Case Study: Purejewels

Over the last decade, the company has been aware of changes in buying trends in its core customer base of Asians, who purchase high karatage gold for weddings, fashion and investment. Younger people were no longer purchasing jewellery for the same reasons as their parents, and the company found itself competing with other jewellery brands to keep its primary customers, who now had higher disposable incomes and valued brand image over loyalty to the family jeweller. The Bhanji Gokaldas name and range was felt to be too mature for the younger market and so PureJewels was adopted to appeal to a more mainstream audience, while still maintaining the traditional values of integrity, fairness and quality.

The company also realised that to succeed in this wider market and still keep the personal attention that had built the business so far, they would need to invest in systems and processes that would allow them to offer a reliable and profitable service. A new stock control system was introduced, an internal catalogue of all products and designs was created, and photography was brought in-house. The company was then ready to embark on its eCommerce web site, the vehicle that would deliver the PureJewels brand and product range.

The management team had very little experience with web sites but understood that the success of the venture would depend on making sure that the experience of online customers was consistent with their traditional values. At first the number of suppliers for eCommerce solutions was bewildering, but after speaking to many of them, it was quite easy to see that only a few stood out. After extensive research, the company appointed Paraspar to help them to build the web site. “We needed a supplier that had experience in mail-order and who had addressed a lot of the issues we were facing, and a whole lot we didn’t even know about. Paraspar understood our requirements and after speaking with them we realised that this was not about buying a computer system, but about building a partnership. Paraspar helped us address the fundamentals and vetted our ideas and expectations for success. Their solution was also the best we had evaluated and offered us the flexibility and functionality to fit our culture and processes. This has been a critical factor in getting us to where we are now.” says Jayant Raniga, Brand Manager, PureJewels.

The eCommerce site was launched in October 2003 and the company embarked on building traffic to it with a limited budget. Raniga “We went through a process of learning as much as we could about the various options available to us for online marketing before the site launch, and had a reasonably good idea how we would do it. Paraspar helped us to become self-sufficient in using the site management tools, including the reporting functions. This allowed us to work efficiently with search engines, directories, affiliates, aggregators, Adwords, Overture and fine-tune the performance of keywords and our product range. We learnt a lot about the market this way.”

The PureJewels web site exceeded all expectations and drew many appreciative comments from customers, suppliers and partners, and sales started steadily building upto the Christmas period. The management feel that they have taken the right direction with the new brand name and web site. Raniga “We are very excited about the whole thing. The new brand and eCommerce site have allowed us to appeal to a market we had no access to before and have opened up many new opportunities. We have started discussions with some great jewellery designers and brands. Our collections are expanding and the customer base and traffic to the site are growing nicely. We are also producing a printed mini-catalogue to promote the range and web site offline and are considering a retail showroom.”