How Ice Jewellery transformed a local family store, into a thriving online business

Ever since I was a little boy, my world has been filled with Jewellery.  My parents, Ron and Michele, founded one of Australia’s most loved brick-and-mortar jewellery stores in Wynyard Station, where it sat for over 30 years, writes Simon Molnar.

I watched my parents as they built a successful business, putting their customers at the forefront of everything they did. However, when my brother and I were in high school, we saw the way the internet was growing at such a rapid pace, and so we decided to take our parents concept to the online world.

Taking the family business online

In 2008, we began to familiarise ourselves with eBay, as we noticed it was starting to become more popular among people. It was here that we began to start selling our parents jewellery through the platform and became the largest provider on eBay.

It was evidently an incredible success as we garnered more attention and were growing in revenue – so we made the decision to transition from eBay to our own standalone website. The result was Ice Jewellery, which alongside my brother, we developed to become Australia’s largest online-only jewellery retailer.

Throughout the years, I’ve experienced and learned so much from coordinating Ice Jewellery to an online-only channel, and so, in light of COVID-19 and many more people shifting their retail stores into e-commerce platforms, here are my best tips for how we were able to transition so successfully – that you can implement in your business as well.

3 tips to successfully transition to an online store

Make sure you know how you’re going to attract traffic to your website

It’s one thing to build a state-of-the-art website, it’s another having people actually find your site online. Understand the world of Google and social media and make sure you are able to adapt to any changes that come your way. Also, don’t be afraid to go out and look for what new ways you can speak to your customers. You may unearth a new platform that your customers love where you can speak to them without your competition surrounding you.

Your customers have to be at the forefront of your business

Without customers, you don’t have a business. It’s important to provide a great customer experience when someone places an order with you both online and in-store. However it’s even more important to provide outstanding customer service when someone has a bad experience with you – and it will happen – it’s inevitable. How you treat someone when something has gone wrong will show the character behind the business and will instil trust in that customer to shop again with you, because they know that if there’s a problem in the future, they’ll be looked after.

Technology is your best friend

See how you can leverage different technologies to help you automate and to get the most out of your eCommerce website. Customers these days expect a personalised, seamless and quick online experience and there are technologies that exist to help you achieve all of these and most are very reasonably priced.

Want more? Get the latest coronavirus news and updates straight to your inbox! Follow Kochie’s Business Builders on Facebook, Twitter