Reinventing and finding solutions to every problem takes sales through the roof for this young jeweller

Twenty-three-year-old Shivansh Raj Seth wanted to join his family business since he was a child. With his eyes on the prize, he graduated in commerce and joined his family firm — Rajkumar Sarraf Jewellers. Now the director, this third-generation jeweller’s idea took birth from the fact that his small town had no organized players. He wanted to revamp the generations-old business the moment he stepped into the leader’s shoes and thus, introduced many firsts for his customers.

The need for a fresh in-store experience

For a small town, the concept of a retail experience is still absent. As a child, I always saw customers sit on beds on the showroom floor, and there was no concept of chairs. However, I could see the customer evolving with time and changed the seating arrangement.

The pandemic too brought in a lot of change. Despite having a diverse inventory that can attract high-end customers, I could see that they were not comfortable sitting with others. To deal with the social distancing norms, I decided to add another floor to our existing store, which has increased our footprint to 1800 sq ft from 900 sq ft. We have a lift that makes movement easier.

Branded Assurance Card

To improve transparency in transactions, I have decided to introduce a caratometer for gold jewellery from January. We have customers who have been with us for generations and would trust us blindly, but I still felt that this level of transparency could further cement the faith.

For customers who want hallmarked jewellery, we personally take them to a local hallmarking centre and get the jewellery hallmarked. I have also decided to give them an assurance card on every gold purchase, which will have details such as the jewellery weight and making charges, and other quality details. If we are transparent, the brand image will improve by leaps and bounds. Apart from this, I also decided to give away free insurance on every piece sold by us, so that the customer’s faith increases.

‘Wowing’ the customers

 Many customers were travelling to Lucknow to buy jewellery. As far as inventory is concerned, I wanted to bring in more variety so that people did not have to travel so much for better designs.  When I joined the organization, we only dealt in plain gold jewellery. With time, I introduced designer gold, diamond and kundan. Now, we also have solitaires. In my city, customers did not have any idea about diamonds for engagement rings. I have managed to educate them. Now, there is a huge demand from young customers for platinum jewellery at the store, so I am planning to introduce it on our first floor.

As published in The Retail Jeweller India magazine