How Can Product Managers Convince Millennials To Buy Jewelry? [The Accidental Product Manager]

How can product managers get millennials interested in jewelry?
Image Credit: Kris Fricke

Being a product manager for a high-end jewelry company would be a pretty good job to have. You really would not have to sell all that much of your product in order to have a good year. However, these product managers have started to run into a problem. It turns out that the next generation of jewelry buyers, the millennials, just don’t seem to be into the pretty, sparkly, things that you wear every once-in-a-while. These are the things that their parents and grandparents used to buy. What’s a product manager to do?

The Problem With Millennials

Let’s face it: today’s millennials are just not being turned on by traditional high-end boutiques that are more like museums than stores. Jewelry product managers are facing a big challenge here. It goes without saying that everyone needs clothes. However, not so much when it comes to jewelry. The target customers are members of the causal Friday generation who simply don’t dress up all that much. The product development definition for jewelry is going to have to change. When you talk with them, the millennial generation who grew up wearing things such as streetwear styles will tell you that they view classic jewelry as being too old-fashioned. They view it as being something that is either worn or given only on special occasions.

One of the biggest problems that jewelry product managers are facing is that millennials tend to dress up less than their parents did. This is both for going to work and for going out. This means the jewelry product managers are going to have to find ways to shift how they market their products in order to find ways to make their products once again relevant if they want to have something positive to put on their product manager resume. What had worked for jewelry product managers in the past was that they could get millennials interested in jewelry for weddings and anniversaries or perhaps even as gifts. This has had to shift as product managers are now trying to get their potential customers to buy jewelry for themselves to wear anytime and not have to wait for special occasions to occur.

The good news for jewelry product managers is that millennials are interested in precious metals and valuable stones. However, the challenge that these product managers are now facing is that they need to find a way to turn these starting ingredients into modern products that will allow them to turn millennials into paying customers. This is going to call for some marketing. Product managers are facing two different types of challenges. The first is to find a way to design jewelry that will appeal to millennial shoppers. The next is finding a way to persuade millennials to purchase jewelry for themselves at any time and not limit themselves to just buying it as a once-in-a-while gift to celebrate a milestone.

How To Get Millennials To Buy Jewelry

The first thing that jewelry product managers are going to have to do is to redesign the stores where they sell their jewelry. They are going to have to rethink their store designs. At the same time they are going to have to make changes to what they are selling. They are going to have to come up with edgier, lower cost collections of jewelry. These collections are going to have to get people that the millennials recognize to promote their collections such as models Lily Aldridge, Bella Hadid, and actress Elle Fanning.

In order to get millennials to start to purchase more jewelry, product managers are going to have to get aggressive. This means that they will need to design products that their millennial customers can then personalize after they have purchased them. They are going to have to make a big deal out of the company’s ethical sourcing of the components that go into each piece of jewelry in addition to the company’s support for sustainability efforts. Product managers need to make purchasing the jewelry easy to do and distinctive both in the store and online. In order to catch the attention of their customers, product managers will need to occasionally host pop-up stores that have limited-edition pieces of jewelry.

What product managers need to understand is that when millennials do purchase jewelry, they are often seeking out pieces that are eclectic. They also have a preference for artisanal jewelry from small or newer brands or handcrafted works that are sold online. When millennials wear jewelry, they do so in creative ways. They like to mix and match expensive pieces of jewelry with inexpensive pieces of jewelry. At the same time, millennials like to make their own jewelry or customize pieces that they have purchased in order communicate their personal style.

What All Of This Means For You

As product managers one of our biggest challenges is getting our customers to be aware of our product. This is a problem that jewelry product managers don’t have – everyone already knows about jewelry. However, these product managers are starting to run into a significant problem – the millennial generation is not all that interested in buying jewelry like their parents and grandparents used to. Product managers are going to have to get a good grasp of what is going on and then use their product manager job description to come up with some creative solutions.

Jewelry product managers are facing a couple of significant issues. The first of these is that their stores are more like museums instead of places where millennials would want to shop. Secondly, millennials are not used to wearing classic jewelry – it strikes them as being too old-fashioned. Millennials don’t get dressed up as much as their parents used to. The good news for jewelry product manager is that millennials are interested in precious metals and stones. Now all these product managers need to do is to convince millennials to buy jewelry even when they are not celebrating a milestone. Jewelry product managers need to redesign their stores and create low cost lines of jewelry. It will be important for product managers to create products that can be personalized and to demonstrate that they ethically source their products. It will be important to realize that millennials are looking for unique pieces of jewelry that they can then further customize to match their personal style.

Let’s face it: jewelry has been around forever and it’s not going to be going anywhere. However, if product managers don’t get busy then they are going to miss out on selling to the next generation of jewelry customers: the millennials. The good news is that this set of customers will buy jewelry, just not in the same way that worked for their parents. Product managers need to take the time to understand their customers and then change their stores, their products, and how they sell their jewelry in order to meet the needs of their new customers. This can be done, let’s watch and learn as jewelry product managers transform beautiful jewelry into successful products.

– Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Product Management Skills

Question For You: How do you think that jewelry stores should be changes to meet the needs of millennials?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So let’s picture a typical evening for you. You get home from work, sort through the mail, change clothes, click on the TV, and then you start to think about dinner. Assuming that you have not gone crazy and called up Uber Eats to deliver you some restaurant food, you are going to be on the hook to create a meal for yourself. If you have some chef skills this won’t be all that hard to do; however, if you are like the rest of us you are going to be searching around for something to eat. One handy solution that a lot of us often go to is the so called “TV Dinner” – a frozen meal that has all of the important parts of a dinner such as vegetables, meat, and a desert. Is this a meal that product managers could once again make popular?

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