Gioielleria Italiana, the New Start Up for Jewelry Retailers

According to a study by Euromonitor, in 90% of cases, when consumers want to buy an item of jewelry, they go to a reliable jewelry store and, in 80% of cases, choose an item with a classic design. A model that can be, and is, copied by several brands. But what makes consumers select one item instead of another? They entrust and rely on the jeweler who, in turn, directs them towards an item that can often be found in another sales point or online. 

A transfer of trust that can lead to a progressive loss of customer loyalty since the same, or very similar, jewel can be found in other jewelry stores. This inevitably leads to a drop in customer-jeweler trust and supply chain streamlining. These are the starting points that urged Francesco Mangini, CEO of Gioielleria Italiana, a company founded only last October, to study an innovative start-up in the b2b segment of fine jewelry. But what is the true innovation of this tool that sales points now have at their disposal. «Let’s take one point at a time. I have been working in the sector since the age of 23. Now I am 35. Initially as a sales rep and then as a sales manager until I created a distribution company. It was here that I learned the dynamics of a highly fragmented supply chain, organized into phases that are often very complicated to manage, so that an item of jewelry might finally reach the store with an 80% mark-up. A complex supply chain that uses a ‘collector’ figure, who unites the work of several third parties, in a company that applies its own ‘label’ and then distributes throughout the territory with its own distribution network. In this process, the jeweler becomes a mere retailer, a sort of dealer who sells the same item under a brand’s ‘label’ and who does no marketing whatsoever on the customers to attract them into the store. And this is the first problem. The second, as a consequence, is the trust that is lost between jeweler and customer because the seller transfers the customer’s trust to a jewelry item made by a third party».  For this reason, Gioielleria Italiana, a company launched just last October, and which attended Vicenzaoro January 2020 for the first time, proposes two objectives: 

• supply chain streamlining, which would lead to a reduction in mark-up and a 30% saving on the end price in respect of average market price (the mark-up is about 80% at the moment in terms of production price due to too many figures involved in the production-distribution process. Gioielleria Italiana operates with an average 23% mark-up).
• Customer loyalty thanks to jewelers being able to personalize the jewelry through the Gioielleria Italiana platform and sell it as a brand of its own jewelry store and also personalize exhibitors, packaging and warranties.

Now let’s look at how the platform works. Let’s say I have a jewelry store and I want to become your partner. What do I have to do? «It should be pointed out that some jewelry stores can become partners and others are simply customers. In the first case, thanks to a public equity crowdfunding campaign, jewelers who decide to make an investment will have, in exchange, a company share in line with their investment and special advantages for those who are an integral part of our project. Our Partners have chosen to be associates instead of merely customers of the system they will be using to create their jewelry items. Moreover, they will be part of a network that will stretch to reach 100 jewelry stores throughout Europe. Being a partner involves no risk except the invested capital which, however, will be returned to the jeweler in the form of more convenient jewelry purchase discounts. 

If the jewelry store only wants to be a customer, it can submit an order of any amount, follow the production in real time and check that, within 15 days, the goods will be delivered by the courier engaged for shipment. The average value of orders received after 3 months of activity has exceeded 2,000 Euros each.  We can now boast over 70 jewelry store partners and we expect them to spend about 20,000 Euros a year. The jewelers that adhere to the project as partners can integrate our system onto their e-commerce platforms and already involve the customer in the product personalization phase. In fact, each partner has a tool that allows them to apply, at their own discretion, a price multiplier to create the jewel together with the customer, checking, in real time, its actual value as they go along. 

At the moment, about 103,000 unique articles are available on the platform with prices that range from 60 to 10,000 Euros cost to the jewelers. Our core business is based on classic jewelry in the low to medium price range even though we have also created highly valuable items. 
An innovative project that fills a large gap in the jewelry sector by stimulating sales points to further strengthen relations with the end customer. The founding partners of Gioielleria Italiana, besides Francesco Mengini, are Davide Dilorenz, from the homonymous gem-setting workshop, Orsini Gioielli, which has been making jewelry since 1970, and Alessandro Ivaldi, already the founder of Talent Garden in Genoa and CTO of Gioielleria Italiana. A short equity crowdfunding campaign is to be launched on the 200crowd.com platform to collect partner investments. The minimum collection required is 150,000 Euros but it is hoped that this figure will be surpassed and even multiplied. Stay tuned!