Why your jewelry business needs a CRM

This post is written by Marty Hurwitz, Founder of The MVEye.

After graduating college and fumbling around different careers, I eventually became a third-generation jewelry retailer and achieved significant results with targeted direct mail. It was this success that led me to become a zealous CRM advocate for small and medium-sized businesses.

It was serendipitous when one of our small store’s vendors, thinking we were a large enterprise, sent their national sales manager to visit us and figure out the success factor behind our marketing. When she arrived at our small, dingy showroom on the Bowery in NYC, she was shocked to find just the two of us behind a tiny counter—me at the computer and my partner dusting inventory.

Fast forward a few years, that sales manager and I married, moved to California, and started our own company providing research and communication services to the global gem, jewelry, and watch industries.

For a successful jewelry business, maintaining strong B2B connections is vital, so customer relationship management (CRM) is an indispensable tool.

What is CRM?

CRM is a tool designed to help businesses manage interactions with current and potential customers. It centralizes data, streamlines communication, and ensures that every customer’s journey is tracked and optimized.

But CRM is so much more than just a tool. It’s more than just a software platform; it’s more than just a database or a list—it’s a culture. And culture eats strategy for breakfast every day!

To properly implement and use a CRM in a jewelry business, one needs to foster a culture of sharing. Shared ownership, shared belief, shared responsibility.

For CRM to drive marketing and sales, as many people as possible must buy into the culture. Those that do will thrive; those that don’t will be anchors holding back the ship.

Why does a wholesale jewelry business need CRM?

In today’s dynamic job market, the world’s working population changes jobs and/or relocates every year. Updating and maintaining the relationships with a business’s clients and prospects is critical to year-over-year sales growth.

Without a CRM, it’s hard to keep on top of all of these changes, let alone successfully navigate them. But there are many more reasons why your jewelry business needs a CRM.

Here are my top ten reasons why.

1. An up-to-date customer database

The global jewelry industry, in particular, experiences more than average employee movement, transition, attrition, and M/A activity on an annual basis.

At our company, we have a team of people just doing the CRM administrative blocking and tackling. Every night they update job changes, company changes, new hires, new terminations, new email addresses, new phone numbers, etc. So when the sales team comes in to work in the morning, they know that our CRM is up to the minute.

That’s the culture that makes it work.

2. Transparency and structure

The jewelry industry is vast and opaque.

Supply chains stretch across continents and involve raw material sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution. Transparency is a significant challenge. Add to this the highly fragmented nature of the industry, with numerous small retailers, high-volume retailers, e-commerce sites, wholesalers, and manufacturers, and it becomes clear why effective management tools like CRM are essential.

CRM brings structure to the inherent complexity of a wholesale jewelry business.

3. Focus on human relationships

We live in an increasingly digital world.

In an era dominated by digital interactions, CRM helps you build meaningful relationships, maintain a human touch, and personalize communications.

There is nothing more powerful in the jewelry business today.

4. Mobile accessibility

For situations when you need to capture important details on the go, a mobile CRM plays an important role.

If you just finished lunch with a hot prospect and they want to see the new styles next week, open your CRM mobile app. Enter meeting notes, add the opportunity to your sales pipeline, notify your boss, and schedule a follow-up reminder to book the appointment (all before you turn on your car engine)!

This will take just a couple of minutes but will make your work much easier in the long run.

5. Trade show follow-up

Jewelry trade shows have become so expensive that every lead, prospect, and customer interaction must be followed up within days of arriving back home.

CRM can make this critical function more efficient, beginning with…

• in-show note taking,
• follow-up scheduling,
• professional quotation creation,
• emailing,
• and so much more.

6. Email campaigns

Processing new leads is a really important but often neglected part of the sales process in a jewelry business. It requires scheduled drip marketing campaigns.

CRM software can seamlessly integrate with a tool for scheduling automated (drip) email campaigns that help jewelry wholesalers stay in touch with retailers by sending updates on new collections, special offers, or industry news.

This keeps your business top of mind at the precise right time for clients and prospects.

7. Data security

Given the high value of jewelry transactions, data security is paramount. A robust CRM system protects sensitive client and transaction information, providing peace of mind for both wholesalers and their clients.

8. Inventory management

In the wholesale jewelry business, the person who dies with the least inventory in the vault wins!

Today, given the stress of consignment inventory, extended terms, returns, and exchange (all combined with precious metals at all-time high cost levels), inventory management can be a make-or-break situation.

CRM can integrate with inventory software and RFID solutions to make sure every piece in every SKU is tracked and monitored. You can even set up scheduled and automated correspondence to recall consignment products. You can’t make money with 30-90-never payment terms.

9. Customization

Every jewelry business has its own nuances.

CRM allows users to customize fields to include details like metal types, gemstone usage and grading, design preferences, price point requirements, and key buying cycles, ensuring that no critical detail is overlooked.

10. Team collaboration

There is no I in your wholesale jewelry business.

Every style, every customer, every prospect, and every order requires a wide range of people, all over the world, to successfully do their job to achieve company-wide success. Your team requires maximum communication efficiency across a wide range of time zones. There isn’t a minute to be lost.

The days of picking up the phone to call someone in the factory or finance or marketing or sales are long gone.

CRM makes team collaboration happen in real time, 24/7.

Implementing a simple CRM in a jewelry business

Understanding the benefits of having a CRM system in a jewelry business is the first step to success. Once you’re clear on why you need a CRM, you need to set up one in your company.

The good news is that it doesn’t need to be a complicated solution. If it’s easy to use, helps you to keep an up-to-date record of contacts, and makes your work more structured and efficient, it means you’ve found the right solution.

Ease of use and cultural acceptance are critical to the success of your CRM platform. Culture eats strategy for breakfast! A CRM platform is only as good as the level of acceptance it receives in an organization. A complicated system can lead to poor adoption. Your CRM platform must stand out for its simplicity and user-friendly design, ensuring that businesses can focus on relationships and sales, not navigating complex software.

The wholesale jewelry industry thrives on trust, precision, and efficiency. A CRM tailored to the unique challenges of this sector can transform operations, build stronger client relationships, and drive sustained growth.