E.E. Robbins - The Engagement Ring Store - Our Blog : E.E. Robbins - The Engagement Ring Store

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

A Bit Miffed!

I have to admit that I get bit miffed when I hear a certain national chain jewelry store owner constantly going on about how you won’t be pressured in his stores because “unlike other stores”, their sales people are not on commission.

The fact is, is that pressure doesn’t come from receiving commission or other incentives as much as it has to do with hiring the right people in the first place.

A perfect example of this is Nordstrom. Nordstrom is world famous for providing outstanding customer service and yet we all know that Nordstrom’s associates are paid in part on commission. Have you noticed that you rarely, if ever, get pressured at Nordstrom? I personally can attest to this, because I do most of my clothes and shoes shopping there. The associates at Nordstrom always seem to be educated about their product and do a great job of helping you find what you want. And I never feel pressured to buy. The reasons for this are that they hire outstanding people to begin with and then provide them with extensive customer service training. Nordstrom is a great model for any business that cares about offering the best possible customer service.

When I shop at many other stores; including those that don’t offer their associates any incentives, I’m usually disappointed with how difficult it is to get someone to even help me. There is nothing more frustrating than store employees who just don’t care.

I’ve always believed that pressure comes from top down. If you hire nice people; people who truly care about helping others and then you make clear to them that your company culture is that customers should be listened to and should never ever feel pressured; guess what will happen? Your customers will never be pressured. Conversely, if you hire overly aggressive people, who only care about making a sale and you don’t pay them even a nickel in commission, I can pretty much guarantee you that customers will still be pressured.

I’ve never understood when we live in a capitalistic society why commission is a dirty word. Shouldn’t those who work harder and perform better make more money? Why would we not want to motivate and reward those who do a better job? If you don’t offer an incentive for your associates, then how can you expect people to work harder for their customers?

The ironic thing about this is that while this particular owner that initiated this conversation talks about their associates not being on commission; they do in fact, offer other sales driven incentives that have the same effect as paying commission. Add to that the tremendous pressure placed on their Managers and sales associates to perform, and the end result is customers often leave their store feeling pressured and their associates know all too well that these ads are not accurate.

At E.E. Robbins, I freely confess that we do pay our sales associates a sales incentive. We believe that by doing this, our customers are better served.
We also reward our associates for outstanding customer service as measured by their customers. We constantly ask our customers to fill out a “Tell Emerson” Questionnaire (I read every one of these every single month) and every month we reward those associates who receive a given amount of complimentary feedback from their customers. More importantly, if our customers ever do feel pressured; our associates know that they will be reprimanded. They also know if such customer pressure continues, that associate will very soon be looking for another job.

Most importantly, our company culture is built on simply treating others as we ourselves want to be treated. Our goal, even more than sales volume, is to offer our customers a shopping experience that is relaxing, informative and fun.

We feel if we do this, then the sales will usually follow. Maybe it’s part of the reason that E.E. Robbins not only sells more quality engagement and wedding rings than any other stores in the Northwest, but we have also won national awards for customer service as well as been voted “Best of Seattle” for the past three years running. If I could sum up our entire philosophy in just one quote, it would be this, “Be kind to others. If by doing so, it doesn’t fill your pocket book, it will fill your heart”

Posted By Emerson At 4:30 PM • Comments (0)

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Doing Business Locally

This is that time of the year when politicians start slinging the mud at each other. If you’re like me, you probably don’t enjoy hearing them slam each other. It’d sure be a lot better if they just told us straight up how they stand on the issues. But that’s probably a bit like asking Donald Trump to be humble. It’s just not in their DNA.

However, it is important to understand the issues in order to make the right voting decisions.

I think it’s pretty much the same when you’re shopping for a diamond or ring. While I don’t want to ever say anything negative about our competitors; it is important that customers know the facts before making such an important decision as buying their engagement ring. We know we’re not the only good place to buy a diamond or ring from (although I do passionately believe we’re the best place).

In any case, one of the frustrating things for us is when we hear customers mistake us for a national chain or think that some of our competitors are local businesses—neither could be further from the truth. We’ve always been a local family owned business. In fact, my Grandfather, Ben Tipp owned the premier Diamond store in the Northwest back when Nordstrom was just a tiny shoe shop.

His three-story store was on the corner of 3rd and Pine in downtown Seattle. More on that story later, but the point is that I was born in Seattle and here I am today with our original store just a few blocks from my Grandfather’s famous store.

Another truth is that most of the other jewelry competitors that you often hear advertising on the radio aren’t local stores. Most of them in fact are huge national chains. One of the names you always hear radio ads for has stores all around the country and are headquartered in Colorado. Another big radio advertiser locally is owned by one of the biggest jewelry conglomerates in the world. They also own many of the mall stores that you see in most of the malls around the country. And another of the big chains that you often hear on the radio is owned by world famous billionaire, Warren Buffett.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with doing business with a national chain, but you do have the right to know who you’re doing business with. Some people prefer to do business with a small local company and some don’t really care. It’s a choice. I should know. Earlier in my career, I co-founded Robbins Bros., World’s Biggest Engagement Ring Store. Robbins Bros. became an almost overnight success, but after a number of years, I wanted out. I sold most of my partnership interest when my brother wanted to go national and I didn’t. I found that I just didn’t enjoy the bureaucracy that is an inherent part of an ever-expanding business.

Many customers write in our Questionnaires that they’d like it if E.E. Robbins opened more stores, but we’re one of the few businesses around that has no interest or intention in becoming a big chain. We know that it would change our business forever and that we couldn’t offer the same kind of buying experience to our clients. We just want to be the best that we can be, not the biggest.

Maybe you like doing business with a local family owned company like ours and maybe you don’t care or maybe you enjoy some of the advantages a big company can offer like, for example, locations nationwide in case you move around a lot. It’s your choice, but either way it’s good to know about the company you decide to do business with. If you’re not sure who the company is that you’re considering buying from, you may want to look on their web-site and see how many other locations they have and where they are based out of.

In any case, we’ll always be proud to be a Seattle company.

Posted By Emerson At 8:39 AM • Comments (1)

Saturday, October 04, 2008

My recent trip to London

I just returned from London, after visiting with DeBeers (now officially known as the Diamond Trading Company or DTC for short). When I first entered the business some 30 years ago (yeah, I know I’m now officially considered an old codger); DeBeers had a virtual monopoly on diamonds. They dominated the world diamond mining and distribution, controlling over 85% of the world’s supply of diamonds. However, over the years, as governments became more sophisticated, DeBeers’ world changed. Governments were less willing to just hand their diamond resources over to DeBeers for the shorter end of the profits.

Thus, some of these diamond producing countries began to mine and distribute their diamonds on their own. Many of the countries elected to form partnerships with DeBeers (DTC), in order to take advantage of DeBeer’s knowledge of mining and distribution and still participate in a greater share of the profits.

The bottom line was that over time, DeBeers lost more and more control of the world’s supply of diamonds.

Now here it is 2007 and DTC readily admits that they only control about 40 to 45% of the world’s diamonds. We now also know that their diamond supply is more hand to mouth. In other words, they have to keep mining diamonds or their supply will run out. Thus because their supply of diamonds has shrunk, the DTC has had to keep cutting the number of companies (otherwise known as Siteholders) that they sell the rough diamonds to. And because profits have dropped, they have been forced to put more of the cost and responsibility of advertising diamonds, as they themselves cannot afford to keep doing this on a world-wide basis.

DTC even sold the rights to the name DeBeers to the luxury brand company, LMVH which owns Louis Vuitton, Moet & Chandon, Dom Perignon, Hennessy Cognac, Tag Heuer watches, Givenchy, Fendi and many other luxury brands. This company has opened DeBeers diamond stores around the world including London, Paris, Beverly Hills, New York and many more to come. These stores are not wholly owned by the DTC but their famous name allows them to play on the consumer’s awareness of the DeBeers brand.

In any case, the DTC people could not have been more gracious. We met with many of their top people and came away feeling that they are more socially conscious that many of us gave them credit for. Maybe it is for selfish reasons, but they are very aware that they must continue to link diamonds with love and positive emotions and thus do all they can to see to it that diamonds help the people who mine them, the people who cut them and the people who distribute them. They have gone to great lengths to shut down the flow of conflict diamonds.

I came away from the meeting with DTC more convinced of several factors. First of all, I am now convinced that diamonds are becoming increasingly harder to come by and that because of this rarity in supply, the cost of mining these rare miracles of nature will continue to increase as the supply of diamonds dwindles.

And I am further convinced that we at E.E. Robbins buy our diamonds from one of the finest cutters in the world and that our close relationship with these cutters, allows our local three-store operation to be as competitive in our buying as any store in the world. Like many other natural resources, although a diamond is forever, the world’s supply of diamonds are becoming ever more scarce.

Posted By Emerson At 10:03 PM •

Friday, June 20, 2008

Mission Statements

A lot of companies believe in mission statements. We don’t happen to be one of them. It’s not that I’m opposed to mission statements, but for me, a mission statement is kind of like trying to describe why I love my wife. I can’t really sum that up in one paragraph. It’s pretty much the same with trying to put into a capsule sentence or two what E.E. Robbins is all about. Sure, we’re about engagement and wedding rings, but that in itself would be way too limiting.
The following are some of our core philosophies, but I sure haven’t been able to narrow them down into one short paragraph.

Getting engaged is one of the happiest times in a person’s life.
The shopping experience should add to these wonderful memories-to-be.
We think the experience should always be relaxing, informative and fun!

Invest in your customers. Take the time to educate them about your products and give them the knowledge to confidently buy their engagement and wedding rings. If you have the best quality, styling, etc. and price your products fairly and affordably, then your customers will see that and you’ll earn their business. If you don’t, you don’t deserve their business. Your customers should be the ones designing your business. After all, if they don’t appreciate how you do business, how can you possibly be successful? And if they love the way you do business, how can you possibly not be successful?

Never pressure your customers. I hate being pressured when I go shopping for something. So I encourage my staff to treat our customers how I would want to be treated when I go shopping?

Your associates are your public relations ambassadors. Their enthusiasm for your company and it’s products (or lack there-of) will determine how your customers perceive your company and your products. If they are not passionate about what you have to offer, then how can you expect your customers to be?

If you want your employees to care as much as you do, strive to make them part of the team. Our Managers have been given stock in our company. They are part owners. If I could figure out a way to make every long-term employee a part owner, I would.

Buy your diamonds direct from the source. This is why Brant and John (E.E. Robbins managers) travel to Ramat Gan, Israel four times per year to buy from one of the world’s top cutters. If you want average diamonds, buy your diamonds sight unseen or have average diamond buyers. Brant and John have been in the diamond business for a combined forty plus years. Their well honed eyes have been trained to cull out only the most brilliant and beautiful diamonds. This is why John and Brant hand-pick every single diamond that we carry. They go through thousands of diamond parcels representing many millions of dollars every time they travel overseas. For every diamond that we purchase, they have rejected many hundreds more. This may be one of our greatest advantages in business.
Our diamonds truly are world class!

A diamond represents your love and union. This important symbol should never be connected with anything that is not pure and eternal, which is why we have always made absolutely sure that our diamonds come from conflict-free sources.

An engagement ring is the most personal possession a woman will ever own and one she will wear more often and cherish more than any other. So make sure that your engagement rings are exclusive styles that she is not likely to see on another woman’s finger. This is why we work with smaller boutique designers rather than mass manufacturers that supply the national chains. We value our vendors relationships, they’re true partnerships. I believe, if you don’t care about their best interests, why should they care about yours?

Well, I know I’ve probably left out a lot and you’re probably tired of reading it. Maybe that’s why companies have mission statements - so their customer doesn’t have to read as much. Never-the-less, I still don’t know how to sum up our business in one paragraph. Maybe you have an idea on how to do this?
If so, I’d love to hear from you.
In any case, thanks for reading more about us.

Posted By Emerson At 4:37 PM • Comments (0)

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Best of Seattle

I’ve always believed that when it comes to an area that I don’t have much expertise in (which includes a whole lot of areas); that it’s best to use references. I will try to do some research or even better yet, get recommendations from friends and other people that I respect. Every business always tells us how great they are, but the true test is how their clients feel about them.

Following that line of thinking, we’re especially proud to announce that E.E. Robbins was just voted “Best of Seattle” for engagement and wedding rings for the third straight year. This is a special honor because the voters are both the readers of Seattle Bride Magazine, most of which have recently tied the knot as well as the top Bridal Vendors in the greater Seattle market. These Bridal Vendors including Bridal Consultants, Wedding Photographers, Caterers, Bridal gown salons and many more truly get the inside scoop from their clients as to what businesses provide the finest products and service.

So thank you to Seattle Bride Magazine, to the thousands of Seattle Bride readers and the hundreds of amazing Bridal businesses in our community for this great honor. You can be sure we will continue to work hard to offer the finest in engagement and wedding rings and the warm, caring service that we have become known for.

Posted By Emerson At 10:02 PM • Trackbacks (0)

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Our newly updated site and my blog

Thank you for visiting our web site and my blog. We're all very excited about our newly updated site. Many of the new features of our site were added as the result of feedback from our customers. We've added hundreds of photos of our rings and made it much easier to search through the selection.

We've also added a lot more product information about our rings and diamonds, more educational guidance and more about who we are and what we stand for as a company.

I'm sure that we can all agree that our time is more precious than ever before. That's why a web site should allow people to do some homework before they shop around so we can be more efficient and not waste our time visiting stores that don't fit what we're looking for. By looking at different sites, you can get a better idea of the personality of that particular company and the products they carry and see if it looks to be a store worth visiting.

I'm confident that we have truly captured the personality of our company, so if you like what you see on our site, you'll no doubt love our stores.

In any case, we'll never compromise on a few things, our integrity, our quality and our dedication to warm and caring customer service. You can always be sure that our priority will always be to just tell it like it is. We hope that you feel the same. And if you want to rant or rave, either way I'm always going to listen. Thanks again for visiting our web site.

Posted By Emerson At 10:01 PM •