About Retail: The Ring of the Month Club

A Minnesota jeweler with a background in manufacturing has an idea to help grow his business--a custom ring club for other retailers.

Michelle Graff michelle.graff@nationaljeweler.com

The white and yellow gold diamond ring dubbed “The Wispy Bishop” will be the first design jeweler Brian Walters rolls out for his Ring of the Month Club.

Excelsior, Minn.--Minnesota jeweler Brian Walters is looking to move his jewelry business forward by reconnecting with his past.

Before he opened a retail location, the longtime jeweler worked in manufacturing, first at a Minneapolis jewelry factory and then out on his own as a designer who worked the trade show circuit and traveled around with this bench.

Now, as retail changes around him, Walters is looking to give his business a boost by making for other jewelers the same rings that he has had success with and presenting them in a different way--one at a time, as the featured Ring of the Month.

“No, I’ve got plenty to do,” he says when asked if this decision to return to manufacturing was due to struggles on the retail end of the business.

“But,” he allows, “I’d like to grow.”

Walters got his start in the jewelry business in the same way as so many others--his family.

His father, the late Lowell Walters, was vice president of jewelry manufacturer Jewelmont Corp., and Walters joined him there, working at the company’s Minneapolis facility.

After some time, he branched out on his own, leaving Jewelmont to design his own jewelry and exhibit at trade shows such as the American Craft Show and the long-defunct annual show organized by the Minnesota Jewelers Association, which also no longer exists.

He also used to travel around to different jewelry stores to do remount events, putting his bench on wheels and packing it up in the back of a van along with various mountings.

“I made more money in the wholesale end of the business,” Walters says. “But the road life gets old after a while, and I had a family and kids and that’s when I went into design and retail.”

Walters has owned and operated a retail business in Minnesota for years but, like so many, he had to downsize his operation in the last six or seven years, shrinking from two stores and a staff of six to one store and a staff of two, including himself.

He looks at the Ring of the Month Club as a way to grow again.

Walters, who’s branded himself as “The Ring Maker,” says he has this one design that he sells at least one of per month, a two-tone diamond ring internally called “The Wispy Bishop” but which customers call the “Wild Two-Tone Wrap.”

About a month

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ago, he started thinking--what if he could sell 100 of these a month or week, instead of just one, by making them for other jewelers?

And that’s how he came up with the idea for the Ring of the Month Club.

The club will work like this.

Jewelers who pay the one-time $499 fee to become members will receive, as the name of the club indicates, a different mounting or semi-mount set with a cubic zirconia center every 30 days on memo.

About 80 percent of the rings will be bridal designs, some of which Walters will select from his portfolio of already copyrighted designs.

Jewelers will set their own diamond or other gemstone into the design (or Walters can do it for them.) He says while the mounting will be made to fit a 1-carat stone, the designs are done in CAD and therefore easily can be adjusted to fit up to a 3-carat stone.

There’s also flexibility with the metal. Although the delivered design will always be in 14- or 18-karat gold, it can be special ordered in platinum (add $1,000), or rose or green gold.

If they don’t sell the ring after a month, then they can keep it and pay Walters the wholesale price or return it, though he notes that if the program goes well, he’s hoping to be able to give jewelers more flexibility on the return dates.

“I can see it really going well, and a year from now, we’ll have enough turnover going (to be able to do that),” he says. “There will be no dogs in this line. Every design will be a good one.”

Walters said because the rings are not mass manufactured and can’t be shopped online, he says jewelers should be able to do a keystone markup.

So, for example, the first ring in the program--his bestseller, the aforementioned “Wispy Bishop”--retails for $2,900. If jewelers sell it, they keep half and then get the next ring in the program.

Walters also has worked up a display that can be used with the program that is in the shape of an artist’s palette.

While the design is still being finalized, he says he it will be about 8 inches by 6 inches, possibly white leatherette with “Ring of the Month” in gold, with spaces where jewelers can display alternate center stone choices if they want, much like a painter has various dabs of color on his or her palette.

The cost of the palette, as well as geographic exclusivity, are included in the $499 it costs to join the club.

Walters plans to support the jewelers who enroll in the program with marketing and training and already thinks that it gives jewelers’ salespeople a great opening line to use on people as they enter the store: “Have you seen our Ring of the Month?”

For more information or to join, visit RingoftheMonth.com or email moresales@ringofthemonth.com.

Michelle Graffis the editor-in-chief at National Jeweler, directing the publication’s coverage both online and in print.