Custom jeweler Takayas Mizuno reflects on lessons in business and life

EDITOR’S NOTE: In this occasional column, we’re asking experienced custom designers and makers to share a few of the things they wished they’d known when they were getting started. Takayas Mizuno, owner of Takayas Custom Jewelry in Los Angeles, talks about well-trained sales staff, social media marketing, and the importance of listening to the customer.

I wish I knew then…
that social media is valuable for establishing trust with potential customers.

My business has always relied heavily on word-of-mouth, but early on, I didn’t think of social media as a business requirement. I’ve since learned that social media is a powerful tool because it concentrates all of your customer recommendations in one visible place for potential customers to see—essentially word-of-mouth on an exponential level. Our customers regularly post on our Facebook page, thanking us for their engagement rings, and our followers organically get to see this. Part of our trust-building approach is not to use our social media pages to bombard followers with promotions, but instead, we use our pages to share our customers’ design stories to inspire others to create their own custom piece with us. This is also fun for our customers because they get to see the step-by-step process of how their own jewelry piece came to life.

I wish I knew then…
to spend more time training sales staff in communication.

I’ve always believed that a quality jewelry piece will speak for itself (which I still stand by); however, in the beginning, I spent more time at the bench and not enough time training new hires. Early on, we received a lot of online inquiries, but I was so busy making jewelry that I didn’t realize my staff was rushing through the inquire process without explaining important details, such as the high quality materials we use or the time and labor involved in making a piece from scratch. Custom jewelry is uniquely sentimental because someone cared enough about an idea to want to turn it into a wearable work of art. Anyone can walk into a mall and pick out a ring from a showcase. If someone commissions a custom piece, she has a story behind her jewelry that she wants to share. A successful custom jewelry sale requires a well-trained sales staff who can connect with customers by attentively listening to their jewelry ideas, getting to the essence of what the customers are asking for, and most importantly, concisely communicating all of these requests to the designer. Teaching new hires this nuanced balance of warmth and efficiency requires investing a fair amount of time in one-on-one training, but it’s priceless in the end.

I wish I knew then…
that successful custom design is about listening.

There will always be a gap between the customer’s jewelry requests and your understanding as a designer, but the best advice I could give myself would be to slow down and truly try to see the customer’s point of view first before beginning any design. People like to know that you really listened to them and that you found a way to incorporate their ideas into every facet of their jewelry. Often times, customers will supply reference images or sample sketches that aren’t to your taste, but a custom jewelry piece is incredibly sentimental, and each tiny request is important. The more you are able to look past your own subjective designer standpoint and put yourself in the customer’s shoes to understand what they are asking for, the more time you will save on revisions in the long run. That being said, if a customer’s idea isn’t realistic or a structural possibility, I always let them know upfront that their request isn’t possible. However, as the professional, it’s also my job to find a workaround so that they feel like we’ve met them in the middle.