In the Loupe
In the Loupe
What You Learn in Your First Year as a Jewelry Retailer ft. Cole from Ware's Jewelers // LIVE!
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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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Live From The Client Workshop
SPEAKER_01Welcome back, everybody, to In the Loop. What is up, everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop. This week we are live from the Punchmark Client Workshop in Charlotte, North Carolina. This is our fifth year hosting our annual client workshop where we bring in some of our clients from all over the US to have two days of educational seminars and work sessions with the Punchmark team and some of our partners. It was a really fun time, and part of the experience is I do two live in the loop recordings at the end of each day. So one was this one with Cole Roland from Where's Jewelers. We talk all about being a new retail jewelry store. I have one more for you. It'll be next week. And this one was with Lenny from the Edge. And uh that was a great interview as well. So be on the lookout for that next week. This episode is a really fun time because Cole is one of my uh better friends in the jewelry industry. He uh we always affectionately refer 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 being a retail jeweler. And you'll learn as you listen to the episode that he went from being a vendor and he uh slowly um took over the leadership of a uh retail jewelry store and eventually um was able to buy it outright and is now the owner of a new jewelry store. It's a really cool conversation. I want to talk a lot about uh what goes into a store purchase and uh you know the the nitty-gritty of buying a business, and I hope you'll enjoy following along as well. Cheers. We'll be back next week Tuesday with another episode. Bye.
Punchmark Sponsor Message
SPEAKER_00This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, Punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth, or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, Punchmark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical world in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmark.com slash go. And now back to the show.
How The Podcast Evolved
SPEAKER_01I know because I was on vacation, I was in in Colorado. I came back and we had already decided that we were gonna do a podcast. Uh at the time, our podcast was called The Driller Survival Kit. That was all about how you can actually use your website to make your business stay afloat when your brick and mortar is shut down. Uh that was happening to everybody um around the world, but especially our clients. And I noticed um, I would never point fingers, but I thought that there was a real resounding silence in the jewelry industry where no one was kind of speaking to what's going on and offering help. And that's where we stepped in. So we ran uh a weekly podcast series that was called Jewelry Survival Camp. One thing we learned, if you go back, you can actually find all the episodes, they're the first seven episodes. We learned it was uh kind of a bummer talking about COVID all the time. So I took it over and I made a little pivot. Now we're called In the Loop, it's but O U P, of course, and we now uh interview different people. It used to be more about e-commerce and digital marketing, it still is, but now it's a lot more about the industry. And I've really enjoyed getting a chance to speak with so many people. And uh I have a lot of these uh these series. Another one was um I do breaking down the best, which is where we talk about um these suites of products that I'm a big fan of. I have a background in user experience design, and uh things that work really well are really exciting to me. So I've talked about um the Google Suite, which is what Punchmark builds their uh our infrastructure on. Um if you're a Microsoft person, go kick rocks. I hate that. Uh we also I just did one um actually last week on uh communication systems, which is uh if you use Slack or Microsoft Teams or group chats or Discord, show of hands. Who uses a group chat for their business? Oh guys, guys. Check out Slack or Discord, we'll we'll we'll talk afterwards. But uh the coolest thing is also is 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 San Antonio, and I got a chance to speak with you. So, Cole, maybe could you just um kind of introduce yourself first as how
Meeting Cole And His Backstory
SPEAKER_01I knew you and now who you are today?
SPEAKER_02Uh so originally um I used to work for Inox Men's Jewelry, but I don't know if there's anybody here who sells Inox, but good for you. Uh still love it, still sell it in my stores today. Um I was uh rep for them for five or six years, um, and then ran into Bob and had the opportunity to move over to the retail side. Um and my wife and I bought our store in January, so we are first generation owners again.
SPEAKER_01First generation, and but where'd you where'd you run into Bob?
SPEAKER_02Uh here. Actually at the Punchmark Seminar, I believe 2000 had to be 2023. Yeah. Um we were sitting down at Fin and Vino, which is a great place. We're all gonna go to dinner there. You'll love it. Um, it's incredible. Um he sat down next to me and jokingly said, I'm I'm gonna sell my business. And I was like, haha, sell it to me. And uh he did. Uh it took it took two years um of me working in the store, but um we had my wife and I contribute a lot of our start on the retail side to this uh seminar itself because we've been doing it for I've been here at every single one, um, and I planned to attend every single one going forward. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you've seen the industry from both sides, which I don't know if there's like a ton of people that have done that. Uh only one of the remarkable ones is um my bosses uh uh started out in the jewelry industry. Uh Lenny, who is is gone. He's gone. Uh Lenny um also has experience in a jewelry store. And um I think if you look at some of the leaders in the industry, you find that there is a background in jewelry, but not always. What is being a vendor, how did that kind of contribute to your your perspective on the industry?
SPEAKER_02I think it gave me a lot of perspective on how the other side works and how they view every day for a retailer, and then it's a little bit of vice versa too. Like I get the margin side for you know your vendors and where they're trying to come from and how they're trying to contact customers consistently, but I also hear from my side now what I need from vendors, so it's very easy for me to go back and forth and have conversations with Craig and other you know vendors and Jordan and Bravani, people like that, in order to learn and get better, and that way we can provide for our customers quicker and more efficiently. It's it's nice to see both sides, um, and it makes it just easier, yeah.
SPEAKER_01You I feel like do you think that there is there uh a difference in the you know what I mean by like the tone of the sale? Because before you were selling to retailers, yeah. And it was like a little bit more jovial, like kind of like, come on, why can't you just take a risk?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now, what is the what's the difference you think?
SPEAKER_02So we you're used as a vendor used to selling to salespeople. Um so your sales pitch is a lot different. It's gotta have a lot of different technicalities to it, it's gotta have margin-based, it's gotta have some some interesting perspectives. But when you're selling to a consumer, most of the time it's just the price point and how quick they need it. Um so you're you're pitching the romance of the product more so than the technical side. As a vendor, you're really, really pitching. Like at Inox selling a men's brand, we are really focused on hyper margin for people because it's a very good margin product, but my consumers obviously don't care or need to know what the margin is. Uh so it makes it a lot easier when you're just talking to them on a personal level. It's way less business focused.
SPEAKER_01So I wanted to kind of sort of gear this one into like a lot of people are interested in in being becoming a retailer, from jumping from one side
Vendor Sales Vs Retail Sales
SPEAKER_01to the other. And I've even had people in my day-to-day life be like, Oh, I've always like wanted to open up a jewelry store. So let's take it back to the beginning. So you started having this conversation with Bob, and what was the conversation then? You bring that home and started discussing it with your wife. I'm assuming that's probably the next step.
SPEAKER_02Basically, we weren't married then, um, so thankfully she still likes me to this day, which is nice. Um so we had the conversation. Obviously, it's a huge um shift from working on the B2B side and being on the road 20 weeks out of the year to completely changing where you're living and uprooting and going from we were living in Pensacola at the time all the way to Bradenton, and then you gotta find a house, you gotta find, you know, all those things to to start your business in general, but it really came down to us having a conversation with Bob about what and how we were going to do this and how long it was going to take. Uh, it went from five years to three years to two years very quickly. So um, once you're in there, things change rapidly. You just have to be willing to have a conversation with the person that's there and really be flexible on what is necessary. And thankfully, my wife does the opposite side of what I do every day, so that helps. Uh, because I can never do her portion of the business, no shot.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, I guess uh a lot of times it's portrayed in in media that's like you go from buy 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 the process behind that? You said it uh the timeline shortened and were you like getting trained? Is that like what you what the time needed?
SPEAKER_02Or I mean essentially, um you don't really sell from a B2B B2C perspective is very hard to train the difference there, but it's mostly understanding like how to order findings and how to order a head for a ring and make sure that we're setting the diamond correctly and making sure we're who I'm buying from and where we're buying from and when we buy and the different individual quarters that work out, so it makes it very difficult to you know have that conversation a lot of the time. I don't know, it just it just makes things a lot easier when you're able to work together with the person you're running the business with. You have to really understand what kind of transition it is, if it's a retirement sale or if it's going out of business sale or if it's a you're gonna work for him for 10 years and then eventually buy the business. Like you really have to have that hammered out up front because if you don't, uh things can get blurry,
The Two-Year Path To Ownership
SPEAKER_02you know. So you have to have an idea of what you want to do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I guess to put the question to the crowd, um, show of hands, who has their significant other involved in the business? If you're a store owner, only only one. So I wanted to kind of ask about that. I know I didn't put this on the script, but I hope you might jump off this one. What's it like working with your with your spouse?
SPEAKER_02Uh I couldn't do it without her. Um I think most people in the room know Michaela. I think she's incredible at what she does. She's not the talking person in a relationship. That falls to me, unfortunately. Uh, but she does all the admin on the backside, so it's all admin professional, all accounting, all receiving, all invoicing, like this stuff that makes me just sick to my stomach. She does that every single day. Um, I do the sales and the marketing, so it makes things a lot easier. Now keep in mind if I sell something at a lower margin, she's like, Why did you sell it at a lower margin? Um, but I'm like, you weren't out there, you don't know. You don't understand. So, you know, we have our we have our give and takes there, but we've always worked together. Um we worked together at INOX. So um she's been telling me what to do for seven or eight years now. So I'll just keep listening. She's pretty smart.
SPEAKER_01Nice. So did you have like a moment, was there like a real like pivot point where you got to like look at the books? I don't know where that part of the relationship is in a business buy.
SPEAKER_02So yes and no. Um the transition is a little bit different when it's a going out of business sale because the corporation completely dissolves. So I don't need to know what their business was doing. Like I knew obviously the sales numbers and what we were buying and what the profit looked like and things like that, but the internal like gist of the numbers, I guess, for lack of a better term, is not something that we really discussed most of the time because once it was a going out of business sale, it truly didn't matter.
SPEAKER_01When you like so you say like they they dissolve the the corporation, uh technical question, like does that mean like your JBT rating like kind of just like resets? Oh, yeah, it's gone. Everything just resets. Gone. What about your like standings with like um vendors?
SPEAKER_02So that is a that's a different question entirely coming from the vendor side. I had a lot of really good relationships, Jordan, Craig, people that I worked with before, um, and they knew me as a vendor, understood the person I was as or was hopefully going to be as a retailer. Yeah, so we had connections there. Um when you do a going out of business sale, you have absolutely no product. So we opened January 14th with uh two cases full of jewelry, uh, which is not a lot of jewelry. So we we had memo people uh send us in a bunch of different product from being a you know partners with them and and friends with them in the past. And thankfully Steven allowed us to stay within IJO because the store had been in IGO forever and it's a 55-year-old business. So without IJO's help, I really doubt I'd be here. To be honest, it was just wouldn't be that way. So because it's impossible for me to go any vendor and get any kind of information or them sell me anything with no JPT rating, like in my own credit score. Like that's not gonna it's not gonna work out. So um yeah, I mean IJO is a big portion of why we were able to do that.
SPEAKER_01Because I mean, Craig alluded to it in his presentation.
Running The Store With A Spouse
SPEAKER_01Um the biggest trend I'm starting to see across the industry when it comes to buying is it's fewer relationships but deeper relationships increasingly. Um I actually just had a conversation with uh with Stephen Barnes when we did our yearly checkup, uh, and he was talking about like one of the symptoms of uh of a business um not doing as well is they have like a hundred vendors that they have a line with and they're only selling, you know, they I think the statistic is you do 80% of your business with 20% of your vendors and then the remaining amount in reverse. Um did you have to kind of strategically pick and choose your partnerships and like which vendors you're going to work with in that front and kind of build your business in one solid kind of uh sweep almost? That's a super good question.
SPEAKER_02Um Yeah, I mean we definitely had an idea of who we wanted to work with um and who we had the store had already worked with in the past. Oh, okay. And uh going to shows coming from the vendor side, I knew a lot of people obviously at the shows. So when we were probably a lot of pressure, too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, a little bit. There's a little bit there.
SPEAKER_02Uh that when the transition was happening, um, we were having conversations of like, look, like when the going out of business sale happens, I'm going to need X number of product at terms or whatever is necessary. So we we worked with vendors that were willing to work with us, um, which was really nice. Um, and it made things a lot easier to have that conversation. Like if I was friends with somebody for 10 years and they were just like, no, we can't do memo, then that's just how it is. And that's okay. That's some and did the memo part of the business is very, very difficult because coming from 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 can up to a certain point. You just don't want to take advantage of those vendors long term. So with most of them, we've worked out a 30, 60, 90 day payment program or whatever it is specifically in order to get us started, because I can't upfront do that with the with the cost of starting a business. So a lot of it we had a plan,
Going-Out-Of-Business Sale Reality
SPEAKER_02but we kept working with a lot of our vendors that were already doing well in the store.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I mean, so you said that where is this kind of like legacy business? 55 years, that's pretty established. Yeah. Like, I don't know how many businesses 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 you guys were like the bridal destination. Is there uh did you have to decide uh with your uh your wife if you wanted to continue that way? Because very easily you could have like changed course and just been something else, you know, been more fashion jewelry, have been more um, you know, everyday kind of approachable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think I think you have to stick with what works. Our store's always been known as a repair shop for a very long time. Uh Bob, our previous owner, is a master jewelry, he's been on the bench since he was 17, 18 years old. Um can, you know, one of those guys who can size a ring in five minutes type of person. So the store's been focused on that for a very, very long time. Um I was brought in primarily to change and shift that. Oh um and kind of get us out of like, oh, it's a rep it's a repair shop, like I'll get my watch battery changed. And I know all retailers love watch batteries, but um, so yeah, no, it's it's it's the best. Um but no, we we we really focused on the repair portion to get us started, and that's kind of what's been keeping us going for now. We do a lot of custom. Um shout out to to Craig over there who's paying a ton of attention. We do we do a lot of custom through Ospie um and we work with him primarily on that kind of stuff. So we focus on the repair and the custom and we're slowly transitioning into doing a little bit more sales, but it really is hard to do that after going out of business sale because the greater number of your population bought a ton of jewelry over the Christmas season, they're not gonna come in and buy more jewelry in February. Yeah. So it takes a little while to get to that point, but that's the that's the process.
SPEAKER_01What about like is there anything that you wanted to add on? Like, did you want to become well yeah, we're gonna be repairs, we're gonna do some custom, but we also want to be known as like the place with like like great diamonds or something like that. Is there anything that you wanted to add on to your business to like make it your own sort of thing?
SPEAKER_02I 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's familiar with Bradenton, but it's not necessarily the youngest population of place. So it's hard to kind of shift that and we with us only owning it to technically for three or four months, that we've really just kind of hyper focused on what we do well um and then we're gonna build off of that hopefully going forward. But we didn't really make any drastic changes immediately, you know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's uh it's such an an interesting thing because like on the one hand you really want to like put your stamp on it. You know, I guess uh do you when you when you take over I mean you said that some of it dissolves, do you also include the employees? I don't do you buy the employees in the purchase of the sale, you know?
SPEAKER_02Um well we're a very, very small shop. Uh there's only four of us, technically. Um, obviously my wife and I, and then our sales associate, and then we have um Bob is the bench jeweler, but um our sales associate just stayed on staff. Um we just paid him through the transition um because the store never technically closed for more than two weeks. Um so um that's what's weird about it going out of business sale. It's going out of business, but it's not, so then you gotta explain it to everybody, so that's kind of a little bit of a problem. But yeah, we just paid him with startup capital to start, and he just stayed with us onto uh the new store.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, did was there anything like surprising that you get with the purchase of a business? Like uh you get in the you get in the location, yeah, you get in the sign. Are you getting like the you get the vaults?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean we get ever we get everything you want, essentially. Um like we got the cases, we got um we paid for we paid for all of these things, we didn't just get them, unfortunately. But um you so we didn't buy merchandise, we purchased hard assets. So by that I mean the lasers, the benches, all the tools in the back, um, all the watch repair stuff, everything, the the steamer, the polisher, all those things we bought. Um and then the merchandise, obviously there was none left. Um and that was all Bob's, so it was either scrapped or he kept it and did what he wanted to do with it because it was already paid for. Um but yeah, that's what you buy that and uh headaches. You've had a lot of headaches.
SPEAKER_01But other than that, it's it's uh yeah, it's good. This isn't what happened for you, but it's pretty interesting. I do all the exit interviews for Punchmark when uh when a client's either going out of business or moving on. And one of the the craziest ones, a guy um was closing up shop and he was not selling the business as a jewelry store, he was selling the business um it was going to turn into something else. I don't know, like a dry cleaner. And one of the things he included in the sale is he wanted the carpet, and he sold the store, um, but he said that the carpet was not included. He took the carpet, he uh whatever, what did he do with it? He refined it. He refined it, probably got the gold out of it, yeah. He got so much gold out of it. And they didn't even they didn't uh question. Apparently there's so many, so much gold flake in it, because it was like a 70-year-old store. It's an insane amount. Yeah, and it was the same carpet. Yeah, and apparently he um and I I was doing the interview over Zoom with him, and uh he held up uh a jar and it was like it was like a full jar of gold flake, you know, from just a carpet. Pretty crazy. But um, okay, so you guys had a close-out sale. Um did you like learn anything about what got sold during the closeout sale? Was there like anything like, wow, this was still hanging around? I thought for sure this would have sold earlier.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so that was part of the issue with the going out of not the issue, but part of the reason why going out of business sale made sense for Bob was he um had a lot of product that a lot of jewelers have. A problem with they keep it forever. 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 time they'll never change the gold pricing. It's just been the same piece for 10-15 years. So there was a lot of stuff in there that was still uh there from when I was there and then before I was there that just didn't sell. So either it was just not it was not priced right or it was just not uh a pretty enough piece, I guess. But Wilkerson helped us with the transition and they bring in supplemental product too. So the the case is just, I mean, jam-packed with jewelry. And a lot of the time we're we're not gonna say, well, that's not our piece, that's Wilkerson's piece. So like you kind of just have the conversation
Vendors Memo Terms And IJO Support
SPEAKER_02with customers, and the hour pieces are marked down less than the Wilkerson piece would be. Oh yeah. So you you end up selling more Wilkerson at some point in time, depending on where your store is. Yeah. But you don't really get a a good gauge of what works and what doesn't, because when you do a going out of business sale, depending on the volume of your store, you do uh I mean a ridiculous amount of money in like the six-week period, like to the point where we see fifty or sixty people a day every day for six weeks. And it was during Christmas, so it was even doubled. So it's just you don't really know what's happening. Bring in supplemental product? You don't have to, but you can. Oh yeah. It just it just gives customers more options. That's so interesting.
SPEAKER_01I would love to like speak with them. That that sounds really fascinating, that whole strategy behind it, because at the same time, it's like jewelry stores. I mean, it's a real it's a real trend. Is you know, there are fewer jewelry stores opening than there are uh going out of business. No doubt. They're all consolidating. But uh the fact that they have a business behind that, is it merchandise that was from a different store? Not to get too much. I have absolutely no idea.
SPEAKER_02Um that portion was completely handled with Bob and Wilkerson because it was his business. So I was just there to sell it. Essentially, I didn't really know what they were bringing in, why they were bringing in, or how. Um it just showed up.
SPEAKER_01So just to compare, like, so now you're this vendor that has switched into becoming a retailer. It's a really interesting storyline. Is there anything that you would like that you've learned in like uh the short period of being, you know, being a guy now? You're four almost almost four months into into being a store owner. What have you learned so far?
SPEAKER_02I 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 interviews we did, I think it's the accountability of owning a business, is now it's like it's completely and a hundred percent your problem. You're the top guy. Yeah, and like at INOX, I could always 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, every product we sell, every watch battery we change, if the watch doesn't work, it's all of a sudden it's my fault and not the fact that it's 58 years old. So you really,
Choosing A Focus Repairs And Custom
SPEAKER_02really, really gotta understand the accountability you take the first day. Because as soon as you cut the ribbon, do whatever you're doing, and your name's on the the checks, as you say, it's it's it's your problem. So that's probably the biggest thing that I've had to and not that I didn't know that was gonna happen, it's just like it's so it's overwhelming at first when you first deal with it, but the the longer you do it, it's it's not so bad.
SPEAKER_01Did the skills transfer though? So we talked about like the different types of like selling process. Um like the I'm sure that the soft skills transfer, but like the jewelry knowledge, um Craig just gave a uh talk about um you know the best salespeople and the best people in jewelry don't always come from jewelry. Um do you feel like you brought in some like a like a leg up on the competition sort of thing?
SPEAKER_02Yes and no. Like I started um in the industry at Jared. I know I don't want to hear it, I'm sorry. Um didn't last didn't I didn't last 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 and I 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 Inox, who does none of that. Um it's just all well they do the lab ground diamonds and things like that now, but there wasn't a ton of like individual grading of diamonds. There wasn't a whole lot of like you need to order this head for this particular ring, and there's a peg head, and there's this and there's that. So that was what I had to learn very quickly. And thankfully, Bob being a bench guy for a very long time, was was very good at teaching us those skills. But a lot of it you just have to, it's just a repetitive every single day portion that you you have to learn very quickly. So I don't know if I translated it as much on the technical side, as much as like talking to customers is talking to customers, no matter who it is, you just have to adapt your pitch to who's in front of you as opposed to it being a salesperson or uh normal consumer.
SPEAKER_01Man, and uh at the same time, it's like you came in, so you have like you have that moment first day, you sit down. Were there any priorities for you? Like, no, now that I'm this guy, we're gonna wear florals on Fridays. Was there anything like that that you wanted to kind of push into?
SPEAKER_02Uh not necessarily. I just think the biggest thing for for Michaela and I was to make sure our culture was was what we wanted it to be every day. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Was that a cog like cognizant decision?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that was something we talked about a lot, um, because we want it to be an open environment, not necessarily for our employees, but like for the customers that come into. Like we want the culture to be fun and be inviting and like not so like, oh my god, I'm going to a jewelry store, they're gonna do this, they're gonna do that. Like we don't, like I dress in what I'm dressed in now. I don't wear anything over the top. I just think it was of establishing a culture that we both wanted to be a part of and we could live in every single day. That was the biggest thing we tried to do immediately.
SPEAKER_01Man, it's it's that's a really uh something I've never had to um like think about, really, is I've always come into predetermined cultures. Um with Punchmark, it's adapted and shifted throughout the years as you add more people. Yeah, it's kind of like a like a big stew. You know, as you add in more flavors, it really does kind of shift and adapt. But to start from from scratch, um, I can only find that to be, I'd find that very daunting.
SPEAKER_02But I mean, it definitely was. Um I mean, Bob
What You Actually Buy In A Sale
SPEAKER_02had an established culture there. It was just he's he's been a jeweler for for 50 plus years, so his way is the way that's going to happen. Um so you have to be flexible to that. But there was some things that we immediately wanted to change that like uh this is this is funny. We used to listen to 60s and 70s music in the store every single day. I mean, I can I can tell you every lyric, every lyric of every song of that. It's not that at all. It's it's we've we changed the playlist completely, which is nice because now I don't hear the same 15 songs every day. But that was like the culture that was there, so we knew that we had to change that if we because like just to put a small imprint immediately, something that was like effective that we could do quickly.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think like clothes and like yeah, the sounds, and I I know that some places even do like uh sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we did we do that too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 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 was like the moment when you like kind of sat down and you're like, 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 your store instead of Bob's?
SPEAKER_02I 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 never worked in the store, but I was there for two years and like our customers knew it was happening, Bob knew it was happening, Michaela, Aiden, everybody knew it was happening. So it wasn't like it was like a big shock to me that it happened, it was more so like when the lawyer was like, All right, it's you now have this attached to your name. It was kind of like okay, like we're here now. Um and that happened well before the open date because we had a bunch of things to change. So I think it happened like the 27th or 28th of December was effectively the date that it became our problem. Yeah. Um, but we didn't open until I think the 15th or 16th of January. So we had to do a lot of renovations in the source uh to get it going.
SPEAKER_01Man. Well, it's been it's super exp inspiring because I know that uh I I find the story of of next generation jewelers to be like very inspiring right now. It's it's something about the fact that it's not an easy business to get into. Um it's like, you know, like I said, more stores closed than open these days. And when you hear the story of someone starting, I find it to be like very much like um like a bright light off in the distance where it's like, oh, someone is actually endeavoring upon this. And it's not because they've been around for a hundred years already. Uh at the same time, like I'm sure that brings on a a whole nother set of responsibilities and and um like you know yeah, yeah, responsibilities, as opposed to now you come in and and though you dissolved like the yeah, the LLC, it is um, you know, has some history, but it's now it's your your kind of uh story you're writing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and it's it's it's interesting because it's where's has been there forever to the point now where people I think they would they didn't even realize it going at a business sale happened, like they just showed up and they were like, Where's Bob and Cheryl? And we're like, oh well, they still work here part-time, and like still work here, what do you mean? And I was like, Well, my my wife and I bought the business, and they were like, What do you mean you bought the business? So it's very interesting that some people like will always be Bob and Cheryl's customers forever, no matter what, and I 100% respect that, and I hope that that happens to us at one point in time. But you kind of have to have you kind of gotta walk the fine line of like that customer expected this type of service.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02So you have to give that type of service no matter what, or you run the risk of losing. And sometimes it's okay to fire a 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 your business to a point where like if they have friends that have been in the store and they've been their mom's mom bought from Bob, like they've said that to me. Like, I'm you're I'm the fourth
Accountability Culture And First Lessons
SPEAKER_02generation in my family to buy from this store, and you're like, that's insane. That's wild. Uh that could that that that could happen. So like those customers are gonna get deferential treatment no matter what, like they're going to get something different, but you can't make that a reality for all your customer base, and that's where you gotta walk a line that's a little bit tough to do sometimes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I never even would have thought that you do have to kind of reach into the old bag of tricks for like certain clients customers. So if someone's like listening to this and you know, maybe they're interested in approaching a store, maybe they're you know, working from um inside of a store and they want to be the the next in line. Do you have any advice to them about about how to go about it and to position themselves properly?
SPEAKER_02Uh I think learn as much as you can. Um I never I mean, I always wanted to to to buy a business and and run one or start my own or whatever um situation would have arose. But I think a lot of time it's just being in the rooms with people who are willing to teach you um and are willing to have serious conversations with you and like not just tell you everything's gonna be okay, you know. Um and I think you gotta really align with either a business partner or someone who's willing to do everything you're willing to do to do it, because it's not, I mean, as everybody in here knows, it's not easy owning or operating or even managing a business in general. So you kind of have to you really gotta work exceptionally hard to get to that point. And like don't don't be don't be shy about working that hard. Like it's okay to work hard, and I think a lot of people think it's kind of out of fashion or whatever, but um, don't know, just work hard and be in the rooms with people that you can learn stuff from.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. Well, Cole, thanks so much for uh for joining me. I really appreciate it. And thanks everybody for uh being here as well. I really appreciate it. Uh that's gonna be the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back Tuesday with another episode, and uh cheers. Thanks. Thanks, Mike. I appreciate the benefits. Thanks so much, guys. All right, everybody. That's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. My guest this week was Cole Rowland from Where's Jewelers? And thank you very much for joining. And we were live at the Punchmark Client
Advice For Future Store Owners
SPEAKER_01Workshop in Charlotte, North Carolina. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, Michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cocker. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and leave us feedback on punchmark.com slash. That's L-O-U-P-E. Thanks, and be back next week Tuesday with another episode. Cheers. Bye.
