Tom Shane's World

The restaurant Black-eyed Pea is now displaying a sign saying, “Buy Mom Dinner, She Gave You Life.”

I’m not sure why this has stuck out in my mind. Perhaps it’s driving by it on the way home from work every day for the past two weeks since they’ve had it up, but it sure makes a point. I know they meant it to be funny, but it made me think about the relationship between a mother and a child.

The sign on my way home

It is very easy in our fast-paced lives for one to disregard their mother simply as another family member, regardless of whether they’re close or distant with their own moms. However, she did, in fact, give you life and that’s a pretty important statement on its own!

I know with my own mom, throughout my 30 years of life, that we’ve gone through times consisting of everything from me being called a momma’s boy by others, to me having bags packed, threatening to move out of her house for good (oh, the joys of being in 8^th grade).

I’ve always found relationships with moms, whether it be from personal experience from dealings with my own mother, to observations of others’ relationships with their own moms, to be very unique relationships, different from all others that anyone has with any other person in their life.

I think this has to be due to the fact that Mom isn’t like anyone else in your life. She’s amazing at loving you, nagging you, caring for you, minding your business, and driving you up a wall… sometimes all at once. Who else but a mother is capable of all of this?

So if you are fortunate to have your mother near you this Mother’s Day, I recommend you take the advice of Black-eyed Pea and buy her dinner… or cook her brunch, as my wife and I will be doing for our moms at home. Either way, take advantage of the opportunity to use this day to remember the restaurant chain’s advice, and show her the recognition she deserves for giving you life.

Comparing products can be very frustrating for consumers. I personally find a lot of frustration when venturing through a grocery store. Last week, my wife asked me to pick up some milk and a dozen eggs on my way home from work. I’ve been buying these products on a regular basis for all of my adult life, so you’d think the task should be quite simple. When approaching the egg section, the choices, as anyone who does their own grocery shopping knows, are borderline overwhelming. There are brown eggs vs. white eggs. There are several sizes of eggs. Hormone-free eggs, cage-free eggs, omega 3 additives in eggs, and that’s just off the top of my head. To complicate things even further, there are several companies selling each of these options. In all, to simply take a guess of how many different types of eggs there are in the average supermarket where I shop, I’d have to guess I have at least 15 (seemingly) completely different egg choices. The pricing on these ranges from the mid 1 dollar per dozen up to almost five dollars a dozen. That’s almost a 400% difference in price, for basically the same thing! As for the milk, it doesn’t get any easier.

So, why is this relevant to a blog post for me? My little grocery store frustration is not very well understood by me, but what I do understand is diamonds. On the topic of diamonds, I find people making the same assumptions all of the time, and I get frustrated from the completely opposite standpoint…As in trying to point out politely but passionately that what they’re comparing are two completely different things. And the answer I often get, which goes something like “but they’re both 1 carat diamond earrings in 14K white gold” is presumably just as misinformed, but as easy of a trap to fall into, as me saying “They’re all just a dozen eggs”.

One story that I tell my sales teams, which seems to surprise some people, is what I often do with customers when they’re making an important jewelry purchase. In particular, the instance that comes to mind, although I have been known to do this on several occasions, took place several years ago at Christmas when I was working in our Portland, OR store. A man that I was working with for quite some time was looking to purchase a pair of diamond earrings for his wife, and he was a longtime Shane Co. customer. This Christmas, he informed me, he was watching every penny he spent very carefully. After showing this gentleman dozens of pairs of earrings, we had settled on the pair that was perfect for him. When he informed me that this was the pair that best suited his needs, I very naturally asked him, “So this is the pair you are going to go with?”, and to my surprise, he said that he needed to look around a bit more, at the mall across the street. I was surprised, but said I completely understand, and wanted to know what he was looking for further, as obviously I did not completely satisfy his needs with what Shane Co. had. He informed me that that was not the case at all, but he heard that a jeweler at the mall (he couldn’t remember if it was Zales, Kay, or Helzberg) was selling the “same” earrings for a much cheaper price. I quickly told him that was impossible and I was going to prove it to him. He was shocked at my conviction, and wanted to know how I already knew that he was incorrect, so I explained our practice of constantly shopping every other jewelry store in town, how we buy our product, and how we price our product. But of course, he didn’t believe me, as a representative from Shane Co., I know I wouldn’t if I were in his shoes! To make a long story short, I asked him to please go to the mall and purchase anything and everything that he thought would beat out what I was showing him, and if he liked theirs better he could keep them, but if not , he could go back across the street and return them. I even told him that I would keep his earrings off to the side, not something we normally do during the Christmas rush. So, we had a deal. Not 60 minutes later, the gentleman came back into our store, with his head and eyes looking at the carpet. I asked him politely if he’d like me to retrieve his earrings so he can compare them to what he saw across the street. He softly informed me that he would just go ahead and buy ours. I said, “didn’t you bring anything to compare them to from the mall?”, and he said he could tell from all he had learned that day that what he saw at the mall, at the same size I was showing him, was quality he was embarrassed to give to his wife, and what he saw at our quality at the same size was significantly more expensive. I said to him something like, “then why are you so upset, I’m glad you are making an informed decision?”, and his only answer was, “I’m upset that I didn’t believe you and just wasted an hour of my Christmas shopping!”.

So, the moral of the story is, when shopping for an item that you view as a commodity, and you’re shopping solely based on price, do yourself a favor and make sure that you’re truly comparing apples to apples, and not being tricked into thinking that everything you’re looking at is the same thing. An informed shopper is an empowered shopper. Now if only there was an educator in the dairy aisle of my grocery store!

When I meet people outside of the United States that are also in the jewelry industry, but not familiar with American jewelers, they always ask me what kind of stores I have.  I think my ability to answer that question succinctly, and with the same answer for over 40 years, has really helped us achieve the position that we have.  I tell them that we stand for two things, value and quality.  Yet our concept of status is to allow those who care about making the best business decision feel good about buying from us.

When asked why we give a free lifetime warranty to the original purchaser, when no one else really does, my answer is equally clear.  Anyone can talk about their quality…but we put our money where our mouth is.  The reason we have rings and other jewelry that requires less service repairs than others is because it makes better business sense for us to engineer it right to begin with.  After all, it is my money that will have to pay for shortcuts and deficiencies….not the customers’ money.  So we can’t afford to give anything but the best quality…and that’s the truth.

Because jewelry is hard to truly compare, value is hard to compare.  Two diamonds can be graded the same; but some independent labs are more liberal than others.  Also, where the flaw is located, within the stone, makes a huge difference in its appearance.  Yet two stones can be graded the same by the same lab, when one diamond’s flaw is very pronounced and a second diamond’s flaw is hardly bothersome, perhaps off on the side and deep within the stone.  Because of these issues, (and the fact that no two diamonds are exactly alike), a consumer needs to be able to count on expert advice when making a purchase.

Having well trained diamond experts selling our product, who are not paid on commission anyhow, is the best way I know to provide a customer with the proper advice.  Every customer’s wants and needs are unique.  We train our people to listen to the customer, so they can first understand the wants and needs of that particular customer.  Then, they can present product to meet those needs.

Operating a large diamond business is hard.  It happens that I love doing it.  But, as far as taking care of customers, that is not hard.  We train our people to treat a customer as they would wish to be treated, were they in the market to buy jewelry and knew nothing much about it.  And the rest is really common sense.