Baribault Jewelers

Jun 9

In their own words

“You walk through our door, and what you will hear is, ‘Welcome.’ This is our home away from home, and we want people to feel comfortable. We have cool stations set up in the store. The ‘Be Creative’ station can inspire anything custom. On our huge flat screen, customers can see their design come to life. Our coffee bar is where you can relax and have our signature heart cappuccino. We have a private showing room with a sofa lounge—a styling area. We host bride’s bridal parties where they come in with their dresses, and we style them. We pour them some champagne and do it up in front of our big floor-to-ceiling mirror.”

-Christina Baribault

Jason’s Interview with Christina

Jason

Tell me about Baribault Jewelers.

Christina

I'm third generation and Baribault Jewelers is seventy-one years old. It's crazy, but we are rocking it with me and my two siblings running the show and leading a really cool team, putting our stamp on the business now.

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Jason
Can you tell me about the history and inspiration that led the two generations before you?

Christina
The first generation was my great uncle, he opened the first jewelry store in the town that we live in. He had just gotten out of the service and opened it with his friend—there was no jewelry store around. Then it moved on to my dad and his brother, who took it to the next level. And then we came. We're doing something modern, innovative, unique. We're doing 360-degree showcases—we don't have anywhere in our store where we're really behind the counter.

Jason
Would you say there's anything that separates your current location with competitors?

Christina
We are into interactiveness and innovation. We’ve set up our store in a really cool way. We think of it as our home away from home. It's super inviting and we want people to feel comfortable. We have stations set up in the store—we have a "Be Creative" station and that's to inspire anybody who wants to do anything custom. We have a huge flat screen—we design and they can see their design come to life right there in the store on the screen. And then we have our coffee bar where you can sit and have one of our signature heart cappuccinos.

We have a private showing room. We have a table and a sofa lounge—a styling area. Brides or bridal parties come in with their dresses and we’ll style them. We pour them some champagne and do it up in front of our big floor-to-ceiling mirror and have a little party. We have fun every day, inspire people—it's their happy place. That's what we're always wanting to achieve, no matter what's going on, they're welcomed there, they can count on us for creating something happy and joyful.

Jason
Can you tell us about a fun client experience that you were able to do a transformation, and not only just make or sell jewelry but offer an amazing experience?

Christina
Two are top of mind. The first one, we did this “Sweet Home Alabama” experience in the store. He wanted to surprise her with some jewelry and we had champagne waiting. We knew they were coming. She had no idea. We had all the jewelry pre-selected ahead of time with him. It was spread across the coffee bar area and they walked up to grab their champagne. And he was like, "Pick one."

Jason
What a fun experience.

Christina
Totally. A good client of mine, unfortunately, her grandfather passed away. She had this beautiful handwritten letter from him, they used to write love letters back and forth to each other. There's a little line "Love you too" in his handwriting and we inscribed it on the necklace. There are so many examples that I could give you, but that's one of my most recent ones.

Jason
I know you have your own design line, you have your own niche. Can you tell us more about that?

Christina
I'm a learner, I'm a researcher, I'm an absorber. From a personal growth standpoint, it's taken me along the journey to a lot of different, interesting, cool, crazy places. My jewelry line, "My Power To Be By Chrissy B" jewelry line is linked to a practice that I've been doing for almost twenty years, just encouraging myself to be the best version of me. My jewelry is super simplistic. I want it as a tool in people's toolkit to remind themselves that they do have the power inside to be the best version of themselves. On those challenging days that we all have, for them to have something tangible to hold on to, remind them just keep going, even on the hard days. I want to design something that's pretty too, and on-trend. That's where I'm going with this collection.

Jason
To the people on Meet the Jewelers who are trying to decide which jeweler they should interact with, why should they trust you?

Christina
Trust is so huge. It's all about building trust because what we do is so sentimental—jewelry is so sentimental. They need to trust that we're going to make good suggestions that are respectful. But also, the message is: we're listening. We want to serve you well. That's how we want to fuel our customers coming back. We want them to feel that we really care and that we're the best-trusted advisors in the business. People remember how you make them feel.