Visit DiamondJourney.com

An Established Company, a New Way to Do Business

The Stuckey Company has sold diamonds for a long time. As an affiliate of the DeBeers network, the Stuckey Company operates in the rarified atmosphere of high-end jewelry, supplying a network of retail jewelers with the highest quality of diamond rings, pendants and earrings. Like many long-standing, established businesses, the Stuckey Company discovered that the standard e-commerce paradigm of the web didn’t fit the proven model that they had established or respect the close relationships they had with their jewelers. The Stuckey Company came to Somerset Design Group looking for a partner who could help them translate their vision into internet software, in a way that would enhance their existing business relationships, using the internet to enhance the positions of their dealers, rather than to undermine them, as often happens when manufacturers move onto the internet.

A Website with a Vision

Stuckey Company’s marketers knew they needed a web strategy and a message that would cut through the clutter in a crowded online marketplace. Their vision became the Diamond Journey, a celebration of a woman’s life-long love affair with diamonds. This special focus became the driving force behind the website as it was tailored to address women as a primary audience. The site content would reflect their belief that as a woman goes through life, diamonds take on special meaning and help mark sentimental and endearing moments that can be cherished forever and that every diamond jewelry piece that a woman owns is as unique as the woman who wears it.

Advanced Affiliate Relationships

Getting the support of the existing network of jewelers was absolutely crucial to the success of DiamondJourney.com. Other manufacturers' efforts at marketing diamonds on the internet had often resulted in cutting the local jeweler out of the equation, resulting in the manufacturer selling directly to the consumer. The Stuckey Company recognized that this was never going to be the way they wanted to do business. In their view the local jeweler is a vital part of a successful diamond-buying experience, serving to educate and take care of their customers while making a very special and emotion-laden purchase in a way that a website never could.

Working together with us, The Stuckey Company and Somerset Design Group came up with a unique approach to managing the dealer-affiliate relationship, allowing jewelers to participate and benefit from the DiamondJourney.com. When a customer shops DiamondJourney.com, they buy not from Stuckey, but from their own local, participating jeweler. This gives the customer the advantage of the immediacy and convenience of the internet, but forges a relationship between the customer and a local jeweler that would give them all the benefits of having an experienced, knowledgeable staff who can assist and advise the customer in a relationship that can last a lifetime.

As a result, existing jewelers saw the DiamondJourney.com website not as a potential source of competition but as a great opportunity to expand their own ability to do business on the web. This enthusiastic support has reaped great benefits for DiamondJourney.com, yielding wide-spread adoption of the tools, a greater interest in the products and services DiamondJourney.com offers to jewelers and local, grassroots promotion of the website.