We're setting our sights on the latest technological advancements and decoding the secrets of successful digital marketing for jewelers. Michael sets up what Season 5 of In the Loupe will look like as well as teases a few of the episodes he is most interested in sharing.
In the second half of the show, he is joined by Ross Cockerham, CEO & Co-Founder of Punchmark, to talk about what he is most excited about personally this upcoming year.
Learn more about National Rarities: nationalrarities.com/pages/host-an-event
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
We're setting our sights on the latest technological advancements and decoding the secrets of successful digital marketing for jewelers. Michael sets up what Season 5 of In the Loupe will look like as well as teases a few of the episodes he is most interested in sharing.
In the second half of the show, he is joined by Ross Cockerham, CEO & Co-Founder of Punchmark, to talk about what he is most excited about personally this upcoming year.
Learn more about National Rarities: nationalrarities.com/pages/host-an-event
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Welcome back everybody to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Welcome back to In the Loop. This is the first episode for season 5 and I'm really excited to get a chance to speak with you. So just to kind of set up what this episode is, I'm going to talk about some trends I saw last year, what I'm looking forward to this year, what you can expect from this season. It's probably going to be a little bit shorter than normal and I also am going to interview my boss, ross Cochrum, and we're going to talk a little bit about what he's excited for with Punchmark, but also his exciting trends that are happening in the jewelry industry. I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1:All right, everybody, we're kicking off the start of this episode. Let's start with In the Loop, because that's the easiest thing for me to discuss right now. In the Loop is going to look very similar to what it was last year. I'm going to try to do a little bit more tech and jewelry focused episodes, so I'm going to try to interview a lot more people that are making moves and waves in the industry. We've learned that that's probably what a lot of our listeners are really enjoying, but also I'm going to try to do a couple more of the series that I've spoken about and done in the past, for example, breaking Down the Best. This is just my opportunity to highlight some of the best, I guess, e-commerce shopping experiences that are out in the world not necessarily in the jewelry industry. So one of the ones I want to break down hopefully coming up soon is going to be about the store online store Huckberry. Huckberry does like kind of redneck, really high quality redneck gear, so things like jackets and boots and, like you know, a lot of car heart related stuff. They're really high quality, premium stuff and I recently bought a jacket off of their website after a very long time of looking at this one jacket and I kind of want to get into it a little bit more. But also we're going to have a couple more of our most popular returning guests. So, coming up pretty soon, I'm going to also be interviewing Justin Van Maeter from National Rarities and we're going to talk about what 2023 looked like for National Rarities and what you can expect going forward. And I'm also going to try to interview Alex from Kiefer Jewelers about the process and expansion efforts that her store is having.
Speaker 1:But also I kind of want to get a chance to kind of be more of a part of the jewelry industry. I've joined a couple of Facebook groups that are about like, for example, young jewelers helping young jewelers, which is a Facebook group that I recently joined, where it's all, I think it's all under 35 or 40 maybe, and it's very active, but it's pretty cool because it gives a slightly different twist on the jewelry industry than what I was expecting and I kind of want to provide information, interviews for what you guys are looking for. If you want to reach out to me and recommend a guest, I would love to interview more of them. You can email me at michael at punchmarkcom. I think that would be a really good way for you to reach out to me.
Speaker 1:But also I want to do more roundtables. We did a roundtable at the end of season four and that one was really successful and I thought it was super interesting hearing what's going on, what's succeeding, what's not, like mistakes. They made things like that and I'm going to try to do one of those probably just about one a quarter, if that's at all feasible, and maybe center them around, for example, a type of position. So maybe have a lot of jewelry store managers on or and we've already had jewelry owners on our young jewelers, but I think I'd love to do one about bench jewelers and have a roundtable with them. So just a couple of things I'm thinking about doing, but I'm also want to kind of bring forward a little bit of niche information that only punchmark is able to provide. So one of those things is that punchmark we only do jewelry websites, which means that all of the statistics that we're able to aggregate from are from inherently just a very confined, confined pool, which maybe that's a hindrance some of the times, where we can't say if this trend is happening across all of luxury, but we can, with quite a bit of certainty, say that this is a trend in the in the jewelry industry as a whole.
Speaker 1:One of those things I can see is e-commerce trends, because I get those delivered to me every single month. I have an automation that scrapes through our entire e-commerce platform and then provides that data to me and shows me every sale for every client that's ever been made for that month and it allows me to see trends were up, you know sales were down, you know average cart value. That's the biggest thing I wanted to share. So in 2023, this is excluding December's data, I don't have that yet I wanted to show that the average cart value from what we saw was, let's see, average was $491.18. So we'll just call it 490. And that's actually really interesting because when you compare that to the trend of 2022, the average cart value in for our platform was $547. So we'll just call that 550. So that's a $60 swing when it comes to average cart checkout value. So this is, for example, the way I'm driving.
Speaker 1:This number is total sales divided by monthly number of sales, which kind of can give you the average checkout value. That can be skewed. For example, if someone buys, you know, a diamond, or if they buy an engagement ring, that's obviously a $10,000 checkout, but it does kind of end up coming out in the wash because people do also sell regular jewelry, you know, fashion jewelry or fine jewelry that's maybe at a lower price point. I sometimes try to guess at, like, what the trends are. I've tried to kind of share this information before in the past and one thing I've noticed is that a lot of the checkouts were there's a lot of yeah, a lot of gold, a lot of gold jewelry or fine gold jewelry being checked out online this year and, inherently, the value of that is just a little bit less than what was getting checked out a lot more in 2022. For example, we saw a lot more checkouts in 2022 with diamond jewelry, especially lab grown diamond jewelry, and that would be just pushing the price point up a little bit more and I think that's how you can accommodate for those. You know average $60 average cart checkout value that we're seeing the dearth of.
Speaker 1:But one thing we also saw this year that was really interesting is we saw a lot more clients making sales. So not necessarily making a lot of sales or like everybody making, you know, a ton of sales, it's more like more different websites. We're making at least a couple of sales and we saw that across pretty much every single month. I have them in front of me. We saw more clients making different sales and, especially early in the year we noticed that, you know, on average, like seven to 20 more clients were making different sales as the year prior, which is always really encouraging. I think that means that a lot more clients are, you know, seeing e-commerce as like a possible way to make some of their money.
Speaker 1:The other thing I find really interesting is just what the trends for the entire jewelry industry are going to be, and one of those trends that I saw was coming from the Edge Retail Academy and you might have seen this article published. It was published on December 13th and this is by Sherry Smith, who we've actually interviewed in, I believe, season 3 for Edge Retail Academy, and this is all about a couple of statistics related to performance in the month of November for 2023. And what we're seeing is that gross sales had fallen about 15% when it comes to engagement rings category as a whole and in this article it mentioned the segment comprises loose diamonds, semi-mounts, completed diamond engagement rings and wedding bands. But it was really interesting that they also saw a no change in gross sales or marginal 2% decrease in the diamond fashion sector, and it kind of has me scratching my head because I always thought that diamond fashion and engagement rings would kind of I don't know kind of be linked together as like what is in vogue, but I guess that those things might be a little bit more kind of up in the air than what I expected. I'll leave the link to this article for National Jeweler in the show notes below. I highly recommend that you get a chance to read through it. It's really quite interesting and I think it does speak to a few of the things that we've hypothesized about, but having some statistics, like what the Edge Retail Academy is able to aggregate, is very, very, very interesting, and I hope that you get a chance to read through it.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I'm hoping to do when it comes to in the loop, season five is I'm going to try to do more tech related interviews and kind of. We did an episode at the end of last season that was called I Tried Every Vertical Video Platform so that you Don't have To, and I went through TikTok, instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts and I kind of did a verbal essay. And what's really great about that essay is that episode is that it kind of turned out to be an of pretty evergreen episode. Evergreen meaning you can listen to it whenever and it's still relevant and I'm actually looking back on it. I'm actually pretty fond of it and pretty proud of how it turned out, mainly because I haven't seen a lot of people, especially in the jewelry industry, doing that.
Speaker 1:And one of the episodes I'm actually looking into doing is I want to try out virtual reality, or what we call VR VR shopping, and I know it's like what, vr shopping? I do think it's not going to be the next big thing, but I do think it is going to be a thing, and one of the things I think I'm going to try out is at the end of January, I'm going to be moving apartments and I am hoping that I need to buy a new couch, and I think I'm going to use an Oculus, which I already have. An Oculus is a VR headset made by Meta, made by Facebook, and I'm hoping to use that to shop for a couch, and one of the things you can do is, through the Oculus, you can turn it to augmented reality, view AR, which is kind of like VR, except you're able to see your real life surroundings as well and have a layer of virtual reality on top of it. And what I'm hoping for is that I've heard that you can shop for couches on there and buy one and or like try it on and you can see if it will fit and how it'll look right in your room right there. And I think it would be really cool to kind of document my process of trying to see what it's like. And how do you enter your card information, is my card processor going to flag it as fraudulent? I would wager yes, but let me know your wagers. So just a cool couple of concepts that I'm playing with and I hope to explore further on.
Speaker 1:The biggest push I'm going to have for this year for the support of our listeners I'm hoping is going to be my goal is to make in the loop a conversation starter and a piece that becomes so important to your lives in the jewelry industry. Not that we are going to be indispensable, as in we're giving only very actionable advice, but I think it's more like I want to become a voice in the industry that is worth listening to, and part of that, I think, is having our listeners, you know, have this podcast be brought up in regular conversation, whether that's at shows or whether that's when you guys are all mentoring each other, which is one of the greatest parts about the jewelry industry. I'm hoping that in the loop is brought up as oh man, I just heard this great interview of you know. We interviewed Penny Palmer and she's the heart of IJO and yeah, oh, I listened to that same interview on in the loop. That's kind of the spirit and goal for this upcoming year. We now have a great listener base and I'm hoping that more people will get the chance to hear about it, and I think that comes from our current listeners sharing their excitement or what they enjoy with each other. Again, the jewelry industry is just so incredibly companionable. I feel like they everybody is so giving with their time and their expertise and their insights and I think that's really, you know, formed a lot of what in the loop is is this business of free, but also I'm hoping that you know we can grow and expand, and part of that is by finding new listeners. So we're hoping to go to a couple of jewelry shows, get a chance to meet you all in person. So if you see, ever see me walking around, please come up, let me know, shake my hand and let me know that you listen in the loop.
Speaker 1:The other part is a little bit of a format change. I'm hoping to include more interview segments as opposed to the entire episode, and one of that, the things that'll allow me to do, is talk about, for example, current trends in the industry ahead of time and then jump into the interview, and that's one of the things we're going to do. Today, I interviewed my boss, ross Cochran, and we talk about everything he's excited for. But that will only be at the second half of this episode and I'm hoping that it'll allow me to kind of get a chance to kind of speak with you all directly and then we'll jump into the interview and wrap up from there. Let me know what you think about this. We're going to have a couple of different infrastructure set up and we're probably going to have a lot more giveaways this season because we have a little bit more of an infrastructure set up around it and you're going to be hearing more about opportunities to meet the punch mark team, for example, as some of the show boost. I hope you don't mind, but we do need to have an advertisement or two on some of these episodes and we hope it's not too much trouble for you to listen to them or skip to them, I understand. But with all that said, thanks so much for listening, excited to be here for the first episode of season five and we'll be bringing on our interview with Ross Cochran in just a moment. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back every week Tuesday with another episode. Thanks Bye. This week's episode is brought to you in part by Accessibi, punch Mark's ADA compliance partner.
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Speaker 1:And now back to the show. All right, everybody. I'm joined by Ross Cochrum, ceo and co-founder of Punchmark. How you doing today, ross? I'm doing good. How about you, mike? I'm doing really well. This is going to be the first episode of season five. I think that you were, I mean, very prominent in the first ever episode ever, back when we were the Jewelers Survival Kit. Just to kind of break the immersion for a moment, this is actually being recorded on the 22nd of December, so we're even before the start of the year. I guess I kind of want to talk about what are you most excited about for 2024? It's going to be coming up right now and we got a lot of things, I'm sure, happening in not just your personal life, but also for Punchmark and also in the jewelry industry. So what are you most excited about for next year?
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a big question because I am excited about a lot In terms of Punchmark. We have been doing things from a traditional aspect because if it ain't broke, don't fix it For a long time not exactly the same. We do a lot of things every year. We do a lot of optimization on our code, but this year we're doing a lot of things a little differently, differently as far as the way we're organizing our products and services to customers, the way we are organizing our development on top of e-commerce, the way we are doing content for clients, marketing for clients.
Speaker 2:Our original tagline was everyone has a story that Punchmark helped you tell yours and for a while we kind of I don't want to say lost site because that sounds negative but we went over to a whole tech aspect of building the platform that lets you help you tell your story. From our aspect, our digital marketing programs were kicked off probably around 2016. And we kind of slowly got back to it in 2022 was sort of our acyclical nature of getting back to a program that we started in 2008, which Punchmark was founded on, this Antwerp marketing campaign for Antwerp Diamonds, and so, anyway, getting back to that school cycle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly our sweeter than chocolate campaign taking pictures of diamonds sitting among chocolates and it was a really fun experience that brought some extra sales pre-sales to jewelers. So anyway, coming back full circle, we have always been invested in the success and the growth of our clients. So, looking at this as a perspective of a digital growth agency in the jewelry industry, there's a lot of things that we've learned that we are about to execute in a whole different way. So I'm excited about like e-commerce. Most people are focused on how do we get new customers, new business, new business and that's very important.
Speaker 2:Obviously, you need a good marketing plan to get everybody over to your website, to get everybody in your store everything from a paid ad strategy to coupon codes to email marketing, all the above. But what a lot of people fail to do, especially at the brick and mortar small business, is you forget to really focus on your current customers. So we all know that a customer who's purchased from you before has like a 70 to 80% higher chance of purchasing from you again than someone who just walks straight into your store. So the same goes with the website. Now, if you're not updating your website often, why is someone going to come back. What's their motivation? Why don't you come back to the same homepage, the same products, the same keywords, the same everything navigation menu and, like Mike you were talking about on your Nike episode, which I thought was awesome to follow, some of the best and greatest simplifying things, organizing things, optimizing menus. Keeping things simple is important, but the wiring behind it is what I'm super psyched about, because, with our integration with point of sale systems like the Edge, we're taking the customer data and we're actually inviting customers back to the website.
Speaker 2:So, for example, what we're releasing soon, which is a long time waiting, long time coming, we have a system where a customer walks in your store, makes a purchase. The next day, they get an email saying hey, john, thanks so much for making your purchase, choosing John's jewelry. An online account has been set up for you where you can view your orders, your purchase history, check your wish list, update your details like birthdays, anniversaries. Now here's the key. We already tested this a little bit the other day and customers actually came in and a few people updated their accounts on a client's website, and the cool thing is a couple people updated their birthdays.
Speaker 2:And so you think about, just in time, marketing. You have three elements you have the right product to the right customer at the right time. So the right time is the birthday, the anniversary, christmas, a holiday, valentine's Day. Now, when you can actually have all the data that you need to do that, you say oh, hey, john, happy birthday, come to our store and get you know, add this coupon code, whatever, and go online. We're also inviting customers to come back and look at their wish list. We're also going to be sending a wish list on sale notification. Hey, mike, one of your items in your wish list happened to go on sale, right. So those kinds of things I'm super excited about because it's re-engagement of current customers. It's very high on the list for a small business to have automated from a client telling aspect.
Speaker 1:That's also a big reason why a lot of stores do these like very low price point, high volume sales is because when you make a person have their first purchase with you, the ease of checkout is so much easier, usually because you have an account or you've already gone through those steps. A lot of times they can remember your information or you can just breeze through it, and that's a lot of times why you see these stores doing like oh yeah, we have like a, you know, a hyper sale that's like down to discounting something, down to like five or ten dollars. It's so that they it's not so that they can turn a profit on that. It's just so that suddenly they have all your information and then they can start remarketing to you and offering hey, we saw that you created an account and maybe you added a wishlist item. So suddenly you're back into the cycle and it's a lot easier for you to start marketing to them again. That sounds really exciting.
Speaker 2:For sure, yeah, I think it's not like a huge game changer, you know, for e-commerce itself. But, you know, re-engaging your customers is super important, so I'm very excited about all that. But also, you know, all the products and services that we're sort of reconfiguring in a way that will make it much easier and much more affordable for our clients. You know there's a difference between something when you don't have the right systems in place, your hand stitching things right. That's my analogy of when you don't have the right processes, tools, technologies in place. You know, just think about, you know, a laser engraver versus hand engraving. Okay, in a store You're taking the time and you would charge X amount for hand engraving. Now, david Geller would argue you should charge more for your laser engraving, even though it took you less time, because you have to share the equipment, right, and you have to do it better, right, if you go back to that in the loop episode. But you know, when you look at the systems we're putting in place, you know, you know my right hand man that we founded the company together, dan Saroi. You know he is sort of our master diamond cutter, if you will, right. He's the guy who touches every website before it launches, and he's even if in the olden days he was of punch mark, he was designing them himself. Now that we have a design team, he still does some of the hand stitching right before everything launches, and you know this he's hand stitched over 1200 launches, right. So in the jewelry industry which is phenomenal in my eyes Like it's crazy the art that he's put into this in addition to our awesome design team. But what we're doing systematically is we're creating these new we call them internally premium templates, but we'll have a more suitable name for them and what's exciting about it is they are following certain personas, right. So it's very appropriate to the type of customer that is signing up for a new website or redesigning and they want a new upgrade and a fresh look. So I'm very excited about what that means. For you know, when it comes to affordability, things that might have cost 10, 15 thousand dollars would now be closer to $5,000. You know, just because of that ingenuity, we're taking our laser engraver right and we are making it much more suitable and affordable and much more powerful. The impact is a lot. There's a lot more impact when it comes to delivering a design that is very appropriate to, you know the retailer. So, anyway, those those types of things just scratching the surface, and then, last but not least, affordable digital marketing plans.
Speaker 2:You know a lot of people are like where do I start? And you know, sometimes the place to start is out of your budget. You know, because you know all the work that we put into it. It's. You know, jewelers make Keystone and Triple Key and we don't.
Speaker 2:You know we have to really be careful with leveraging our smarts, our tools, our technologies, all the things we pay for behind the scenes, and creating an impactful program to help jewelers grow in a way that's affordable. And it's hard and a lot of times, with all this work we put into it with our team that's just, you know, so well versed on all the ins and outs of organic versus paid, it's hard to stitch that together. But we're coming up with some additional. They're more like a slow burn campaign, you know, coming up with things that can be done in like a long playing, the long game right for organic.
Speaker 2:So we're doing things to people's websites on a content aspect, meta, even Google, my business listings, creating things that are available to you on a low touch, you know, sort of plan where we don't have to. You know, do all these things jump through hoops. We can deliver them to you in a very efficient way, which is why we're able to cut our costs. So I'm excited about those, because it's like jewelers constantly come to me and say where do I start with digital marketing? And we're finally able to say start here. So we're excited about that, as well as the turnkey campaigns, like when we brought Antwerp back into the frame. We're going to have a Valentine's Day campaign and one for pretty much every holiday and event you can imagine in the industry and, again, very affordable.
Speaker 2:So anyway, those are the things among all the 50 other things I'm very excited about. Those are at the top of my list on what I'm very, very excited to be rolling out in 2024.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just like I remember when I first started at Punchmark, you guys have always been very encouraging, especially for myself, to think bigger and try to think of things that we could build at the company, and my initial ideas were always like, wouldn't it be sick if we went to someone's website and we looked and we upgraded this one part?
Speaker 1:But it's like what I learned when you explained to me early on this is back in like 2017, when you go and you have something that involves pulling a lever manually, it becomes immediately unscalable, because as soon as you get past a point of no return, then it becomes someone's entire job to be pulling that lever, and then, or you need five people to only be pulling these levers and it just becomes, you know, unmanageable.
Speaker 1:And I think what I've learned at Punchmark is that, like, the best ideas are the ones that can be automated and scaled to accommodate more people, because we have passed that point of no return where pulling a lever is no longer a feasible option for us. We have, you know, close to 500 clients or so, and I remember one time we had to manually update a whole bunch of things on every single website and it took me like an entire week and that was the only thing I did for that week, and, as a result, that is no longer something that is feasible, and having those kind of things that you just outlined be part of what allows us to scale it. It will allow us to make it so that it's no longer has to cover someone's entire job to be pulling these levers. It can instead be, you know, infinitely scaled and becomes much more cost effective for not just the client but also for us, because now we don't have to assign one person to just be sitting there pulling levers, you know.
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, and a lot of people. If there's anything I learned about running a business and scaling a business, it's, you know, looking at. Forget profitability for a second, just as a number, that's just a markup. You have a product, you're going to mark it up, you're going to sell it. That's what most jewelry stores really, really focus in on, and then following, like the Geller book, on how to price repairs, things like that.
Speaker 2:But when you think about profitability through efficiency, okay, that is the maximum amount of profitability you'll ever get Okay, I mean, for lack of a better word right now, especially in the AI era that we're entering but profitability through robotics, right, profitability through roboticizing your certain low-level things that anybody can do or people find boring. So that's something that I've even done a seminar on growing pains and scaling your business and I didn't realize that, especially from COVID, how much I learned through going through that process. So the things that I'm excited about a lot now is, like I mentioned, being able to deliver a product that is top-notch to our clients for a more affordable price, more efficiently or effectively. It's just something that makes me feel really good about where we are, how long we've done this and finally being able to inject something extremely powerful back into this industry.
Speaker 1:So yeah, all right, everybody, we're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. This episode was brought to you in part by National Rarities. Are you looking to boost your business with no cost to you, or want a special promotion for the doldrums of next year? Look no further than National Rarities estate buying events. National Rarities runs three-day buying events from your store that not only attract new customers but also keep your current one coming back for more. Their expert team of buyers are ready to visit your store, handle advertisements, lead the estate evaluations or are easy to work with. And it's not just jeweler purchasing. They also buy designer handbags, artwork, antiques, stuff like that. These events frequently attract a different type of customer than your usuals, because who doesn't love getting a little cash back? Elevate your store's reputation, build lasting customer relationships and become the jewelry destination of your community. It's all about simplicity. They take care of the logistics. You enjoy the rewards. Visit nationalraritiescom. Slash pages. Slash host dash and dash event. It's going to be in the show notes below. Or reach out to Justin Van Maeter by emailing Justin. That's J-U-S-T-I-N at nationalraritiescom. Let them know that in the loop. Sent you Thanks and back to the show and we're back.
Speaker 1:What about for the jewelry industry? Is there anything that's most exciting for you whether it's a trend or kind of like a push in the industry that is kind of exciting to you? You've been in this your entire life. I'm sure you've seen many fads come and go. You've seen the rise and fall and rise again of lab grown diamonds. I'm most excited right now about fancy stones, especially just like gemstones. In general, I think that they offer just a lot more variety than diamonds. I feel like I've seen so many different books and diamonds. It's like, okay, let me see something in Citrine or in Emerald or anything like that. Is there anything that's kind of exciting to you when it comes to jewelry?
Speaker 2:For sure I've been, as have you, I know because we're good friends with Inox. But really following the trends on men's jewelry and seeing how impactful that can be, I feel like there's a lot of jewelry stores who don't embrace it because they're like, honestly, where's the money in that? I'm selling a little rope chain that's stainless steel for how much? Like 125 bucks. I honestly don't even know the price points, but they're not the same price points as fine jewelry and precious gemstones. People are kind of like a little bit turned off from that, but you can't forget that you're creating an experience for the people who are probably going to buy the majority of gifts of love for their significant others. You're affecting their, you're creating another revenue stream, but you're creating another experience for one of your top buyers. Now they're never going to forget you. You can argue that does a bunch of Pandora beads sales lead to engagement ring sales? I don't know. That's the idea I'm going to stow.
Speaker 1:I do a thousand transactions and I made $5.20.
Speaker 2:That's the I'll individually wrap it up. All right. So that's the but they do, they do. Every single interaction with a customer is an opportunity to win them over and give them an experience that's going to make them a lifelong customer.
Speaker 1:So you think about the matter. Turn from a customer into a client, exactly.
Speaker 2:So I hope that more jewelry stores really embrace that trend because it will happen. But when it does kind of catch on like a wildfire, the jewelry stores who were like we were doing this from the beginning, it's going to be like, well, where do you shop? The guys are going to talk among the guys and say, well, I need to change. I mean, chains are back on guys, gold chains, all kinds of stuff, cuban link changed and that's where the money is on gold Got some on right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there you go. So, anyway, I'm excited about that. There are a lot of other little things, but I've turned into a systems guy. So you look at the system that is created from that revenue stream and you watch men as buyers grow into a whole new realm of categories of what options they'll go from there. So men's jewelry is like their starter kit for themselves. Think about it You're in a jewelry store. You're about to buy something sapphire ring for your girlfriend, for your wife or whoever for your mom, and it's going to cost you $900, $1200. You're like I want to spend a good amount of money on this thing, whatever. And then they're like, hey, before you leave, you want to check out these chains. And they're like, yeah, and you're like, look, this one's only like $50 and this is what it means and it's magnetic jewelry. It is what could be anything. You're like you know what? Yeah, add that on. So what's? $50 or $150 on top of $900? So I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think you're right, I hope is a trend. I think that, as there's a shift from or towards sports athletes becoming very influential and especially with a lot of sports athletes that are in helmetless sports, I think, is becoming a big part of it. So, towards baseball, towards soccer, towards basketball, they are able to wear jewelry a lot of the times, especially also in football, where they are able to wear simple chains underneath, especially baseball, though I think that they've already made an impact on making Cuban links very popular, but I'm hoping that we'll see more different looks, you know, whether that's in bracelets or earrings or necklaces or something that we haven't even seen yet. I'm hoping that we'll see, kind of like you know, another age of men's jewelry, because I'll be, I'll be following on closely and see if I can scoop anything for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and speaking of sports, I'm a big data guy and a marathon runner, so I love my little Garmin watch. I wear this to sleep. It tracks my sleep. It tracks my all kinds. It gives me a sleep score HRV status. I don't even know what it stands for, but it's cool so I can't take it off. What am I? I have my beautiful Citizen Eco Drive watch that sits in my windowsill because it's solar powered, right yeah, and I just make sure it has juice all the time for that date night or whatever, and while I put it on, I'm like I'm not tracking my steps.
Speaker 1:I'm not tracking my heart rate, so it drives me crazy, right, how funny is that?
Speaker 2:But I know Apple Watches could get blinked out, but I'd like to see Garmin and other things step it up. I'd like to see maybe a jewelry designer manufacturer work in collaboration with Garmin or other wearables to make those a little bit like just step up the fashion game on it. You know what I mean? Because I mean this looks cool, but it looks like I'm about to go for a run.
Speaker 1:Something you can wear with a suit. Yeah, it's gotta be. I've seen the new. I don't know if you saw like the Apple Watch, like Maximum or whatever they call it, but it's like it's got everything imaginable it's made for like submarine divers and stuff like that. So I agree, I hope that there's another push, but I think all exciting stuff. I think that jewelry is about to have an very exciting year and I'm excited to document it and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity. Anything else, ross, before we wrap this one up, no, I think that's good.
Speaker 2:I mean, I could get into a lot of. You know, I'm the tangent king, right, but I think that's good.
Speaker 1:Awesome Guys. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers. Bye, guys. All 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. My guest this week was Ross Cochrum also made the music for this episode pretty crazy and he is the CEO and co-founder of Punchmark. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez. Previously I already mentioned music by Ross Cochrum. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcast and let your friends know about this podcast. I hope that that is the best way for people to hear for us to grow. Leave us feedback on punchmarkcom slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E and you can get in touch with me there. Thanks so much. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Bye, judgement Day.