With more than 30 years in business, Purvis Jewelers has a solid reputation among longtime Lakewood residents. But to stand out from the growing competition of Internet sales and corporate retailers, owner John Purvis plans to carve out a niche with his award-winning custom colored diamond jewelry.
Purvis recently won the Rocky Mountain Jewelers 2007 Design Contest for a diamond and pink sapphire ring with his signature square shank. He won the same award last year for another gold ring with colored diamonds and has taken home numerous other regional and national honors for his custom-designed work, including the Jewelers of America grand prize and the DeBeers Diamonds of Today Award.
Purvis is also the president of the Rocky Mountain Jewelers association.
By establishing a reputation for colored diamonds, Purvis hopes to grow his sales from about $1 million annually to $5 million, he said.
Demand for colored diamonds has surged in the last five years, particularly in the United States, where they are relatively new, according to the Natural Colored Diamond Association.
Since the 1970s, Purvis has collected about 450 naturally colored and irradiated diamonds, ranging from pale yellow to cognac to deep blue and pinkish purple. Naturally colored diamonds are extremely rare and come from all over the world, including Venezuela, India, South Africa and Australia, Purvis said.
One of Purvis' proudest creations is a ring he designed last year for Bishop Walker Nickless, a former pastor at Our Lady of Fatima parish in Lakewood who is now bishop of Sioux City, Iowa. Purvis set a purple diamond in the middle of a cross, with "M" shapes on the sides to represent the mountains of Colorado, Nickless said.
"I get compliments on it every time I wear it," he said.
Purvis' wife, Pam Purvis, wears several rings her husband designed for her, including a gold ring studded with tiny colored diamonds. Pam Purvis wasn't really into jewelry when she married John, but she's since developed a taste for it, she said.
"It's a fun business," she said. "Of all the customers at Purvis Jewelers, I'm my own best customer."
Independent jewelers such as Purvis face stiff competition from department stores, chain stores and Internet retailers, he said. Wal-Mart and Sam's Club, for example, sold about $2.5 billion worth of diamond jewelry in 2006, he said.
The competition has forced Purvis to be more business savvy and more aggressive with the store's marketing. He's taken out billboard space on West Colfax and hired two consulting companies to analyze his business. In the process, Purvis has learned how best to manage his inventory and cover basic overhead costs, he said.
"The pie is the same size, but the slices keep getting smaller and smaller," he said. "If you're not in the top 10 percent, you're not going to survive."
John Purvis, owner of Purvis Jewelers, sets diamonds in a ring for a customer July 25. Purvis has won awards for his ring designs, including an 18-karat yellow gold ring with an oval-shaped pink sapphire and diamonds. The design earned him a prize in the Rocky Mountain Jewelers 2007 Design Contest.
Source: goldentranscript
No comments:
Post a Comment