RAleigh – When jewelry sales started dropping with the economy in 2008, Bailey’s Fine Jewelry President and owner Clyde Bailey leaned on a trusted set of advisers for suggestions: his children.
At their urging, Bailey’s gift line at the Cameron Village store was expanded, the company opened Pandora-brand jewelry stores at three of the state’s most prestigious shopping malls, and it took over two jewelry store locations in Raleigh and in Fayetteville.
The company has more than doubled in staff size, from 68 people to almost 140, over the past 10 months. As for sales, after falling to $15 million in the fiscal year that ended in September 2009, Clyde Bailey projects the company will reach $20 million for 2010.
“It has been a blessing to be able to grow in an economy like this,” says Bailey’s wife and business partner, Jane Bailey. “We were well prepared to take these steps, and having the children in the business made it possible.”
Over the course of the past few years, both of Clyde and Jane Bailey’s children and their spouses have become involved in growing the business that Clyde Bailey’s father opened in 1948 in a Rocky Mount store no wider than a couple of bowling lanes.
Son Trey Bailey, a graduate of Elon University, has taken over as director of operations. Trey’s wife, Marci Bailey, is a jewelry designer. Daughter Morgan Bailey helped expand the gift business before she became a stay-at-home mother a year ago. Her husband, Doug Morgan, decided to leave the banking industry and join the family business as director of development and community relations.
“They’ve taken what Clyde and I have built and made it even better,” Jane Bailey says.
Making it to the third generation of family ownership is bucking the odds, says family business expert James Lea. “The third generation is perhaps 50 or more years away from the founding of the company, but if they’re smart they’ll nourish and sustain those characteristics that have helped make the business successful for all that time,” Lea says. “Of course, they’re also living in an age that’s dramatically different from granddad’s, and they have to capitalize on those differences and not be smothered by them.”
In an example of capitalizing on the existing market, Trey Bailey convinced the family a couple of years ago to add the Pandora jewelry line to Bailey’s stores even though it required more case space and more sales training. In the first year, the line brought about 1,200 new customers to the stores, he says, because many of Pandora’s beads retail for $30 or less.
“It helped get people in the door,” he says.
When Pandora started licensing franchises in the United States, the Baileys created a subsidiary, Bailey’s Jewelry Ventures, and signed on to open the first three Pandora stores in North Carolina.
The core values of the company are always front and center, Doug Morgan says. The company initiated “Daily 10” meetings a few years ago in which store managers each day host a meeting with staff to share examples and lessons from one of the company’s 10 core values. The values – including gratitude, encouragement, sincerity and humility – are spelled out on laminated cards that are given to every new employee when they join the company.
“Every decision we make goes back to the core values,” says Marci Bailey.
Bailey’s core values lessons have helped launch a couple of the company’s more successful marketing campaigns.
In “Finders, Keepers,” gifts inside a signature black-and-white striped Bailey’s Box are hidden around town with the intent of creating a feel-good moment for someone.
Bailey’s “A Time to Give” campaign invites patrons to visit a Bailey’s store for a watch battery replacement. Instead of paying for the battery, customers are asked to make a donation to select nonprofit organizations. The program has raised more than $75,000 to date.
Such programs appear to be paying off. Bailey’s Fine Jewelry has an “A” rating from the Better Business Bureau of North Carolina with no complaints filed over the past 36 months.
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