Brand Profile: Simon Harrison

Do you think that fashion has a significant role to play in jewellery? Yes, absolutely. Fashion can liberate us from the daily routine of our lives; lift our spirits and make us smile. My personal view is that jewellery is a part of fashion, not something different or separate from fashion. It’s all about body adornment a simple desire to signal something about who we are by what we wear. A well-chosen piece of jewellery can show personality. It can suggest ‘you can talk to me, and by the way, I might be interesting’. Can you tell me how fashion influences your own jewellery collection? If you take fashion as your focus it connects you better with the customer. It aligns your outlook with the wearer’s true aspirations and motivations for buying jewellery. Our aim is to offer our customers colour, form and a sense of fun. Craftsmanship is really important to us, but we try not to overwhelm our customers with complex technical detail. Our customers tend to connect with their jewellery on an intuitive, emotional, level. You use the word fashion in an interesting way. Does that inspire your jewellery? Fashion is a part of culture like music or literature. I believe that all culture needs narrative or lyrical content to connect it to the human imagination. Stories help us to connect to other people. Giving a gifts often involves telling a story. Stories are what gives nostalgic value to jewellery. Designers are often asked what inspires their work, because people simply want to connect to the story behind the product. I am mainly inspired by stories. Storytelling is part of our everyday lives. Stories form the basis of most conversations, getting passed from person to person. They are the building blocks of communication and relationships. What does fashion have to offer the jewellery retailer? Fashion gives us something to talk about. Like football, it’s not too personal or invasive. When a new customer walks into a jewellery store, there is a lot of subtle nuance involved in when to start a conversation and how to engage a person’s interest. A compelling sales story can act as an ice-breaker and help to get a customer talking. Jewellery with good fashion content is easy to talk about. As conversations around fashion stories grow they help the retailer to build relationships with their customers, leading to regular repeat sales. It’s normal within the world of fashion for customers to return several times a season to update their personal collections. When I talk to my customers I find that they already have in mind what piece of jewellery they want to buy next, because it connects the story. Our customers love the comments they receive when wearing the jewellery and we’ve discovered that this is why we have such a high number of returning customers. Jewellers that embrace a fashion conscious outlook simply drive more repeat business.