Designs are fantastic - elegant, simple and beautiful. You should know that already. I have been a fan for a few years.
The shop is really neat as well. Sort of museum like. Also a little like someone found an abandoned small warehouse and dropped a bunch of neat looking stuff in it.
Staff strikes the very difficult balance between friendly and accessible and downtown cool.
But what really moved me to write is a phenomenal customer service experience I just had (and trust me I know as I am a journeyman in high end retail).
I purchased a ring from T.M. about a year ago. Important to note that it was beautiful and functioned perfectly. But I decided for my own not especially rational reasons that I wanted to wear it on a different finger.
I went into the shop to see if the ring could be re-sized. The difference was +2 sizes which given the nature of the ring was way too much to do and maintain the design integrity of the ring. This is the sort of thing that a store like this takes seriously. I was not overly surprised and respected this as I respect that this is an artisanal business rather than just one moving luxury commodities.
However, the craftsperson who was working with me told me that Mr. Muehling was in the workshop, had looked at the ring himself (and yeah this did give me a bit of a nerdgasm) and wanted me to be completely happy with my ring. So they offered to take it back at the full value for which I had purchased it and would sell me the brand new ring that did fit with me only paying the difference (significantly more gold so justifiably higher price).
Going back to my retail background. I know that a lot of big retailers do this sort of thing. But I think there is a misperception that due to mark-ups this isn't a big cost. The truth is that if an item can't be re-sold (and the likely scenario is that my ring was not re-sellable and would be melted down to be used elsewhere) the retailer at a minimum loses any profit they would have made from that item and often even more. So we are just doing it in the hopes of future business from you.
In the case of an independent like Ted Muehling the costs for this sort of generosity are even more significant as it isn't spread out over the sort of volume that a multi-store retailer has. Also, the possible benefit of future purchases is less assured due to the nature of the product (i.e. how much jewelry does one person purchase).
So besides being blown away by the beauty of the pieces, I am completely blown away by this experience and wanted to express my thanks by trumpeting the virtues of Ted Muehling.
I would say that this will result in my future business, but frankly I already loved the brand, have bought more than one item both for myself and as gifts, and would have continued to do so in the future even if this hadn't happened.
But seriously Yelposphere, get out of the mass retailers once in a while and experience what buying from a true independent craftsperson can really be like. read more
