.... Ryan Arnold Interview (cont.)

4. In your most recent role as CEO of an independent jewelry chain in Chicago, you recognized the threat of out of market competition was imminent. You chose to use this as an opportunity to redefine the brand and streamline the internal processes. Describe what the business “looked like” when you began this process.

The business had evolved quite a bit since it was founding in 1964 as a rare coin and estate buying business. In the ‘80’s the business grew very quickly and went through several transformations.
In the early part of this decade, I took the management team through a self discovery process. We needed to figure out what we were passionate about, and what we do better than anyone else in our market.
Through this process the team realized that the passion was to “help people celebrate life’s special moments” and that what we sold were “symbols of love and success”. Once this was accomplished, we could look at the day to day things we were involved in and start stripping away the things that did not fit with our vision. One example is that we closed the coin department in three of our locations.

5. What was the biggest and/or scariest risk you made when starting this process?

The biggest change we made was closing two underperforming stores and opening two new stores within a 12 month period. The two locations that were closed were in areas that were good for estate buying (the old business model) and moved to areas that were better suited for luxury retail.

6. In all your years as a retail executive, what do you consider your finest achievement?

Executing the strategy listed above during a difficult economic time, funding the projects solely from the proceeds of store closing sales.