Jeweller - February 2019

MY STORE
STORE: LORD
COCONUT
LOCATION: Melbourne, Australia
NAME: Mark Boldiston
POSITION: Owner
When was the renovated space
completed?
We renovated our new store in
December 2015.
Who is the target market and how did
they influence the store design?
We have a pretty broad target market in
that we cater for people who are looking
for handcrafted masculine jewellery
not usually found in a high-street store,
those who want something unique and
Australian made. We wanted to create
an environment that guys in particular,
felt comfortable in. We didn’t want it to
be ritzy or intimidating and it had to be
interesting so that even if the jewellery
wasn’t right, the customer enjoyed the
experience of coming to Lord Coconut.
With the relationship between store
ambience and consumer purchasing in
mind, which features in the store best
encourage sales?
The whole ethos and ambience of the
store is based around making the average
person feel comfortable shopping. We
think we’ve got it pretty right when we
have some customers who will spend
up to 50 minutes in the store. We’ve
turned down the lights, removed most
of the mirrors, stopped any notion of the
hard sell and generated a space where
anyone feels comfortable. We believe this
has assisted in the ‘linger factor’ so that
any purchasing decision is made on the
customer’s terms in their own time.
What is the store design’s ‘wow factor’?
I’d like to think that our wow factor was
replicating the look and ambience of a
19th century natural history museum
where the jewellery takes the place of
all those little gems or specimens found
hidden away in draws, under glass domes
and in dusty corners of such museums.
The reality is that we are based in
Mitchell House, one of Melbourne’s Art
Deco gems, a view we have highlighted
through our steel framed windows. i
February 2019 Jeweller 41