around for a hundred years
already.
Uh at the same time, like I'msure that brings on a a whole
nother set of responsibilitiesand and um like you know yeah,
(30:40):
yeah, responsibilities, asopposed to now you come in and
and though you dissolved likethe yeah, the LLC, it is um, you
know, has some history, but it'snow it's your your kind of uh
story you're writing.
SPEAKER_02 (30:54):
Yeah, and it's it's it's interesting because it's
where's has been there foreverto the point now where people I
think they would they didn'teven realize it going at a
business sale happened, likethey just showed up and they
were like, Where's Bob andCheryl?
And we're like, oh well, theystill work here part-time, and
like still work here, what doyou mean?
And I was like, Well, my my wifeand I bought the business, and
they were like, What do you meanyou bought the business?
So it's very interesting thatsome people like will always be
(31:16):
Bob and Cheryl's customersforever, no matter what, and I
100% respect that, and I hopethat that happens to us at one
point in time.
But you kind of have to have youkind of gotta walk the fine line
of like that customer expectedthis type of service.
SPEAKER_01 (31:28):
Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02 (31:28):
So you have to give that type of service no matter
what, or you run the risk oflosing.
And sometimes it's okay to firea client um or a consumer, it's
not exactly what you want to do,but um, it can be done that way
if it's going to affect yourbusiness to a point where like
if they have friends that havebeen in the store and they've
been their mom's mom bought fromBob, like they've said that to
me.
(31:48):
Like, I'm you're I'm the fourthgeneration in my family to buy
from this store, and you'relike, that's insane.
That's wild.
Uh that could that that thatcould happen.
So like those customers aregonna get deferential treatment
no matter what, like they'regoing to get something
different, but you can't makethat a reality for all your
customer base, and that's whereyou gotta walk a line that's a
little bit tough to dosometimes.
SPEAKER_01 (32:10):
Yeah, I never even would have thought that you do
have to kind of reach into theold bag of tricks for like
certain clients customers.
So if someone's like listeningto this and you know, maybe
they're interested inapproaching a store, maybe
they're you know, working fromum inside of a store and they
want to be the the next in line.
Do you have any advice to themabout about how to go about it
(32:30):
and to position themselvesproperly?
SPEAKER_02 (32:33):
Uh I think learn as much as you can.
Um I never I mean, I alwayswanted to to to buy a business
and and run one or start my ownor whatever um situation would
have arose.
But I think a lot of time it'sjust being in the rooms with
people who are willing to teachyou um and are willing to have
serious conversations with youand like not just tell you
everything's gonna be okay, youknow.
(32:53):
Um and I think you gotta reallyalign with either a business
partner or someone who's willingto do everything you're willing
to do to do it, because it'snot, I mean, as everybody in
here knows, it's not easy owningor operating or even managing a
business in general.
So you kind of have to youreally gotta work exceptionally
hard to get to that point.
And like don't don't be don't beshy about working that hard.
(33:17):
Like it's okay to work hard, andI think a lot of people think
it's kind of out of fashion orwhatever, but um, don't know,
just work hard and be in therooms with people that you can
learn stuff from.
SPEAKER_01 (33:26):
That's awesome.
Well, Cole, thanks so much foruh for joining me.
I really appreciate it.
And thanks everybody for uhbeing here as well.
I really appreciate it.
Uh that's gonna be the end ofthe show.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll be back Tuesday withanother episode, and uh cheers.
Thanks.
Thanks, Mike.
I appreciate the benefits.
Thanks so much, guys.
(33:53):
All right, everybody.
That's the end of the show.
Thanks so much for listening.
My guest this week was ColeRowland from Where's Jewelers?
And thank you very much forjoining.
And we were live at thePunchmark Client Workshop in
Charlotte, North Carolina.
This episode was brought to youby Punchmark and produced and
hosted by me, Michael Burpo.
This episode was edited by PaulSuarez with music by Ross
(34:15):
Cocker.
Don't forget to rate the podcaston Spotify and Apple Podcasts,
and leave us feedback onpunchmark.com slash.
That's L-O-U-P-E.
Thanks, and be back next weekTuesday with another episode.
Cheers.
Bye.
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