UX Opportunities in the Jewelry Industry

Two weeks ago I had an opportunity to go out to JCK, a leading trade show in the jewelry industry which takes place in Las Vegas. It was a fascinating experience to see everything on display and the industry mentality. I will say, I have a whole new appreciation for jewelry both as crafted objects and as an industry. Technology has played such a central role in this industry as a mechanism and tool for jewelry making along with sorting, categorizing, and analyzing each minuscule detail. So one could expect that jewelers and jewelry makers have been pimped the latest and greatest technology solutions from the early days of the industry. As expected, when it came to seeing the machines and technology companies at JCK, it was definitely an experience. I observed on the JCK app, a tool created for way finding and tracking a schedule of events for the trade show, that there were roughly 33 companies associated with 3D printing at the show. With that said, there were limited technology solutions created to enhance the user experience with the customers jewelry experience. However, I did observe some interesting trends and companies providing some fascinating solutions to the user experience.

Here are some interesting themes I found on the UX side for customers:

1. Customized Engagement Rings — Before ever going out to JCK I had already seen many jewelry websites such as Blue Nile, James Allen, and all sorts of other sites, that offer the option to customize an engagement ring. When I was at JCK, it became really clear that this is a feature copied all across the industry. As a matter of fact, a representative for JewelCloud, boasted about how he designed a similar engagement ring tool to rival Blue Nile and offered it as a tool other online jewelers can use to compete. This has been replicated all over the industry and many companies have their own version of this possibility. The options for customized jewelry are no longer limited to the engagement ring, but include other possibilities like gemstone pendants and wedding bands.
2. In-store CAD Software to Design Your Own Jewelry— The most standout example of this on display from a fine jewelry manufacturer in Lafayette, Louisiana called Stuller. The software solution is called CounterSketch which offers a library of over 1,100 customizable styles of jewelry. The tool is really easy to use with little assistance and with the help of a sales rep, customers can, on the spot, design their own jewelry! The software works in the form of 3D CAD templates of jewelry that customers can play around with to design a unique piece for themselves. They can export the files to a 3D printer and try on a replica of their desired design before committing to finalize the purchase.
3. Jewelry Kiosk by Leslie McGwire — One of the more fun experiences I found was a sensor system rigged to a collection of engagement rings and a display screen. As soon as a customer picks up a ring to try on, the screen displays an enlarged image of the ring, it’s price, description, and all the important specs one would like to see when making a purchase decision. It also notifies a sales rep of the piece the customer just picked up so they can have some valuable information before engaging in the sale. And as one would expect, you can take a selfie wearing the ring and share it with friends.
4. Imaging Solutions— This one is expected. Jewelry, by it’s very nature, is beautiful and it’s the beauty of the design, the stones, and the metals that have people desire it. This makes photography, videography, and any visual representation of jewelry absolutely critical. People would not like to chance a piece not looking exactly the way they want it if they are going to pay thousands of dollars for a product. Additionally, the exquisite quality of a beautiful precious diamond is a subtle thing, with layers of sculpted light refractions reflecting different colors and brilliance. The difference in price of the same size stone can be thousands of dollars a part, so this truly matters. Vision 360 is one of the leaders in the industry around this offering both the software system and scanning tool create 360 degree view of diamonds and other jewelry pieces. Another interesting low budge solution was called Gem Cam and it allows a business to use their cell phone to record videos of rotating jewelry in relatively high quality. It may not capture the intricacy of details as Vision 360 may do, but nonetheless the beauty of a jewel is certainly apparent. In addition to 360 views, there was a holographic solution also on display from a company called Holojem. The solution sought to go beyond a holographic projection, but a fuller experience with their software offering educational uses for shoppers as well as customization. Beyond just a hologram projection you see in the store, they also text you a video and provide little plastic prisms that you can place on your cell phone to see the projection and share with friends.

There were certainly other interesting things happening on the customer front, but these are the ones that really stood out the most to me. Below are some intriguing solutions I found for UX on the business end:

1. Fraud Protection — As a jeweler one of the big concerns you must deal with is fraud. Jewelry is an asset with easy liquidity and therefore many thieves look to use stolen credit cards, bank accounts and purchase high amounts of jewelry. This is a pain to deal with as a jeweler and therefore there is a critical balance to strike inside of excellent customer service and fraud protection. I spoke with a few jewelers that are actually backing away from e-commerce simply because they don’t think it’s worth dealing with the number of fraudulent transactions they ended up facing. An intriguing solution I came across at trade show was 1Step Technologies. They provide a Point-of-Sales solution and emphasize staff training as part of the package. Solutions include shipping directly to a nearby FedEx facility for high ticket purchases and other sorts of resolutions to even further reduce fraud risks.
2. Inventory Management— Numerous jewelry manufacturers and wholesalers provided database access to retailers for both online and in store retailing. This certainly isn’t a new thing that’s happening, but it was eye opening for me to see the digital exchange of inventory data and the convenience it offers retailers. There were numerous software solutions in the world of inventory management, POS systems, and even ERPs that tapped into databases for many of these jewelry wholesalers and manufactures allowing easy access to hundreds of thousands of products for any jeweler. Gemfind is an interesting technology company that specifically offers tech solutions to the jewelry industry. Their Jewel Cloud app was a very intriguing solution connecting retailers to vendors and a manufacturers and offering further inventory and data management solutions through a cloud-based system. It was one of the few cloud based systems out there, most of the software solutions were built on Windows, which is somewhat expected when it comes to enterprise software solutions.
3. Sales Oriented Solutions— There was an overwhelming presence of solutions geared to making sales. Coming from a customer experience oriented mentality, this was a shift in thinking about technology. Most of the vendors I spoke with shared examples of how their solutions would help a sales person close more sales. To some extent, that is expected, but there is a clear culture in the jewelry industry which is sales first. One vendor boastfully spoke about his engagement ring display that was designed to make men buy engagement rings. He spoke about using a jet black color for the backdrop to intrigue men, the rotating lights to keep the diamonds glimmering and shining. There were no reservations to the fact he designed a display purely to dazzle and exploit a sale.
4. 3D Printing —It makes a lot of sense that 3D printing was prevalent at JCK since it only makes sense that many jewelry makers have or will be adopting 3D printing for some part of there process. The interest was mainly towards jewelry making, customizations, or modifications. The 3D printer offers the ability to produce an inexpensive replica of a design change to customers so they can see before buying. Another use case that was shared with me was creating custom jewelry in resin that could be taken to a jeweler to have made. There is definitely more to explore with 3D printing and the customer experience, especially since it gives people a great sense of fit and design before finalizing a purchase.

While the overall User Experience solutions may not have been overly impressive, what was clear, is that this is an industry with some of the best sales people around and the technology evolution in jewelry is geared towards sufficing an in-store sales driven culture. Customer service and the craft of jewelry making are certainly themes that showed up, but there was a louder presence and context of a sales and a persuasion driven culture. Many solutions that interfaced directly with a customer were essentially sales tools that assisted the customer in getting closer to buy. While the a sale is the ultimate outcome of both great UX driven and a sales driven culture, the mentalities are a world a part.

What was fascinating to see was how many people would flock to the social media marketing talks. Throughout the whole day there was an area in which different people were scheduled to speak throughout the day, and anything related to social media received a flood of attendees filling seats, standing around, and even sitting on the floor, while most of the other talks always had empty seats. The social media talks were all about establishing meaningful connections with customers and you can hear in the audience, different reactions as traditional jewelers began to grapple with how to run their businesses in the future of the industry.

Traditionally, jewelry has been sold as not only a thing of beauty, but also as an investment, yet the rising millennial market is less interested in investment and more interested in experience. Overall jewelry sales have been flat as noted in a report provided by the GIA, the Gemstone Institute of America and that was shared across the board. Yet, online sales for jewelry doubled from 2015 to 2016. This is exciting news for the tech industry! The online jewelry market is just opening up and still up for grabs.

Ultimately, the winner in the rat race will be the jeweler best connected with the customers needs and bringing a completely different lens from which to view the industry as a whole. Is jewelry in the investment business? The wedding business? The art business? The future will belong to those who ultimately own the end to end experience. Additionally, they will do at least one, if not all of the following things better than anyone:

1. Visualization — With the onset of visual technologies such as VR cameras and environments, 3D Scanning, Machine Learning Algorithms and AR experiences amongst many more exciting mediums we will see one of the biggest challenges that digital shops face with online retail and that is giving someone the true look, feel, and fit of a product. The standards here will increase at a rapid pace as will affordability and access to techniques and technologies companies can utilize to connect with their customers.
2. End-to-end Customization — Imagine working directly with a designer to get the best possible design for you. Currently, there are many widgets as I spoke about earlier to custom build different pieces of jewelry, but in reality those solutions are about as custom as choosing a flavor of ice cream at Baskin Robbins. WeddingWire shared how most women don’t know that the customized engagement ring bought for them is customized. What’s possible is a future where manufacturer, designer, and customer collaborate on a platform and truly get something so unique and well-designed with less effort than going over to your local jeweler and making a purchase. Between the advances in 3D printing, CAD software, and AI technologies, a new type of collaborative process is becoming possible.
3. Connected Online and Offline Experience — This is a trend beyond jewelry that goes for businesses across the board for all retail. Urban populations are growing and will continue to grow. People will always want to go to shops to make purchases, but also to window shop. The concept of place continues to transcend physical and digital boundaries and having a consistent yet medium-specific approach will be critical. Customers expect the conveniences that online retail provides like not having to wait in lines and quick and easy checkouts to translate to physical stores just as much as they expect the personableness of a sales person to be replicated on a website. The web opens up access to a new level of information and knowledge about their purchases like status of repairs to manufacturing details that all become part of the experience beyond the jewel itself. The delight and joy of this overall experience is just as important as the beauty of the craftsmanship.
4. Search and Machine Learning — Retailers no longer have to house copious amounts of jewellery. They can now directly tap into a wholesalers database, post the product on their website, and have it shipped directly from the manufacturer or wholesaler. Additionally, we have advanced so far in search capabilities and with the growing effectiveness of machine learning technologies, finding exactly what we want no longer has to be an endless search and the perfect item can be a click away. A large inventory doesn’t have to be more challenging to sift through than a small inventory and with no need to deal with the stress of stocking tens of thousands of products, not to mention the constant fear of being robbed, it is inevitable that smart search becomes one of the biggest game changers to jewellery retail.