The Gold Party Is Over

Posted on | August 30, 2010 | No Comments

Got an email this morning from the State of Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation prohibiting “hotel shows and home gold parties”. Here’s an excerpt from the bill:

SECONDHAND PRECIOUS METAL OBJECT DEALER/ PAWNBROKER ACT
COMPLIANCE ADVISORY

New law prohibits hotel shows, home gold parties; requires dealer name, license number on advertisements. On October 1, 2010 HB318, which will change the way secondhand precious metal object dealers and pawnbrokers conduct business in the State of Maryland. The following changes will take place on Friday, October 1, 2010:
1. Dealers and pawnbrokers will no longer be able to transact business at a location other than the fixed business address except under certain limited conditions.
After September 30, 2010 dealers and pawnbrokers will no longer be able to conduct hotel shows or home “gold parties.”

Finally! It took long enough for the state to realize that these fly-by-night hotel and gold party outfits were not operating under the same laws and provisions that honest jewelers and pawnbrokers are. In a previous law, the State of Maryland prohibited internet transactions. I applaud this new law and I hope this sets a precedent for buying jewelry in other neighboring states like Pennsylvania, Virgina, New Jersey and Delaware. It seemed that every former mortgage broker was asking me how to get into the gold game when it was hot. Gimme a break.

What’s the good news? The good news is that Samuelson’s Diamonds is buying gold, diamonds, silver and estate jewelry at our location. We’ve been at the “gold party” for the past eighty-eight years and we’ll be here for years to come.

So come to a place where “Trust is a Family Tradition…”

What’s Up With Facebook Places?

Posted on | August 21, 2010 | No Comments

Facebook just got into the game of geo-targeting as expected with their new feature, Facebook Places. So basically, you can now check into different restaurants, stores, or pretty much any establishment and tag and share with your friends where you are. There are several sites devoted to this, most notably Foursquare, who is in partnership (as of now) with Facebook on this project. (until Facebook decides to eat their lunch)

My blog post entitled “Foursquare or Stalkersquare” got a lot of comments and feedback so I decided to poll my Diamonds Fan Page on this issue to see what they thought. “Creepy” was the most popular answer.

I also have had some conversations with industry experts on this issue. As of now, the general feeling is that users aren’t crazy about it, but marketers do (and should) love it. Facebook has taken the time to ask if you are a real place (by verifying tax id/business licenses) before you can advertise your “place”, so I’m ready to do some cool giveaways and promotions for my customers when they check into Samuelson’s Diamonds.

On the other hand, I personally don’t want everyone knowing where I am, and I certainly don’t want people tagging me at a place (much like you would in a picture) without me knowing. One more thing. You think Farmville is annoying? Wait until you see your feed clogged up with Places…it’s gonna be a lot of noise.

Here’s a link to an article that will tell you how set your privacy settings so that you’re not tagged, if you prefer.

What’s my take on Places? I have no idea! We won’t know how this will affect your Facebook experience until we’re at least a six months in, so all we can do is wait it out and see where it goes. My one observation is that Facebook is trying to be everything to everyone on the web. Where it was once just a social network, now it’s a place for everything. What’s next? I think dominating search is inevitable. I also think that your very own facebook email account (like gmail and yahoo) is coming up.

What do you think?

Do You Mix Messages On Social Networks?

Posted on | August 5, 2010 | No Comments

I got a message on LinkedIn from a friend/relative that he thought my LinkedIn posts were having a negative impact on my business, as LinkedIn is a different platform than Facebook. Well, for a while I’ve had my twitter feed go to LinkedIn. Never turned it off, and don’t really check LinkedIn much, so have it on auto pilot with a blog feed (which I think is ok) and twitter feed (too much). So I get it, it’s annoying. I never like it when people link Facebook and Twitter – it gets to be too much.

So is mixing messages ever a good idea? I’ve had my Foursquare and Twitter access off and on – I still can’t figure that one out, even after I wrote this post, “Foursquare or Stalkersquare?”. What do you think? Do you use sites like ping.fm to update all of your networks or use them all differently? Which go together like chocolate and peanut butter?

Now I really appreciate honest, no BS feedback, but one more thing that is also interesting. Aside from impacting business relationships, when does this stuff impact personal or family relationships? Because unfortunately, the message didn’t start out with, “How’s the family” or “Seen any good music lately?”

So what do you think, mix your updates or keep them separate?

Thank You Jerry Garcia

Posted on | August 5, 2010 | No Comments

This week is Jerry week. It was Jerry Garcia’s birthday (he would have been 68) on August 1st and he died on August 9, 1995.

Thank you Jerry.

Mark Zuckerberg Interview With Diane Sawyer

Posted on | July 22, 2010 | No Comments

Here’s an except from Diane Sawyer’s interview with Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg. It’s fascinating to me to follow this guy who has this site that is bigger than life, now with 500 million users. Keep it going Mark, we love it!

Scale = Developing The Perfect System

Posted on | July 17, 2010 | No Comments

It was an interesting week on the business front. We’re getting ready to launch a new website and make some major changes to some other properties later this summer.

I wanted to share some great advice that I got from a friend about scale. In one project, we were working more on expanding, but I’ve come to realize that we’re not quite ready for that yet. We need to develop a perfect system and get it just right in one location in order to make it work on a large scale. In other words, if you can do it right for one customer, then you can do it right for 100,000 customers.

It’s all about systems. Look at any big e-tailer or retailer. Amazon, Woot, Apple, Walmart, FedEx – they have order fulfillment down to every last detail. Quality control, packing, shipping, customer service – like clockwork. Does not matter what the actual product is, or whether it’s an actual product that you’re selling or a just a service. It’s all about following a detailed process that works.

And that’s what we’re developing…the perfect system. Once we do that, there’s no stopping us!

Phish Merriweather Post Tomorrow Night

Posted on | June 26, 2010 | 2 Comments

Another year has gone by since I’ve seen Phish. I have to say that the show last year at Merriweather was disappointing, but I’m giving them another try hoping they break out some old school stuff. I reviewed the show in this post, “Summer Concert Review”.

Here’s the kinda thing I’m looking for:

Wish me luck!

Facebook Bug Had My Page Losing Thousands

Posted on | June 16, 2010 | 4 Comments

Last week, I noticed that my Diamonds Fan Page was losing THOUSANDS of fans a day and hundreds of fans an hour. I was at around 349,000 fans and I saw this number go down by the minute – all the way to 342,000.

Of course, my natural reaction was…PANIC! How could this be? I googled everything I could think of and nothing came up. In my mind, there were a few explanations to this:

1) A certain country banned Facebook and all of those fans (I know they are “likes” now but I still call them fans) are gone.

2) Facebook was clearing out phantom/fraudulent accounts and there just happened to be 7,000 of them on my page.

3) People just don’t like diamonds anymore.

4) Facebook is out to get me. 😉

Well, checking this page every five minutes was driving me nuts so I just accepted it and hoped that it would stabilize. Then, Friday night I did a twitter search (don’t do that enough) and found this article on InsideFacebook.com:

Note: Facebook Working on Fixing Fan Count Bug For Pages

Over the last couple days, some Page administrators have been noticing incorrect counts for the number of people who like their Facebook Page. Facebook has confirmed that this is a bug, and is working to fix it today.

According to a Facebook spokesperson, “There was a bug that caused an accounting error for the number of people who like a Page. We are working hard to fix this bug and restore the counts as quickly as possible. No fans or data was lost, and news feed distribution has not been affected.”

We’ll let you know as Facebook makes progress on fixing the issue.

Phew, that was a close one!

Then I found this post the next day on AllFacebook.com:

Facebook Bug Results in Decreasing Fan Counts

Over the past few days many Facebook Page administrators have noticed their fan counts decreasing. If you’ve seen this happen, you are not alone. We’ve reached out to Facebook but haven’t received a response on the issue, which means there is probably a bug which needs to be fixed. Unfortunately there hasn’t been any clarifications from Facebook, but don’t worry as many other people have noticed similar issues.

Logically, it didn’t make sense, and I needed to go with my gut and realize that Facebook can make mistakes. They do have 500 million users and an unbelievable amount of content and data.

So now we’re back up to speed and moving forward on making DiamondFans bigger and better. And I will not let Facebook glitches take me off my game anymore!

Facebook Page Creator Can Now Be Removed

Posted on | June 10, 2010 | 6 Comments

It’s funny how things work out. We have a few facebook fan/business pages that were created a couple years ago under the account of one of our employees. We did not know at that time that facebook had a rule that the permanent admin/creator could NOT be removed as an admin of that page. This policy was troubling because it meant that if an employee, ad agency or anyone else created your page, they were potentially in control of your page forever. So when we recently parted ways with that employee, we arranged to purchase his personal facebook page from him, so that we could retain our administrative control.

Well, guess what? I look on my pages today and facebook changed that function. Now you can remove any admin, even the creator. It was ALMOST perfect timing.

So what’s the point? Well, now you can remove anyone as an admin of your page – seems as if there’s no concern now over who the creator is – sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you…

JCK Las Vegas

Posted on | June 8, 2010 | 3 Comments

I am on the plane reflecting on my JCK Las Vegas jewelry show experience this year. I’ve been attending this show for at least ten years. My first trip out to Vegas was as a pawnbroker, delving into the new and even elitist world of fine jewelry. No one was very interested in talking to me since I wasn’t a fancy retailer – at least that’s the impression that I got.

My wife and I would go to do some buying, but mainly to vacation, eat good food, gamble, sit at the pool and just have fun. I never went (or was invited to) any industry events. In fact, I don’t even think I knew or cared that they were going on.

The show has changed for a me for a couple reasons. One reason is the economy. The exhibitors (jewelry brands, wholesalers, etc) got knocked off their high horse and are finally starting to realize that they should be thankful for all of their customers, and not have the attitude that they’re doing us a favor by selling to us.

The show has also changed for me as my business progressed and I started building our store brand and, most recently, my personal brand.  Last year was my first year speaking about Social Media. We spoke to a pretty empty room. This year, we spoke to a jam packed room with a lively audience participation. I also had the opportunity to speak/present at the exclusive high end Couture Show at The Wynn. It was weird for me to be there, but I actually enjoyed that experience and felt like the audience responded to our talk.

These talks provided me with the opportunity to share our new brand, The Social Jeweler. We soft launched it last week, and the response was great.  Right now, it’s about creating custom facebook pages for jewelers and jewelry brands.

As far as social events, we had a great time. There was a great party Friday night at Mandalay Bay, where the show is next year, and of course our annual Face-to-Face party at TAO Beach.  Both very fun, although I will say that the management at TAO is terrible. Wouldn’t let some of my guests in because of dress code stuff (come on, it’s Vegas and 107 degrees out). Also were very unaccommodating to me. The JCK people took the lead on this party so I was just along for the ride, and I should have known about the TAO people because they were the same way last year. Overall, all who attended had fun, however, looking back, it wasn’t a great move to have the party on a Saturday night at the most popular club on earth.  But..you live and learn, so next year we’ll have it at a more intimate place that wants the business.

Sleep, relaxation? No way. It was just work and fun and then up for work again. Overall it was a great show and although I didn’t buy much, I did sell a lot and meet some great people.

Here are the latest write ups about my talks:

JCK Las Vegas: Social Media Can Help Jewelers, Panel Agrees

ABJ Panelists Help Solve Social Networking Issues

I also shoot a very cool video with Engagement101 magazine that should be up soon.

Here’s the write up on that one:

Jewelry Fashion Week Roundup

See ya next year Vegas!

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