At Jared stores, the aura is changing — and it’s happening just as the jewelry brand celebrates 30 years in business.
Fine jewelry stores can be intimidating, but Jared stores are being renovated, lightened up and elevated with new product displayed in freestanding vitrines to encourage closer, side-by-side interactions between associates and shoppers discovering the jewelry. Those traditional, extended glass vitrines that create more of a separation between shoppers and staff are being replaced, and the color palettes of store interiors are changing from dark brown to tourmaline, sunstone and topaz. Certain spaces are differentiated with gold or blue accent wall coverings, and there’s new carpeting in bridal areas.
“We’ve placed such an emphasis on creating a sense of intimacy,” said Claudia Cividino, president of Jared. “We are evolving our way of selling to be more modern.”
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The new fixturing, she said, allows clients to get close to the product. “Before, it was a more formal experience where the jewelry consultant is behind the case. In this selling ceremony, where you’re buying an engagement ring, it’s such a considered purchase. The transaction easily lasts an hour in our stores.”
The idea is to have the customer seated and comfortable, interacting with an associate, especially for bridal. “In fact, we build such a rapport with the guest in this situation that many of our jewelry consultants have been invited to their weddings,” Cividino said.
Touring the renovated Carle Place, Long Island, store with a guest, Cividino selects a $1,300 Italo D’Oro necklace. “Feel it. It’s just featherweight, and very comfortable to wear. It’s a statement piece. The necklace is woven in very fine threads of 14-karat gold, like a textile,” Cividino observed. It’s typical of Jared’s collection, which Cividino characterized as “approachable, luxurious and high-quality.” Perhaps a bit less accessible for some is what Cividino highlights next: an Italian-made Zydo sparkle bracelet with handset diamonds and special spring technology for stretch, priced $55,000.
Then she shifts to the glass-enclosed design and service center manned by five jewelers who design, repair, personalize and clean jewelry. “We train our own jewelers. They are hard to find,” Cividino said.
The service is available to not only Jared customers but those who purchased jewelry somewhere else. It’s linked to Jared’s Foundry service that has artisans who work with customers to create bespoke pieces with a range of options, from altering an existing piece to a design from scratch. Every Jared store has access to 150,000 units of loose diamonds per day on average, adding to the element of specialized service.
Deeper into the store, Cividino shows off another innovation, the Rare Bond proprietary men’s band collection which provides different ways to customize a band, with a choice of materials, finishes, widths and personalized engraving.
“When Jared launched 30 years ago, they really disrupted the space,” Cividino noted. “They were named Jared the Galleria to signify the breadth of the assortment. The business started in the Midwest, and very quickly developed scale across the country. We’re now at 223 stores.”
Having Galleria in the brand name seemed dated, so it was dropped earlier this year; the business is now called Jared Jewelers.
With a few exceptions, Jared stores are all freestanding, Cividino said. “We are not mall based. We’re more of a destination.” The stores average almost 5,000 square feet in size, have parking spaces and stand on their own, as opposed to being inline and less conspicuous in malls.
“We’re a local jeweler — with scale,” Cividino said.
Last year, 10 stores in the fleet rose to a ‘diamond level’ product assortment that included Italian 18-karat gold from Crivelli with handset natural diamonds, pearls from Yoko of London, gemstones, as well as an elevated offering of bridal and men’s jewelry. The merchandise entered into stores during the summer of 2023. Jared launches a new collection into the market a few times a year, almost double the rate than in the past, while keeping a core collection at the center.
When Jared was founded by Sol and Roger Weinberg, who were part of the family behind Sterling Jewelers which Signet purchased, its prices started at $150. Rolex watches were also sold. But in the last two years stores vacated the $150 price point, and currently prices start at around $300. “It’s actually a big change,” Cividino said, though the $150 price point is still seen on the Jared website.
“We did not renovate any stores in 2023 but here in 2024, because we saw the client response to what we had done with product, we are refurbishing many of our stores in the fleet. By the end of this year, we will have renovated 45 stores, roughly 20 percent of our fleet, and we will continue along the path to premiumize the Jared experience.”
Cividino knows a thing or two about premium product. Prior to being named president of Jared, she served as the chief executive officer of Loro Piana North America. Earlier, Cividino held senior executive positions spanning over two decades at Bally of Switzerland, Prada SpA and Saint Laurent.
When she joined Jared in January 2023, she spent a lot of time meeting with clients, watching transactions unfold, understanding what mattered to them. So much of the strategy she created at Jared has been informed by those learnings.
“I think the essence of Jared is the fact that we democratize luxury,” Cividino said. “What I mean by that is that our spaces are designed to feel luxurious and special and yet be completely unintimidating. And that is also inherent in the values of how we train and develop our people. The selling ceremony here is never arrogant or off-putting.”
Jared specializes in accessible luxury with engagement and bridal jewelry, custom jewelry, timepieces, men’s and women’s fashion jewelry, and curates collections from brands and designers such as Vera Wang, Pnina Tornai, Le Vian and Tag Heuer. Jared is a division of Signet Jewelers, which also operates Kay Jewelers, Zales, Banter by Piercing Pagoda, Diamonds Direct, JamesAllen.com, Blue Nile and other jewelry brands.
“I come from the luxury part of the world, and one of the things that I love about this brand is the fact that we have always believed that every customer deserves a luxury experience. At Jared, we deliver that. In this past year, we’ve been really honored to be recognized with several industry awards,” Cividino said, citing “Retailer of the Year” by ACE, or Accessories Council Excellence, and a “Best Service” award given by Forbes.
Soon after Cividino became Jared’s president, she devised a three-year strategy. One of its fundamentals was to reconnect to the founding principles to be “an accessible luxury, local jeweler” with a breadth of assortment and price points. “That’s still very much a part of our DNA today,” Cividino said. “It’s about how that [gets conveyed] to a guest. Thirty years ago it looked very different than how it comes through to a guest today.…How do we differentiate across Signet? I would say first and foremost, location, location, location. We are a freestanding jeweler. We are a destination jeweler, just in and of itself.
“From a product perspective, we are the largest banner at Signet that can span to the price points that we do, whether it be in the commitment jewelry space or the fashion space.”
How Jared’s strategy continues to evolve could be shaped by J.K Symancyk, former president of PetSmart and Signet’s new CEO since November. “I admire how the brand has evolved while staying true to its core values,” Symancyk said in a statement. “I was drawn to Signet by the strength of our banner portfolio and strong brand name awareness, including Jared’s.” He said Jared exemplifies “accessible luxury, offering a high-end yet attainable experience across all touchpoints, including the website, in-store, product design and services. Our team’s exceptional customization capabilities produce high atelier pieces for prestigious events and broadly accessible designs for consumers.”
Across the Signet portfolio, Cividino maintained, “there’s very little crossover between brands, in terms of who the customer shops with. Jared has its own customers. Zales has its own customers. Kay has its own customers. And while there is crossover, it’s very small, smaller than you might imagine. I don’t lose sleep at night about our collection strategy. I focus on who is the guest I’m serving. And how can I surprise and delight? I would say that our average customer age is slightly higher than it is for the mall banners” of Signet.
Cividino said that in the last two years, the average price at Jared has risen, though she didn’t say by how much. “It’s because of how we’ve assorted the stores, and the fact that as we’ve elevated the assortment, the consumer has shown their appreciation for what we’re offering.”
Lab-created diamonds have been gaining popularity and taking some market share from natural ones. “Our philosophy is that we stay on the guests’ agenda, and we offer an incredible assortment of both natural and lab-created diamonds,” Cividino said. “We believe strongly in the values and the qualities of natural diamonds, and what we find is that the guest does too.”
Signet does not break out the individual financial performances of its divisions, and Cividino declined to disclose Jared’s annual volume. But she did provide some commentary on bestsellers, indicating that women’s fashion jewelry across the board is performing very well.
“Women are really understanding the value of this category and are more interested.” Increasingly, in their jewelry selections, “Women think about it as part of their wardrobe, in a way that I don’t think has always been the case. And I think that young women are entering the jewelry category…with plated gold at really accessible price points.”
As women get older, Cividino sees them opting for gold, and not just gold-plated pieces. “Their tastes are maturing and evolving. We see that across our business.…The performance of our gold jewelry is very, very strong. It’s led by gold necklaces and gold chains. The guest sees the value of gold. And our team has done incredible work with our gold assortment.” Much of Jared’s gold jewelry is now Italian-made, Covidino noted. “And we have really elevated the quality and the attention to detail, but the workmanship is Italian.”
Cividino also said men’s jewelry is on the rise. “As a percent of the business, men’s jewelry has improved by a few percentage points. That year-over-year growth is important. We are selling more men’s jewelry and men are generally more interested. Just as women have an interest in stacking, men now have an interest in stacking, particularly in bracelets and in necklaces. Gold chains for men is a very important category.”
For holiday, Jared’s Unspoken collection takes “center stage,” Cividino said. It’s a collection of natural diamond pendants, earrings, rings and bracelets set in high polished yellow gold as well as white gold with diamonds. Also important for holiday is Jared’s partnership with Le Vian, including a wide range of pieces on Jared’s website, for example a $420 bridal ring with a 0.5-carat diamond and a 14-karat gold setting, as well as a $14,448 ring with a 4.375-carat diamond and round 14-karat honey gold.
“E-commerce is foundational for us, because more than 80 percent of our customers discover us online before they discover us in store,” explained Cividino.
It’s also because Jared operates only 222 stores around the country. “What’s notable about our online presence is that the assortment we can offer dwarfs the assortment that we can offer in a store. In a store, we’re very curated about our offering. Online, because we still maintain price points just north of $100, we’re able to service a broader demographic, a younger guest who’s acquiring jewelry, maybe for the first time. So it is that online presence that helps us curate the in-store customer of the future.” The Jared e-commerce site lists about 35 percent to 40 percent more stock keeping units than what’s sold in Jared stores. Most online orders are picked up in the Jared stores.
“What’s interesting about our website is how much engagement jewelry we sell online,” Cividino said. “This modern consumer is totally willing to buy an engagement ring online. And I think that speaks to the level of trust that they have for Jared. It also helps that all of the services that Jared offers in its stores extend to those shopping online. We are completely interconnected from an omni perspective. And of course, because we have such excellent, extensive data, we’re really able to understand the full journey of the guest between that online touch point to either completing the purchase online, or finding and researching us online, and then entering the store to make a final purchase. At Jared, we put an increasingly important emphasis on following that whole customer journey.”
According to Cividino, over the past year Jared has introduced more newness to its assortment than in a long time. “I would say that we doubled the pace of newness of product in store this year versus the prior year,” Cividino said.
“My team does an excellent job of taking measured bets,” she added. “When we decide to launch a product across the fleet, we don’t feel like we are taking a risk, because we test and learn. We place the item online. We will put it in a select number of stores. Then we read the results, but we’ll only put it to scale when we see that the full breadth of results come through to the extent that we had intended.”
