Jeweller - July, Edition I 2020

New buying group reaches membership goal
Independent Jewellers Collective has achieved its goal of more than 40 retailer members.
Independent Jewellers Collective (IJC), which was
formed in January 2020, has surpassed its initial
goal of 40 retailer members, securing 44 as of 1
July.
Josh Zarb, CEO IJC, told Jeweller that the group
still had more than 100 expressions of interest
pending, and that the number of member stores
was expected to increase in the coming weeks.
“We’ve been fortunate in that we’ve had expressions
of interest evenly spread throughout the whole
country, [and] we have members who have joined
us from basically all states and territories so far,”
Zarb said.
While the timing of the launch was complicated
by COVID-19, the pandemic forced IJC to adapt its
processes, particularly in communication.
“The big challenge was the isolation as I would have
ordinarily had face-to-face meetings, but I became
a good friend of Zoom. Now I don’t know how I
would live without it!” Zarb said.
“COVID-19 allowed us to take a step back; it allowed
us to really refine what we were doing with our
resources. We spent the time still assisting retailers
– we helped members with marketing, we turned
on all of our communications platforms and put
together private social media groups – and it made
for the perfect opportunity now to hit the ground
running above our targeted number.”
IJC has received positive feedback from its first
44 members, with its technological assets and
“community of like-minded people” impressing
retailers during the lockdown period.
“Everyone has been very surprised with how many
resources we’ve got behind us in such a short
amount of time,” Zarb said.
“Members were presented with our entire scope of
assistance and our network of people; it’s not just
our staff, I’ve got an amazing network of third-party
resources to help our retailers, which were built
through my industry relationships over more than
20 years.”
He added, “The group was always set up to be a
smaller group [of] really good quality retailers and
supplier partners. And so far, touching a lot of
wood, we’ve ticked every box.
“COVID-19 allowed us to take a
step back; it allowed us to really
refine what we were doing with our
resources... It made for the perfect
opportunity now to hit the ground
running”
– Josh Zarb, Independent Jewellers Collective
“We’ve got nearly all the suppliers on board [that
we set out to work with] and we’re working through
that process.”
When asked about IJC’s supplier relationships,
Zarb said, “I always had a core group of people that
I wanted to work with. At IJC, we do not buy and
hold any stock ourselves so we definitely want to
work and support the local supplier network.
“We have a vision to work with good suppliers
and work with them more one-on-one,
through things like product curation, ranges
within ranges, and working with them on web
and digital strategy. Having a tighter working
relationship with our suppliers, as well as retailers,
is what’s important to us.”
In the near-term, IJC will focus on building more
supplier relationships and finalising trading
terms, rolling out its Christmas marketing plan,
and preparing to launch more digital features and
support for retailers, including custom design.