Welcome to the GuiltTrips podcast. I'm your host, Kendra Lockhart. As a goldsmith and
gemologist, I'll be speaking 24 carat on all things jewelry, metals, and gems. Join
me plus a few friends to demystify both materials and designs as your private jeweler. Let's
tune in on these topics and get golden. One of my favorite questions to get is, what was
your first real job in jewelry? And I have two answers for that. Depends on what your
definition of real is. Back in the 90s, fresh out of college, I worked part time at a franchise
jewelry chain called Illusions. Illusions find jewelry to be specific. The basis of that
company was doing replica jewels that were recognizable in high caliber synthetics and
a proprietary alloy that could be sized and polished like real gold, but didn't have a
carriage to it. It was just illusion metal or whatever they decided to call what that material
was. While it did get me in front of rings and repairs and necklaces and pendants, greeting
customers and wrapping gifts at holiday time, that's not what I consider the big, fat,
real gig for my career. It felt serious when I got myself a newspaper and turned to the
classified ads for jobs and who was hiring and found Seeking Jewelry Salesperson Slash
Designer. Then you would send a copy of your resume in the mail to the designated mailbox
or PO box if they had shared their actual one. It was here that I learned the art of
most pillars that we all have in common as beginners and veterans in this beautiful career
and industry. My interview consisted of going over my resume, which pretty much was mostly
college achievements plus Illusions Find Jewelry, which was part time because the other days
of the week were spent working in a dental office where I had access to the lab to work
on my own pieces, which were far from professional and high end, but still were helping me build
traction. After we had our conversation in the office, he brought me to the counter,
pulled out one of his rings and said, draw this. With a fair number of illustration,
life drawing, sketching, painting, or studio art classes under my belt from my degree,
it wasn't that challenging. But for the owner, he realized that he had somebody who could
be his hands while he was busy explaining and elaborating upon his ideas for any sort
of custom work. And so I got hired. In this episode, I'll be covering selling, being a
courier, designing, repairs, colored gems, appraisals, and my best and worst moments
at this jumping off opportunity. The beauty of being a beginner in jewelry is that you
really don't have context or comparison. And selling doesn't quite seem to present itself
as an art form when you're first getting started. You would think the obvious. Someone comes
in, you say hello, they either reveal what they're looking for, or you ask a few questions,
have a conversation, show some items, they buy or they leave. It was here at this job,
I learned the difference between selling versus clerking. There's so much more to greeting
a client when they come in and reading the room, leaning into what their energy is, where
their eyes are focusing. If they're alone or have brought somebody, how present or distracted
they seem, and other factors, there's a beauty in the ability to find out the relevant information
and to avoid it turning into a bedtime story or a personal tell all. It's important to
be respectful of both parties times. The dance of guiding the process so that there is a
trust built in your expertise. This is probably the first ring of great importance they're
buying. But you've been around important rings nine hours a day times how long you've
been in your career. And lastly, the moment of obtaining a satisfied client who, depending
on their nature, will refer you, return and be a repeat, write an excellent review, possibly
bring in a future generation. As a courier, it's a game of great responsibility while
trying to be unassuming. The protocol and process of carrying high value, retrieving
necessary goods and gems, and returning anything unsold to the parties that have loaned it
to you. Playing the part of the messenger or courier can be one of the most nerve wracking
and then most enjoyable duties in the ecosystem of creating for our clients. When my favorite
stories to share and to illustrate how green I was when I first got started is that I was
asked at some point, tomorrow, you're going to be a courier, you're going to take $40,000
worth of diamonds downtown, back to the diamond houses. I need you to pick up these rings
from the engraver and also bring back a couple chain samples for Mrs. So-and-So. He told
me, I need you to look discreet. The next day I showed up in my painter's smock, complete
with splashes of color from everything I was currently using on a canvas, and my flannel
pajama bottoms. He was normally an unflappable kind of person, but he took one look at me
and said, I said, look discreet, not homeless. We had a good laugh about that for years to
come. One of the reasons I was hired was so that he could build out his custom work service.
And there is something to be said because it doesn't just develop you as an asset in
the jewelry world, but it refines who you are as a listener and a communicator. There's
something potent about deeply hearing somebody's half-baked, fully formed, off the wall, or
crystal clear ideas to enter into a creative collaboration with a client that maybe you've
only known for an hour, and the art of taking absolutely nothing and turning it into something
to pull together parts into a whole that is a one-of-a-kind, not only resulting in the
piece that they're going to wear, but an experience that they can share as many times
as they desire.
Repairs is not something that you're going to learn overnight. Whether you're on the
bench as a goldsmith or behind the counter as a salesperson, it is going to take more
cases than you could possibly imagine to get confident in assessing and addressing how to
fix broken jewelry. And even after a decade, there's always the one that might make you
scratch your head and need to get second or third opinions from your colleagues or your
contractors. Sometimes it's very simple to know when it can and can't be fixed. Many
opportunities are straightforward. A busted chain, the broken prong, the ring that is
bent out of round, a missing stone, but others are less oblique and need to be approached
with more of a restorative thinking. Sometimes it can be fixed by a single jeweler. Other
times it requires layers and a team. As much as I find sizing a ring very therapeutic,
where I really get sparked is going through the talent in my mind when it comes time to
rebuild a vintage ring. Will I need the engraver? Do we cut out a half shank and put fresh metal
in there? Are there any techniques that could be compromised under the heat of the torch?
Is this replacement stone truly a match for its era and period? Or are we changing the
integrity and modernizing it in a way that doesn't really suit its original design? If
nothing else repairs as frustrating as they can be, they're never boring.
The next thing that I learned at my first job was the world of colored gems. Sure, you
grew up knowing what your birthstone was, or maybe you took a few trips to the crystal
shop and had a dozen or so that were familiar to you. But to really begin to immerse yourself
in the craft of other wholesalers and see through their eyes into niches and nuances
is like being in a dream. We had one particular gentleman who was a very unassuming midwestern
man named Dennis, and he was one of the country's most sought after Australian opal importers.
We threw a beautiful trunk show for him from his last trip, which he only took twice a
year. The party was incredibly well attended. It was paired with Australian wines. And these
were gems that were rarely allowed to leave the country unless you were willing to visit
Australia. I had never seen such play of colors or varieties of opal in my life. And to this
day, 30 years after that moment, I haven't seen anything that compares to what he brought
back from his travels. Other vendors who would come through town would introduce me to jewels
that I would not have come across in commercial designs. I was pretty young when I learned
things as unusual as savorite garnet, chrome dioxide, tansnite, appetite, and other beauties.
It only enhanced the mind of myself and the owner as designers.
Using a completely different part of my brain would be necessary for conducting appraisal
work. I had yet to go to the GIA and become a true gemologist, but I did have a diamond's
certification under my belt. And since the majority of what we were working with was
bridal when it wasn't being designed from scratch, meant getting good at the instruments,
tools, and vocabulary for insurance purposes. Having to hone in on correct millimeters,
proper weight estimations, and being able to write accurate descriptions of an object
in my hand so that a benefits examiner could recreate it in their mind and compensate the
loss or damage within the parameters of a policy was very useful for the future of my
career once I got on the workbench. Knowledge is power and it's amazing how many different
aspects of the industry you can find yourself in when working in a single jewelry store.
And now it's time for my best and worst moments. Surprisingly, they were both facilitated by
the same manager. Now it comes as no shock that not everyone on a team enjoys working
with each other or gets along perfectly. I happen to be the personality type that can
acknowledge it, shrug, and move on into a professional zone. That it's not so much about
do I like you or dislike you, but can we be a lock and key as far as partnering to get
professional tasks and business needs accomplished? It was a particularly hot day in July and
there was a young man who had been running up and down the street. He had a sweat stain
from his neck to his armpits down to his navel on his t shirt. And he kept stopping by the
window and looking in every time he did a lap around the block. It almost seemed as
he was getting more tired that he might want to stop in. The manager took one look at me
and said, if stinky comes in, he's yours. I was fresh out of college and she was twice
my age. So naturally, the authority went to her as far as cherry picking. He came in and
as we got talking, he found out that I was the custom designer. And by then I had won
an award. I found out he was a medical student and he happened to be the largest sale of
the year. And yes, I was on commission. He had a one of a kind three stone ring in platinum
that totaled out just under $60,000 back in 1995. As for the worst, that same manager
was realizing that my accomplishments were contrasting her mistakes. Even though she'd
been there for four years, her learning curve wasn't very steep. Maybe she just didn't care.
Perhaps it was the inability to take ownership of errors and try and do better. But the day
that she called out of spite to tell my clients that their ring was ready for pickup on my
day off when it was 48 hours earlier than a promise delivery, I didn't appreciate her
sabotaging the relationship or playing around with my reputation on my time and our bosses
dollars. I took it as a sign to find greener pastures. Never underestimate the power of
someone above you who overtly or subtly shows you it's time to go. It's time to grow. And
in this case, it was both.
Thank you for listening and learning with me. I would love you to share this project
with people finding rare beauty in today's world and throughout our times. Until the
next episode, keep your own stories sparkling.