The Grant Jewelry Factory is a jewelry company in St. Petersburg that has grown from a small gold and diamond private jewelry workshop founded in 1999.
According to the Federal Assay Chamber, it is among the TOP 100 Russian gold jewelry manufacturing companies.
The Grant company has partnership relations with individual entrepreneurs and trading houses in Russia and Belarus and a sales office in Kazakhstan.
Over the past two years, the Grant jewelry manufacturer has become the leader in the jewelry industry in the North-West region. The company enjoys the loyalty of its existing customers and attracts new ones thanks to its manufacture of high-quality and unique jewelry designs.
The company’s director general, Stanislav Mazurchik, told Rough&Polished about what is needed to run a successful business, as well as about the company’s latest collections and future plans.
Many companies have closed their stores and showrooms recently or moved online, and you keep on advancing and becoming one of the leaders. How do you do it?
Our company specializes both in classics and in quite innovative jewelry, so our jewelry is in demand even in challenging times.
We have to quickly adapt to changing environment.
Innovation in design and manufacture is fundamental to success, as well as being in line with the trends in the global and domestic markets. That’s why we have both neoclassical style jewelry (the Mobius and the Waterfall collections) and fancy designs (Snake, Somnium, the new Shanghai collection, and others). Technologically, we are as good as the international brands now. We have filed a patent application for some clasps used for our company’s jewelry items as no other company makes them.
Transparency is very important as jewelry buyers are usually very sensitive to the quality and origin of gemstones and metals. We are manufacturers and we focus on providing transparent information about our jewelry and guarantees of high quality. For example, each jewelry item bears the name of our company to emphasize that we are responsible for the quality of our goods. We also issue a certificate and a lifetime guarantee so that the client can contact us if any questions arise when using our jewelry items.
But there are a lot of high-quality jewelry items on the market. Competition is quite tough, despite the fact that the economic situation in the country is not conducive to purchasing non-essential items.
Under otherwise equal conditions, I think it is also important to build a positive reputation. In addition to the high quality of the jewelry we offer, this means high quality of services for our clients whose loyalty we appreciate. We regularly exchange information with them, receive sales data from customers and prepare statistically based recommendations for them. When working consistently, our goods account for 25% of the total turnover per week. According to statistics from clients, our jewelry items sell 5-10 times more than those made by other manufacturers, even though the markup on our jewelry items is 2-3 times higher than on the goods made by other companies. The markup on some of our jewelry items reaches 600%, and yet, we are among the top sellers. According to one of our partners in the Southern Federal District, our jewelry items saved his company last summer since they were the only ones popular with the customers who purchased goods from him.
But financial stability is ensured primarily by effective production management?
Not only by effective production management, but also by the management of all the company’s resources. This allows you to survive difficult times and even grow, expanding your business on a global scale. In the summer, there were many trips around the world, including Kazakhstan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan... Receiving income from different markets reduces the risks caused by changes in one country.
You have done a good job of attracting attention to your jewelry using successful marketing, advertising on social networks...
Our investments in marketing strategy and advertising and regular publications on social networks allow the audience to see our brand more often - this increases its visibility and strengthens confidence in the company. We pay a lot of attention to ensuring a customer feedback and constantly communicate with them through social networks, quickly respond to their comments, questions and suggestions, as well as to requests from partners, and conduct customer surveys at exhibitions. This helped create a community of loyal partners around our brand, identify our target audience, increase the company’s reach, and develop a content strategy. Active interaction with the audience and increasing the company’s coverage (our content is distributed further through reposts and comments) is efficient, gives us a positive experience and contributes to a steady increase in sales. Often, new clients come to us for a specific collection, and after viewing the jewelry pieces we offer, they become our regular clients.
We also send email newsletters regularly to our subscribers and customers with the information about our new collections, discounts and special offers.
We take part in jewelry exhibitions and fairs to demonstrate our jewelry items and make new contacts.
There is also one point: your lightweight jewelry items, fancy and exquisite, look much more expensive than one expects looking at their price tags. What kind of technology do you use? Tell us about your know-how and signature features.
We create new trends in the jewelry industry: we experiment with new shapes, work on technological solutions and approaches. And we try to create something innovative for each collection that no one else has created yet.
Our main know-how is study of the strength of materials, mechanics and plasticity. For example, we have very convenient clasps for fastening a bracelet, and reliable clasps for earrings - so our jewelry items do not get caught on anything or get lost. Thanks to customer feedback, if a problem arises, we quickly resolve it.
If you look at our chokers and bracelets from the Waterfall collection, you will notice that our clasps are not just comfortable, but completely invisible and protected. We even had to attach the tag right next to a clasp so that during the demonstration of a jewelry piece it would be easy to find it.
Our jewelry items should not deform or break because we give a lifetime guarantee for our jewelry. At the last exhibition, clients really liked the company’s neoclassical earrings but we discovered that the clasps were insufficiently reliable and redesigned them, so we will present a new version at the next exhibition in four months.
We have many ‘hidden’ inventions, for example, there is a cast that repeats our logo. There is a corporate pattern and grid where the company name is encrypted. In general, the main thing is a responsible approach to each collection and each jewelry item.
What materials do you like to use in your jewelry?
We work with gold and diamonds, which have been chosen and preferred by various people for thousands of years. We very rarely use other precious stones, such as emeralds and rubies, usually if the design of our collections requires their use. Our most favorite gemstone is a diamond.
On every jewelry item you manufacture, there is a diamond dot after the name of your brand - Grant. And you have started making chains with diamonds. Why do you find diamonds so attractive?
Diamonds have a special meaning and appeal thanks to their amazing brilliance, crystal clarity and sparkle. It is well known that diamonds have been high-status jewelry items since ancient times. They are associated with luxury and power, and are also used in engagement rings as a symbol of eternal love, not to mention their use as an investment, which is especially true for large-size and rare diamonds.
Classic diamond cutting is very labor-intensive, and diamonds require an appropriate setting. As a jeweler, I want to create perfect jewelry items, that is why our factory places a diamond dot after the company name in each of our jewelry items as a sign of a ‘diamond quality’.
Your new collections appear so often that it is difficult to keep track of them. What inspires your creative team to design them?
There are many sources of inspiration for jewelry artists and designers, including nature, culture, history and even modern trends. The names of our collections speak for themselves, they are Somnium, Mobius, Princess, Space, Blossom, City Jungle, Zebra, Versal…
By the way, the Waterfall collection ranked first in the Golden Style nomination at the latest Junwex exhibition held in St. Petersburg.
There was an interesting story related to our Tiger collection. One client from Moscow saw a photo of the jewelry set on Telegram and asked us where she could buy it. We advised her to visit our Moscow partner but, unfortunately, he did not have a ring of the size she needed. We found out that our partners in Vladikavkaz had the jewelry set with a ring of the right size! We wrote to her, and soon received an online review from this happy customer who flew to Vladikavkaz for a weekend to purchase the jewelry set.
Which collection is the most successful and which one is your favorite?
The Snake collection is the most successful now. But as for my favorite collection, it’s a difficult question. How can I choose? All of them are my favorite collections.
We closely monitor the needs of our partners, so we take their requests into account when creating new collections. Much attention is paid to symbols. For example, 2024 is the year of the Green Dragon. For many people, this mythic animal is associated with wisdom, strength and wealth, and such a symbol attracts good luck to your home.
What are your plans for the nearest future?
At the next exhibition, we are going to present the Shanghai collection dedicated to the next year of the Green Dragon. We hope that it will be a pleasant surprise to you.
We will continue to develop new design solutions and technologies. These include the use of new materials, processing methods, and the creation of more technologically advanced clasps.
We will continue the promotion campaign on social networks, increase our online time, as well as upgrade our websites and create virtual platforms for viewing and selection of jewelry.
Of course, we will use every opportunity to expand our business into new markets - both the domestic and international ones. This requires finding new customers and distributors in different parts of the world.
The future of the jewelry industry lies in close cooperation between manufacture and trade. Therefore, our plan is to strengthen the relations and maintain the interactions with our partners, offering new ways of cooperation.
It is important to be optimistic about the future and believe that the jewelry industry has good prospects for the future.
Also, our dream is that St. Petersburg becomes not only the cultural, but the jewelry capital of Russia, too. For our part, we will make every effort to achieve this.
Galina Semyonova for Rough&Polished
