Business is still booming for Katherine Fischer and her husband, Neil, who have operated a jewelry store in downtown Santa Maria for 40 years.
When Fischer’s Fine Jewelry opened in 1979 in the 600 block of South Broadway, it didn’t have a storefront. The business started as a trade shop where Fischer and her husband did repair and custom work for about 15 jewelry stores in the Central Coast area.
Slowly, customers found out about the shop and began coming to it directly. The number of customers seeking out the shop continued to grow, as Fischer’s Fine Jewelry began transitioning away from being a trade shop.
“Around the 15-year point, we started cutting off the wholesale accounts that we were doing because our direct person-to-person business was growing so much,” Fischer said. “There wasn’t time for both.”
Shortly after phasing out the store’s wholesale clients, and growing the shop’s retail business, Fischer said they began looking for a larger location. They moved to their 1,800-square-foot shop at 225 E. Main St. in downtown Santa Maria about 20 years ago.
Nowadays, business at the shop is pretty evenly split between repair and custom work and the jewelry for sale at the shop, Fischer said.
For the custom work, the shop can make changes to existing pieces of jewelry, or create something new.
“Sometimes it is totally one of a kind from the ground up,” Fischer said. “Very often, it is taking things that a customer has—gemstones, metals—and maybe combining a number of pieces into one or two other pieces of jewelry that’s more useful for them.”
On the retail side, the shop sells rings, earrings, necklaces, and other jewelry made from both small designers and larger manufacturers. Fischer said they also sell estate jewelry, pre-owned pieces that can be either modern or antiques.
At a time when people can buy jewelry with a few clicks on a cellphone, Fischer’s Fine Jewelry continues to grow. Fischer said she credits this longevity to everybody at the store focusing on what they do well rather than worrying about how to compete with online shopping or big-box stores. This has created a strong sense of customer loyalty, Fischer said.
“We have some clients that are third generation, and that’s a wonderful thing,” Fischer said. “Also [there are] some people who used to live here … and have since moved away, but still contact us when they have needs. So we’re working with people from out of state, and, in one case, out of the country.”
Fischer said the store plans to commemorate the past 40 years of serving these long-term clients, and other members of the public, with special events later this month. Visit fischersjewelry.com for more information.
Highlight
• The Allan Hancock College Winery is hosting an event to celebrate its fifth anniversary on Sept. 21 from 6 to 9 p.m. at Presqu’ile Winery. Tickets for the event are $100 per person, which includes one bottle of pinot noir. The event is a benefit for the Hancock Viticulture and Enology Foundation. For more information, visit hancockcollege.edu.
Staff Writer Zac Ezzone wrote this week’s Biz Spotlight. Send ideas, tips, and interesting tidbits to spotlight@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Sep 12-19, 2019.