Revolution Jewelry Works

Nov 18

In their own words

“We have beautiful concrete floors with a two-tone filigree pattern etched into them, it’s like this metallic epoxy that looks like you could dive into it. I had a childhood dream of putting the biggest chandelier I could find in my store, so we have a 10-foot chandelier in our entryway. Everything else is industrial, like a wood-metal fusion. I’m a big believer in educating behind the science of jewelry. When we’re casting, people who do custom with us can schedule to come in and watch us pour their metal. It’s a fun interactive experience, and it’s part of the jewelry business people don’t get to experience that often.”

-Jennifer Farnes

Jason’s Interview with Jennifer

Jason

We're back on Meet the Jewelers and today we're talking to Jennifer from Revolution Jewelry Works. How did you get started in the industry?

Jennifer

I fell into rockhounding as a kid. I had two older brothers. When we would go on family camping trips, my parents would make them drag me along. One of my brothers was a very avid rockhound and I caught the bug early. We would dig in the dirt and find crystals, and I thought it was amazing that gems came out of the ground. Later on in life, after I met my husband, I introduced him to rockhounding. That was just a pastime the two of us would do together.

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For our first anniversary, we were talking about buying some kind of jewelry gift and he said, "Hey, why don't we get one of those crystals that we found faceted?" I know crystals come out of the ground one way, sold in a jewelry store the other way, but I never made the connection in my brain that there's somebody in-between that does that. I went about pursuing someone locally that could facet one of my crystals and was introduced to this sweet, genteel, older gentleman. He sat down with a cup of coffee, he had me come to his house and look at crystals for two hours. At the end of it, he said, "You know, if you really like rocks this much, you should learn to cut." I told him if he was interested in teaching, I would love to learn. He took me on as an apprentice. That was where I fell in love with the industry, sixteen years ago.

Jason
How do you compare the last sixteen years from where you are now?

Jennifer
Doing the apprenticeship, and then moving into journeyman, and then offering my services to other jewelers, it was something that I did as a pastime. I was ultimately trying to pursue a career in marketing and advertising, radio-TV broadcasting. That's where my head had been my whole life. I had more and more people calling, looking for my services. They needed me to repair gemstones, cut to match, color match, and shape. My mentor turned me loose and said, "You're going to figure out on your own and maybe pursue this as a career." I was doing it out of my basement. About five years in, I had to make the decision. Do I continue in advertising, I was a media buyer at the time, or do I take a chance and pursue my bliss? My husband at the time was working for this incredible company and making really great wages. I didn't need to continue doing the advertising career and I could see where faceting was going to take me. Once I left advertising and moved into doing faceting full-time, my business blew up. I had jewelers all over the United States and outside of the country that were sending me things to repair. As a lapidary and a faceter, I was quick to respond. I didn't think it was right for someone to send me a family heirloom and for me to sit on it for a month. I had really great turnaround times, great maintenance of weight when I was doing repairs on gemstones. That instantly became my full-time job. It just kept growing. More and more people were coming to me saying, "You faceted this gemstone for me and I gave it to my Mom, now she wants to put it in a necklace." I had to figure out a business partnership of a jeweler that I trusted to take the gems that I had cut and do a good job setting them for my clients. Then I was approached about buying another jewelry store because of the business acumen I had. We were two weeks from closing on that particular business and the owners backed out of the deal. I already had all of the loan funding and everything, so I switched it from an acquisition to a startup and that was when Revolution was born. This was in May 2013.

Jason
So what are the highlights? Tell me about your brand.

Jennifer
We really wanted to focus on custom. There are a million different stores out there that sell the same look, the same style. I am a geek at heart. I'm one of those people who really love their jewelry and put money into that. It's really hard to find a Halo ring. I'm not talking about a halo of diamonds—I'm talking Halo, the video game, something that has that type of theme to it. Or World of Warcraft. I started working on my appeal to fandom people. We have so many people that come in that have gone into other stores with heirloom diamonds that they want to turn into something new because grandpa's nugget ring from the 1980s is not attractive anymore. All the other stores that they go into say, "Oh, that's nice. Let us sell you something else," instead of, "Hey, let's figure out how we can incorporate grandpa's metal and grandpa's diamond and turn it into something you will wear." Of the custom that we do, at least half of it is recycling pre-existing materials. We're still a multimillion-dollar business doing it that way. It is more on the service side. I employ four full-time jewelers.

Jason
Tell us about the area. What is it like to be inside your store?

Jennifer
We're in the beautiful mountain city of Colorado Springs and it's very central to the state of Colorado, but we do have people that travel from all over. It's a great tourist destination. If they're coming in to do a consult on jewelry, they'll make a vacation out of it. We just got done with a major remodel. When we first opened, we were opening on a shoestring budget. It felt very industrial, concrete floors and rudimentary showcases. We had it set up to where the jewelers are surrounded by windows in the back so you can see the work being done. With this expansion, we actually took over the space next door and incorporated the two together. We went from 1,200 square feet to over 4,200 square feet. We've got these beautiful concrete floors that have a filigree pattern etched into them, two-tone, like this metallic epoxy—it looks like you could dive into it. I had a childhood dream of putting the biggest chandelier I could find in my store. When my husband asked how much it cost, I said it didn't matter, it's a childhood dream. We have a ten-foot chandelier that hangs in our entryway. Everything else about the store is still very industrial, it's kind of like a wood-metal fusion. We have diamond plate kick plates everywhere and wood showcases that are a rich maple finish. It just feels like us. When people come in, if they want to wait and watch their jewelry being worked on, they can. All of our jewelers are facing up against a line of windows and everything is very secure. I am a big believer in educating the science of jewelry. When we're casting, people can come in and watch us pour their metal. It's a really fun interactive experience and part of the jewelry business that people don't get to experience that often. We've actually been reclassified with the state as a manufacturer even though we have a retail storefront, because of the volume of manufacturing that we do.

Jason
Are there any causes that you're a part of?

Jennifer
I'm a big believer in recycling as much as you can and also supporting the arts. I think that there has been so much focus taken away from art because of the digital age. There's tremendous opportunity everywhere. And there's such a need for art in our communities. On the recycling side, it's really important for people to be aware of the repercussions of mining in some countries that don't have any type of environmental controls. There is so much gold that's coming in to be refined and recycled, and why aren't we taking more advantage of that? So all of the pieces we craft when we are doing customs are made from 100% recycled materials, whether it's coming from our client or from our vendor. Those are two things that I've always been very passionate about.

Jason
Why should people trust buying their jewelry from you?

Jennifer
We don't have the markups of some jewelry stores that are out there, primarily because I am not paying salespeople to stand around and scratch their heads all day when there aren't clients in the store. Everyone that works for me is professionally trained in the jewelry industry in some way, shape, or form, whether they're a jeweler, an appraiser, a professional liaison. When we don't have clients in the store, everybody here has other tasks that they have to be doing—not cleaning the glass, not taking out the trash. It's helping analyze estates and categorize gemstones from a stone-buying trip. The vast majority of the gems that are in our showcases are faceted by me. Most of the time, I'm either buying direct from the mine itself or from a representative of the mine on the raw material. I'm the one who's doing the cutting and then it's going directly into our showcases. We end up being on a first-name basis with our clients because the custom process isn't a quick process. We will see our clients three to four times throughout the process as we're doing our design work, creating the CAD, scheduling out the casting and a final pick up, and then sizing afterwards. We really do build friendships and get to know people. We don't pay commission here. My business is actually set up as a profit share. So everybody here makes a living wage. When our clients come in, our goal is to make sure we are taking care of them. We ask for a budget up-front because we want to be sure that we're respecting it. We don't offer financing, because I don't believe in it. I don't think that it's right to get people started into a fresh marriage and put them into a tremendous amount of debt with a high-interest rate. It's time for a change in this business.

Jason
Tell us about your ideal customer.

Jennifer
We don't have a target demographic. We have people that come in with heirloom jewelry that want to use certain diamonds and then they trade in all of their scrap gold to pay for the custom—that's a fun experience for us. But then we also have young couples that come in that are just starting out, their first engagement ring or promise ring. We're starting to get a lot more high-end clients that will come in and have a starting budget of $15,000 or $20,000. I'm not in the business of overcharging, I'm in the business of making sure people are getting their money's worth. I never advise that jewelry is an investment—jewelry should always be bought the way you buy art. Buy it because you love it.

Jason
Tell us about a fun customer experience or engagement ring process that occurred?

Jennifer
We had a gentleman come in. He had gotten his fiancé-to-be's mother's wedding set. Her father had passed away, and her mother wasn't wearing her diamonds anymore and wanted them to go into her daughter's ring. He also inherited his grandmother's ring. So he came in with all of these precious and sentimental diamonds and wanted to build something unique for her. We built this cool sunflower design and incorporated diamonds. He had joked with her that he was going to propose with a twist tie and a rock. All of this was done behind her back, collecting the heirloom rings and doing the design process. He brought her into the store to do some perspective shopping on the day that he actually proposed. But what she didn't know is that they were here to watch the casting of her ring. He kept playing it off. He's like, "Oh, they're planning to do a casting. Why don't you come on over and we'll watch this?" They'd been together for several years, so she wasn't expecting a proposal, she just thought it was another day running around. We cast the ring and brought out the raw casting for them to hold. He got down on one knee and proposed in our store, which was awesome. She couldn't wear the ring, but he did have a twist tie with a rock on it in his pocket that she put on until we got done finishing the ring. It was adorable. It was unexpected. We didn't know that there was going to be a proposal in our store that day.

Jason
Where do you see it going in the next five years?

Jennifer
I am actually working with an organization to prepare for franchising. We have such a proven business model that really does put ownership in the hands of the employees. If someone is interested in becoming a franchise owner, they would come work with us and learn our culture. The connection that you have to your co-workers is just as important as the connection that you have to the people that come in the door. I don't have children. My husband and I never started a family. In another generation or two, nobody is going to remember my name. But the one thing I can teach people and hopefully have trickle down through their families is to work somewhere you love, work with people you love, surround yourself with positive energy. As silly and cheesy as all of those things may sound, it really does pay it back in spades in the quality of life that you have. If they can share that with their families and create a culture for future generations, then I am affecting people, even if they don't remember my name. That's a legacy worth leaving, in my opinion.

Jason
Tell us more about this legacy, there's a lot there.

Jennifer
Before I got into the jewelry business, I worked so many different types of jobs. When I was in high school, I got permission from the mayor of our city to be out past curfew to work for a radio station on an overnight shift. When I was in college, I had a full-time job, as well as a full-time college workload. I was working for a TV station doing commercial traffic programming. From there, I was given a job opportunity to move down to Arizona and work with an events promotions company. I got to travel all over the United States working with big rodeos, concerts, and a lot of artists. When I was working for the advertising agency, I had the chance to move to Colorado Springs and take on marketing media. That was a miserable job. The thing with advertising, they realize that it's such a high-demand and high-paced career that they anticipate people being willing to sacrifice their souls. While it can be very glamorous, it can be very thankless too. It hurt me to work there and be told on a daily basis, "I'm glad that you were here until 3:00 AM, and thanks for being back on time this morning. You're going to burn out eventually though, and employees like you are a dime a dozen." To invest so much time and personal life, and even almost sacrifice my marriage—thank goodness my husband put up with me for that era of my life. When I had the chance to leave, I was ready. It boggles my mind that there are owner-operators that look at their team as cattle, and you're here to do a job and make me money. The thing that I love about the legacy that I'm building, and what I've created here in our local market, is this sense of humanity and connection. We work with almost every jewelry store within a fifty-mile radius because we have more technology than any other store has. We have a lot of jewelers that come in and ask us to help them with repairs and we're happy to. I can't do it all the time because I'm not a wholesale trade shop, but they know that I'm here to help them. We need to work together and bring passion and excitement back into our industry because love is where it started.