Should I Bring My Significant Other Engagement Ring Shopping?

     At the risk of sounding uncouth, at least for a 32-year-old, I was surprised by a few things when I entered the fine jewelry industry four years ago, however, one of the most surprising things to me was seeing a majority of engagement ring customers coming into our shop with their significant other in order to pick out the perfect ring together.  Call me old school, but I always imagined that it should be up to the suiter to go and do their research and then surprise their future spouse with a ring on a romantic get-away somewhere in Europe.  However, times have changed certainly, not just socially regarding men and women’s positions within a romantic relationship but also economically as well. 

     For those of you who read these blogs regularly you will know that we sell a majority of lab grown diamonds here at our store, primarily because of the value in price difference.  However, couples coming together adds another economic benefit as well, they get what they want the first time!  Let’s be blunt, many men, on average, do not have a keen eye for fine jewelry.  This goes for a series of relevant categories such as the difference between lab grown and naturally mined, carat weight, color, clarity etcetera, let alone whether the band should taper toward the top and whether there should be talon prongs as opposed to more traditionally rounded prongs.  Women, on the other hand who are the recipient of these rings most of the time and must don them for the rest of their lives, hopefully, tend to be much more keen regrading these little details.  In years past men would come to a store such as ours and would rely on us to guide them in the right direction.  This worked because people in general were not as desensitized to consumables such as jewelry as they are today.  With the advent of social media potential customers can scroll through thousands if not tens of thousands of different engagement ring styles to see which one is the perfect fit for them.  Gone are the days when customers are in awe of your expansive inventory that took you decades to acquire.  Every customer is essentially a custom job now.  That is why couples are intelligently coming into the store together.  At the expense of the romanticism, they are making sure that hubby picks everything out perfectly so that she can be completely content with her new ring, which to reiterate she will wear for the rest of her life!  From a jewelry designer’s perspective this is welcome consumer behavior.  Having to remake a ring because the husband didn’t do any research and now the fiancée is not happy is inefficient to put it mildly, for both the jeweler and the customer. 

     As stated in past blogs, the future small, boutique jewelry store is going to need to have a designer on staff in order to survive the 21^st century business environment.  This trend of couples coming to your store together to discuss, design and eventually purchase a ring from you is a golden opportunity for you to differentiate yourself from the competition.  Social media provides plenty of eye catching pieces to the customer but increasingly companies are getting a bit lazy and are relying on AI digital designs to get customers to click and buy, but any jeweler worth his or her salt knows that some of these refined AI images are completely impractical when made in real life and contrary to ‘The customer is always right’ refrain, educating the customer on why, for example, having a one millimeter thick band with a 2.50 carat marquise diamond flanked by two thirty point pear diamonds is going to spin on her finger like crazy and prove not to be durable at all, will be appreciated by the customer in the end.  In the final analysis, this trend is good for jewelers.  Even with all the social media and ability to order anything you want at the click of a button for a competitive price, couples are still choosing to come into a physical store and talk to a real person before pulling the trigger, that alone gives us all hope and a chance to provide value!