He started his jewelry business with one pair of rings — that was all. Now, more than 15 years later, JP Jewelers is a thriving business
By Stefan Yablonski
Q: When did it all start?
A: JP Jewelers was founded in September 2009.
Q: After a bad fire, correct?
A: The fire which took out the building next door happened in 2008. This building was essentially a burnt-out shell. I contacted my brother, Tony. I said, ‘hey buy the building, remodel it and you will have a tenant for life.’ Tony purchased and renovated the storefront at 136 W. Bridge St.
Q: Wasn’t this already a jewelry store?
A: My friend Mike, Mike O’Brien, was in here before — Wholesale Diamond Exchange. When the fire happened, he decided that it was time to retire. He thought it was his way to step away from the business. He didn’t want to remodel and I had the opportunity to have my family purchase the building and fix it up. So Tony bought the building and did the remodeling — he took care of all that and I was renting it from him.
Q: Are you still renting?
A: I have since bought the building from my brother. I actually own it now. It is nice knowing it’s a business asset. I bought it after renting it for several years. He decided to be nice to me and sell it, so I ended up buying it.
Q: Didn’t you have a store before this?
A: I had a store over on the east side for some years. The real story starts in the late 1990s. I went into a jewelry store the next town over and on a whim I found it intriguing, the whole process. So I decided to go to goldsmithing school. And I actually went to work in that jewelry store for a few years before it closed. That’s how I started.
Q: How many people work here?
A: JP Jewelers employs three people; me, the head jeweler and goldsmith; my wife, Katherine, and Leanne Gillen, the in-house goldsmith and master carver. She does repairs and the custom work. That is rather rare for a shop our size. It’s a small team and a good team effort here.
Q: What’s the difference between you and the big chain stores?
A: Local shops, like us, offer a much higher degree of service and customization, as well as faster repairs when compared to their larger competitors. We are a hometown jeweler. We pride ourselves on giving the customer the best value possible and remain profitable at the same time. All of those stores are battling a massive overhead and it’s not just the employees — all the mall environments have a huge overhead. My mortgage on this building is very minimal, almost nothing. So I don’t have to mark up things 400%, 500%, 600% or 700%. That’s how we keep our costs under control.
Q: Do you have to outsource any work?
A: Most jewelers outsource their smithing work. We don’t outsource anything. We do everything in-house. We do everything — if you came in with a picture or a thought of a piece of jewelry, we can sketch it out and start to finish manufacture that item. We do that every day.
Q: How many customers do you get on an average day?
A: We may see 30 to 40 customers a day [more than 20 came in while I was there]. It was actually kind of slow today. It can get pretty crazy.
Q: What is GIA?
A: I am a GIA certified goldsmith — Gemological institute of America. They are the gold standard; they also do courses for jewelry repair, stone setting and other jewelry-related courses. I took their course in Secaucus, New Jersey.
Q: What are your best sellers?
A: It is a little bit of everything. I think it’s a pretty nice split between all the different types of jewelry. Gold [chains] not so much with gold prices at historical highs. Those items tend to be much more expensive than people remember from back many years ago.
Q: Why have you been so successful all these years?
A: It starts with having the knowledge, working knowledge of the business, being able to multitask reasonably well. I was better at it a few years ago, but I can still kind of do two or three things at the same time and do them reasonably well.
Q: Do you buy old jewelry from people?
A: We get people coming in every day; people shopping for fine jewelry and asking about what they can do with their old items. People come in and ask what a certain item may be worth. We would value it accordingly and I think people are genuinely surprised at how much their items are worth.
Q: Do you do any custom work?
A: We do repairs and custom work. Shock — or maybe relief — when I give them the price for a repair or a custom job. It’s not unusual to hear, ‘I was expecting much more.’ The price of everything has gone up, but we strive to control prices on our end. Whether it is working with companies that offer a better product, better quality, at a lower price or whether we just factor in a smaller mark up than our competition.
Q: If you weren’t doing this what would you be doing?
A: I can’t imagine doing anything different. I’ve done a lot of things in my life. I worked for ADT doing security systems, John Hancock selling insurance, school bus driver for the school district; that was stressful but fun. My passion always went back to this type of business where you deal with jewelry, precious metal. I was interested in this sort of thing even as a child. My mom was a collector of fine things, that’s how I was exposed to beautiful jewelry, amazing rare coins that she had, items like that.
