Maria Lloyd (00:00.12)
Hello everyone, I'm Maria, host of the My Local Marketer podcast. This week's interview is with Adam Jacobs, owner of Jacobs the Jewelers, a familiar site on Jackson's Corner in Reading Centre. Jacobs has been in business for over 75 years, which is an amazing achievement. Find out what they're doing behind the scenes to keep everything going. Just a note that we recorded this in the store and so on a couple of occasions, you hear the beep to signal the front door being opened. Now, without further ado, grab your notepad and let's jump in.

Hello Adam, thank you so much for coming on the My Local Marketer podcast. How are you today? I'm very well, thank you. Thank you for having me. Well, I should say thank you for having me because we are here today in Jacob's Jewelers. Could you please just give our listeners a bit of a brief introduction to yourself and Jacob's? Sure, absolutely. So my name is Adam Jacobs. I look after Jacob's Jewelers in the town centre. We're an independent jewelers, family-owned, family-run and we are just a shade over 75 years old.

I'm the third generation of the family to be looking after the business. We are, I would describe us as a upper middle quality kind of jewelers. We specialize in what a lot of people call fine jewelry. So the better side of things. We've got a workshop on site. So we do repairs, we do bespoke commissions. We've got an onsite designer and we kind of take care of all the kinds of services that you need around owning and looking after jewelry over your entire life. You've been in the family business all your life, I imagine.

What do you like about jewellery? Interestingly, my whole career hasn't been in the jewellery industry. So I've been working now for 25, 30 years of which the first quarter was spent in other industries. So I spent some time with Marks and Spencer at their head office on their graduate training scheme. And then I spent a few years working in a marketing agency.

So my journey to sort of become part of the jewellery industry now is not a traditional one. And you're quite right in saying that lots and lots of people come at it through the family connection, but also, you know, having always worked in it. And that's not the case with me. I first sort of kind of got collared to join the business because the place I was working at historically was great, but my parents had started talking about what they're going to do when they're retiring. And with the skills that I had from being in

Maria Lloyd (02:20.074)
not the jewelry industry, it kind of felt like it'd a good challenge for me and a good fit in terms of the retail experience I'd had, the running a business experience that I had and bringing a different set of skills and a different perspective to the shop here in Reading was something that me and my parents felt would be beneficial to sort of all parties. Since joining, mean, interestingly, and I think one of the things to sort of be really clear about is the jewelry itself is part of the business.

really the key bit of the business and I do a bit of everything, but the key bit of the business is the customers. And when we get the perspective right for customers, we get the product right, we get the environment right, we work with good partners, we make some of our due ourselves, but we also buy a lot of things and then hand pick the range that's here. When you put all those kinds of things together, that's what makes the business. It's no one part of it that's the sort of panacea and the centre bit of it. It's actually being able to look at everything all together and how it all hangs together to

theoretically and touch wood keep us going for maybe another couple of decades. I love the fact that you were in other industries before you came to the jewelry industry. It feels like that was intentional. You went out to gain all these different experiences in order to improve the shop once you had it. Was that never the case then that you were ultimately going to have the shop? It was absolutely, totally, 100 % unplanned. There was never a master plan. There's never been a master plan with anything that I've done. I've been lucky enough

and luck plays a part of it. I've had some good opportunities come my way. By and large, like to do things that are interesting, that are challenging, that I feel I can add something to and kind of reflecting back on the last 25, 30 years, all the interesting opportunities and all the things that I've done, which retrospectively, yeah, sure, you could say, look, there's a very clear plan and a direction there. And that looks like someone who's methodically planned it for 20, 30 years. In reality, it's all been a bit ad hoc.

But by saying yes to opportunities, by doing interesting things and doing things where I can add value, where I can add something different, where it's not something I've done before, actually they've all kind of stitched together and more doors have opened as a result of that. And it's a bit like kind of going through a house where you go through one door into a room and then you're in there and you see another door on the other side or a of other doors and all of them lead to another room to another room. But actually when you look back, you've gone through the whole house and you've kind of, there seems to be a method in the madness there. So.

Maria Lloyd (04:45.166)
bit of luck. I'm not saying I haven't worked hard because I have. I've had good people around me to help me on the journey. had a great experience along the way and here we are. I think that's a very important lesson for everyone. It's about just opportunity after opportunity and finding things that actually feel natural for you. So even if you have you set out with one idea, be flexible. It's probably going to change as you go along. So you found that Reading's actually really worked for you then? Yes, I've worked here and the business has been here in Reading for

Well, for me being here 22, 23 years now, it has changed a lot in the time. Lots and lots of building work, lots and lots of development. I think all high streets, all town centres are going through a bit of a moment where they're trying to figure out what they're there for and what they can add to their areas. I think it's tough because there's a lot of challenges for businesses or retail businesses and hospitality businesses, anyone that's in a town centre that's sort of customer facing because there's a lot of challenges within that.

By and large, we've kind of weathered all those and stitched all together. But Reading has been an interesting place to work. Always participated in the community here in terms of the Business Improvement District. So I was a committee member on that, then became chair of it. That gave me a good perspective of what kind of goes on and how everything hangs together. And from that, also went to work with what was Reading UK CIC and then

When I became chair, we then moved that to become Reading Economy and Destination Agency. It's always been very, very ingrained in the business community in the town centre because number one, like I said, it's interesting and it gives me bit of a more perspective and lets me sort of meet people, which is super important in my line of business. But also it's really important that we kind of participate in the community and work with the community because being very to the point about it, Reading and the Reading area has put food on the table.

for not just my family, but all my team's families for 75 years. I you said a couple of really interesting points there. One, mean, obviously, High Street's will go into challenges later of the High Street, but for Jacob's Jewelers, what would you say sets your jewelry apart from all the others? I know there are quite a few jewelry shops, say, in Reading. So what sets you apart? How do you stand out against those challenges? A customer-facing business has lots of different points to it. The product is one part of it, the team, the service they receive.

Maria Lloyd (07:08.652)
website, even things like the hold music on our phone. There's so many different parts of the business that are both tangible and intangible and actually stitching those all together. That's the thing. I feel it's very much like a cake, right? If you said, right, tell me why your chocolate in your cake is the best chocolate. Well, actually, the chocolate is part of the cake. When you put it all together, the end product, the cake is the thing that's really impressive. And that's what we do here. so from having

great jewelry, which is what your question started with, which me and the team here handpick and go through and check, make sure it's good enough and up to standard through to teaching the staff, training the staff. They're extremely qualified. We've got national trade association, accreditations that all the team have to go through. We do frequent kind of refreshes on training and how we look after our customers from the amount of time and effort and results we put into the website.

making sure that's all up to scratch, email marketing, all the different touch points that we have with customers genuinely are considered. Now you mentioned there your website. One of the things I really love about your website that I've not seen on other jewelry sites is the academy section, Jags of Academy. There is so much information in there. So I think it's a brilliant resource. What have you found have been the most popular parts of it say?

I don't think a big surprise when if you said to a lot of people, know what kind of stuff interests you about jewelry. Usually the question that comes to mind is what's it worth? What's my jewelry worth? So what we find is that the articles on our academy section around how do you consider valuing jewelry and that's an interesting question in and of itself. Those are the ones that get the most traffic and we get tons and tons of questions all the time about how do you value

jewelry to which the answer is and there's an old-fashioned answer which is are you buying or selling because things have multiple values and they exist in lots of different states and actually trying to learn from people what value you're after. You're looking to sell something because that's not the same as what you'd pay for something in the window somewhere. Those are the kind of questions that people like to sort of ask. I love that you've mentioned value there because one of the things that really attracts me and my friend as well who loves jewelry by the way, name's Jill.

Maria Lloyd (09:29.63)
is the stories behind Jory. So you could probably look at my engagement ring and tell me, yeah, that's worth X. But the stories and the history that I have with this engagement ring are so much more meaningful than a figure. So do you have any stories associated that you can share? Obviously, no names mentioned. I think you're absolutely right. And, you know, when people talk about value and it's not an uncommon question, I ask, is it worth preparing this? So I hear this a lot. And the answer

is quite often around the kind of response of, look, this is how much it's going to economically, financially cost you to repair it. If you were to spend that money on buying something else instead that's a piece of jewellery, could you get a piece of jewellery that's as nice as your one is now that it's been repaired and that has the same emotional connection with you as this one? It happens from time to time, but most often people kind of go, you know what, I couldn't buy a piece of jewellery like grandma gave me for

250, 300, 400 pounds. And actually, yes, I would like to spend that money getting this repaired because it carries on for me as it did my mother or my grandmother onwards and onwards. And that's something that we, you you talk about sort of nice stories. Luckily, you know, we've been in the town and in the business now for, as I said before, 75 years, trusted by families and generations over and over and over and seeing some of like

the next generation of families coming through is a really nice thing. Seeing old pieces of jewelry that my father or on occasions my grandfather or grandmother might have sold come through through sort of know old familiar faces as it were, that's really nice. But as I said earlier, you know, we do a lot of redesigning of jewelry. It's not uncommon that people would inherit pieces and they're not to their taste. And that's totally fine because tastes and styles and fashions change. But actually they've got some nice gemstones in there.

maybe some nice diamonds or sapphires or rubies and they go look I want to keep those because they were great aunties or my mums or something like this but you know what I don't wear yellow gold or and I prefer to have platinum or I don't like this it's just a bit of a weird design and it was great in the 70s but for me for what I do I'd actually like to do something with it that I'm gonna wear or I'd like to make two or three pieces out of it for my daughters or something like that that's pretty common as well

Maria Lloyd (11:51.554)
And that's really nice and sort of seeing that design process through and I've got a really talented designer here who helps people kind of get to the bottom of what's going to work for them or the people that they're going to give the piece of finished piece of jewellery to. And that's a really rewarding thing and seeing that moment where someone opens a box for the first time and sees the finished piece, that's really rewarding. Talking about value and you said before how it can be passed down through generations, but the style, what would you say is popular now?

So it's a good question. I think the way in which I kind of answer it is it's kind of like I would describe it as there's some staples of a jewellery wardrobe that will sort of work anywhere, anytime, any place for most ladies. And that would be a pair of diamond stud earrings, a diamond solitaire ring, a diamond solitaire pendant, and then possibly a diamond lined bracelet or tennis bracelet sometimes they're called. With those bits of kit,

I reckon you could go anywhere and do anything and be totally at home. They're the kind of items you can kind of dress up, dress down. They go with absolutely everything and they work with total versatility across any kind of event or occasion, easy peasy. For us, the most popular area for us is always rings. Engaged rings, wedding rings, eternity rings, half eternity rings. And within that diamonds are always the most popular kind of gemstone that we have here. Earrings, pendants.

always staples and being very frank, we're not a fashion jeweler in the sense that the seasons change. You know, we don't have three collections a year. We don't have lots of turnaround here. We've got some great fashion brands, but those brands are long-term fashion brands, tried and tested international ones that will last a lifetime and theoretically to multiple lifetimes over multiple generations. What is your favourite piece of jewellery, would you say? Do you have a favourite item in the store at the moment that you love?

I'm going to give you a really dim answer which is I don't have a personal favourite piece of jewellery. My job, the team's job here is to find our customers favourite piece of jewellery. On the occasions I look after customers and they ask what do you think and what should I have? Straight answer, my opinion is absolutely the least important opinion in the room. What's more important is how do you feel about it? And usually by asking some nice questions and sort of letting people kind of feel the way through it, they know the answer. They know what their favourite piece is from a...

Maria Lloyd (14:19.062)
range on the table and all our job is to of just sort of gently navigate people, help people through that decision making process and help them find their perfect piece. What I find interesting about your jewellery is that quite a lot of them are made in the UK. That is something you're very proud of that they're made in the UK. So why would you say that is important? Why is it important to have something that's made in the UK? So the Made in the UK stamp for us actually is

whilst a lot of our main range would qualify for that, in reality it's only applied for us, it's a voluntary choice to do that, it's a part of the hallmarking part of things that goes on the inside of jewellery or on the outside of jewellery when it's made, but that is applied to all the pieces that we make in-house from our bespoke design commissions. Now in reality, comme ci comme ça, you know some people like it, some people don't, it's not something that seals a deal so to speak.

What it actually means in practical terms is actually all the people that we use to help us make things from casting workshops to gemstone suppliers, those are people that we work with here in the UK and that's because we know the quality of work that we're getting from those partners. We know the people personally that we trust them, that the quality of work is good as I said, and that they're close. And that being close means we can usually get things done really quickly. In the context of having a bespoke piece of jewellery made,

we tend to get those things from sign-off done within three to six weeks, which is not bad going at all, considering how long it takes to get a sofa made or getting a suit made or dress made and some of that. We actually do it pretty well. So the reality of the cruise in the UK helps us in a number of ways as a byproduct, which is by working with relatively local partners for specialist skills that we don't have here.

such as casting and when you get into some the more esoteric skills like hand engraving or enamelling, which we do from time to time with commissions, those people are all within, I would say, an hour and a half, two hours drive of us, got great sort of craft centers in Birmingham in London and some brilliant trades people and craftspeople who help us for very, very specific skills. And one of the great things and one of the, to kind go back to the question you asked earlier, what makes this business unusual? It's

Maria Lloyd (16:37.228)
the network of people and specialist craftspeople that we have allow us to offer some things that you might not always be offered elsewhere. And that's the benefit of participating in the industry community of doing some of these interesting things that I do around the edges, meeting people and being able to bring those skills, that expertise that, I could do that. How can I get that achieved? You mentioned the industry community and let's just go back to the Reading community challenges that

independents especially I think face in the high street. Could you go into a little bit more about what challenges you faced and how you've overcome them or tackled them at least? The challenges that our business has faced as an independent jewelry retailer, there's probably some that are consistent and common across other high street retailers, but some might be specific to us. But they're not a big surprise to anyone. Changing shopping habits.

Probably for me, the main one is the absolute preponderance of stuff that's available for people to spend their money on. And that's great because choice is wonderful and so on. But myself included, everyone I know, everyone's got a limited amount of money to spend after they've paid for the things that they need to pay for. So having a bewildering amount of choice and a lot of choice and some very sophisticated businesses who help money out to people as well is very, very well indeed.

When there's less disposable income, you know, being at the forefront of people's minds to be an option for them is tricky. As a small business and not a large multinational web kind of business, having the ability to connect with customers isn't as easy because we don't have the same budgets as those kind of big businesses, not the same reach. So we rely on other ways of connecting with our customers, which are more within our means. And, you know, the cloth is cut accordingly.

So that's a big challenge, being able to sort of refocus our attention and make sure that we're not wasting money and doing sort of things that don't get there. The cost of doing business, again, not a big surprise. Rent rates, the costs of running a business escalated really quickly in the last five years post COVID, post Ukraine War, all that kind of thing, you know, contributes. And, you know, again, what's the role of town centres for shopping? And it's interesting to me, you know,

Maria Lloyd (19:01.746)
lots of town centres and I was literally about an hour ago just talking to a friend of mine who was visiting us from Bournemouth and we were comparing our day-by-day city centre, we're obviously a large town, same challenges, you know, the ability of local councils to be able to spend money on public realm, to make places attractive, explosive growth in food outlets and coffee shops in town centres and the challenge of finding, you know, retail businesses that can be in a town centre that have got the chops to make it last.

and run themselves in a profitable way. And profit is not a dirty word because in order to survive in a town centre, you've got to earn the right to do it. You touched on there about there are some ways that work for you. What ways work for you for marketing, Jacobs? That's a great question. Marketing is one of the things I really, really grapple with. It's one of the few things I get. It's quite hard to get a handle on and be really specific as to if you do X, then Y happens because there's so many parameters around it. And often the outcomes take

ages and ages and ages. So marketing is the one thing that I feel that's actually quite a tricky part of the discipline. When I sit around and I do sit around in a network group of other retail jewellers, that's the one thing that we all wish you could sort of wave a magic wand and be able to unequivocally go, if you do X then Y happens. Now there's certain activities that do that, but in reality when you're building a business like an independent business or a family business, your horizon is longer than next week or

this quarter or even this year, you know, for us as a trusted independent retailer where the average length between people buying a material piece of jewelry from us are excluding repairs, excluding valuations. Buying a piece of jewelry from us typically is about seven to eight years. That's a long lead time. You know, it's pretty, I guess it's not dissimilar to a car or something like that. So the marketing work that we do here is a combination of kind of like long-term kind of activities.

but also, you know, regular repeat things. Now, in reality, the best piece of marketing that we have here is word of mouth. And the quality of the service here is the thing that is the most important. So if we are not delivering great service, people aren't having great experience here in the shop, quite honestly, the rest of it's waste of time. So with that as a sort of a bedrock, as it were, from that, the website's really important to us as a shop window, increasingly so as a transactional thing.

Maria Lloyd (21:29.582)
It's not the main part of the business, but it is growing in terms of importance to us, which is great. Our e-news, which we do regularly, once a month at Christmas time a little bit more often, is tried and tested. That works really, really well and sort of hooks in with our website and obviously syncs up with that, which is quite important. Networking, me being out, my team being out, my parents being out and meeting people, know, old fashioned one-to-one catching up with people and making

Relationships definitely works. We do events as well. So when we've done in-store events, this Christmas we've done a couple of in-store events, interestingly synced up with some other local independent businesses as well, which has been very well received. That's been a success. We've done external events where we kind of bring two, 300 customers together into a big space where we have lots of suppliers and partners there exhibiting. They've been fun, private dinners, direct mail. I mean,

By and large, you name it, we've probably done it. And some things work better than others short term, some things work better than others long term. And in reality, different periods, different times require different tools. But the absolute foundation bedrock key bit of the business is great product and we do not compromise on the product. It doesn't matter how the price of gold is going, quite expensive at the moment. We will not compromise on the quality of the product because that's what we need to stand by, but also

the quality of the team here, their education, their training, their interaction with customers. That's where it all starts. What are your goals for Jacobs moving forwards? As I said, because this is sort of a family business, there's nothing sort of revolutionary going on here. You know, we continue to sort of grow the business quietly, efficiently, sensibly, reaching new customers. We've got a big project on next year to redevelop the website and beef that up a bit for fingers crossed more sort of selling and we're always tinkering with that.

to add little bits of functionality, little bits to make it easier for people to buy from us. And that's working, which is terrific. The main focus of the business for next couple years is actually about craft, about skill, about design. We've got our own range of jewelry that we've designed here that there's going to be landing early part of next year. So in reality, if I was to say to you, the core business remains the same, but actually just turning the volume up on some of those messages and some of those kind of product ranges where you can have something different to everyone else.

Maria Lloyd (23:57.774)
And as an independent, we're really lucky that we do get to literally go internationally to find interesting things to bring back here to carry in our stock range. But also having the design function here and being able to make our own range is really, really important to have things that you like, literally you cannot get anywhere else. That's super important. That's really interesting. When you said you go internationally, obviously I know you keep up to date with the industry. How do you do that?

There's a few trade shows in the United Kingdom. I go to Germany, I've been to Italy. I used to go to Switzerland when there was a trade show there. weirdly, if I'm on holiday somewhere and there might be a trade show there, then I might go and have a little nosey when I'm there. But there's lots of places to get inspiration. Quite a lot of the international fairs have like pop ups here in the UK as well. So they kind of like reverse send their things here. So I'm always having a bit of a scout. The team here are really good that they spot things and

It wouldn't be a big surprise. We have a regular sort of team meeting on a Monday. One of the first questions on our kind of routine is what are you guys being asked for that we don't have that you think we ought to have? So we're constantly listening to what people are actually asking us for. But if you hear something being asked for a couple of weeks in a row, spread out a bit over a couple of months, then you go, my God, huh, there's something going on here. Let's let's look at that and get it. And being an independent means we're nimble and agile enough and flexible enough to do it quickly as well. One of the benefits of being an independent, I think that's a lovely note to end on.

So is there anything that you'd like to leave our listeners with?

and enjoy them because it's tough out there and genuinely small teams like ours, there's seven or eight of us, we really like having people around. It's a pleasure looking after people, so visit. Adam, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I really appreciate your time and all the fascinating conversations that we've It's been my pleasure. Thanks for having me.