JNA Awards 2020 - Jewellery Industry Best Practices

JNA AWARDS • 2020 85 that can be worn daily. This led MCLON to launch a campaign for “Everyday Jewellery.” MCLON also looked beyond industry trends to gather useful marketing ideas from fast- growing, non-jewellery items such as fashion and footwear. Along with this, systems were put in place to enable next-day delivery or at least assure that products are delivered three days after the placement of orders. Industry Innovation of the Year – Marketing Traditional jewellery retail businesses usually require a significant investment and come with certain limitations. While this model has worked in the past, the rapidly changing times have begun to require more innovative solutions. “Sometimes experience can be a trap. Why can’t people think outside the box? It’s because many choose to build a cage for themselves – a cage called experience,” says Sun. To avoid such pitfalls, the company made extensive efforts to fortify its business model by incorporating technology and digital platforms into the equation. MCLON diversified its talent pool and invited architects from Alibaba in 2018 to study its existing business model and find ways to combine it with e-commerce management methods and system processes. As a result, the Haoban App was released a year later. This platform enables the company to complete online transactions, open additional communication channels for its clients and even continuously update its inventory. “We foresee a combination of businessmen, scientists and engineers working with us in the future. The businessmen come up with ideas, scientists provide the overall planning and technology, while engineers program the systems and develop the operation,” shares Sun. Due to these modern innovations, MCLON was able to break new ground even in these challenging times. First off, it was able to lower capital requirements by 40 percent, as compared to the original investment needed to run the business. The company plans to further bring it down to 10 percent in the future. Despite opening seven new shops from March 2019 to 2020, the number of store employees has also dropped by 10 percent. The positive effects also extended well into the company’s client base, which increased by 500,000 customers, while repeat clients grew to 65 percent. Customer satisfaction, and online consultation and processing rates were also rated at more than 99 percent. In spite of the pandemic, the company was able to achieve its online sales revenue target in February 2020, marking a 5,250-percent increase in online sales compared with January 2020 figures. March 2020 sales figures also showed an exponential increase of 11,765 percent over April 2019 numbers. Whether in serving the post-90s generation or operating in the new millennium, MCLON certainly stands tall among its peers in the jewellery retail space. 1. MCLON staff during the ‘Looking for Firefly’ brand event on Chinese Valentine’s Day 2019 2. Divine Brilliant diamond rings 3. Firefly Collection 4. Song He Sun, Chairman of MCLON Jewellery Company Limited 5. Divine Brilliant diamond earrings and charm 3 4 5