This review contains two stories: One of them is about jewelry, and the other is about *my*…read morejewelry. Shall we start with my jewelry? Yes, let's do that.
My engagement ring has been perched on my hand ~24/7 for the last ~3 years, and OH MY GOD I LOVE IT. I just bloody well love it. This ring is the best insurance my partner ever bought -- even when I am ready to run (not walk!) back to singledom, I think, "But I can't get divorced; I have this absolutely perfect ring pair." (I mean, I'm sure people still wear their wedding+engagement rings after getting unmarried, but it seems like maybe that would be weird?)
Todd has a whole process for helping people find an engagement ring, and it's... very chill. Very, very chill. This is not -- not upon NOT -- the kind of thing where you walk into a mall & some person with a Muppet-level fake smile says a bunch of clichéd BS while trying to upsell you some overpriced piece that they swear you can afford on their secretly 30% APR credit card. Nope. Gold'n Treasures is run on *relationships.* This is the most delightful & delightfully human jewelry-buying experience you will ever have.
This is like... you walk in. Todd, who clearly loves people (but in a laid-back way that's still comfortable for introverts -- will vouch!), says hello, offers you your choice of beverage, and welcomes you to his back room studio, where he has not one, but several, towers of trays of example rings. And whooo-boy, he's got EVERYTHING. You want classic? Got it. Modern? Got it. Looks like an antique? Yup. Looks like a Calder sculpture? Uh-huh. Simple? Absolutely. Batshit crazy giant grandma rings that take up half your finger? In spades! You weren't looking for diamonds? He's got a whole array of Sharpies for you to recolor the example rings to your liking. And Todd is *not* in a hurry. "Play!" he says. "Have fun!" he encourages. Oh, you brought your toddler with you? She gets a beverage & is also welcome to play with the example rings. This place is magic.
I spent a semi-forever going through example rings, & had selected about a dozen candidates... and Todd sent me home with homework! He gave me a URL & said, look through these, let me know what jumps out at you. I clicked & clicked & clicked, & emailed Todd with at least a half-dozen additional candidates. He said he'd order those models, and we set another appointment time.
But here's the best & most amazing part: This whole time, I was more-or-less looking for a ring that I liked well enough that my partner also liked. We have *radically* different tastes, and I have a long history of pathological people-pleasing; I guess, on some unconscious level, I felt like the tastes & opinions of the person purchasing the ring were more important than the tastes & opinions of the person who was actually going to wear the ring. I liked something about each of the rings I'd identified for Todd, and also they were all compromise designs. Somehow -- and reader, truly I have no idea how, other than perhaps by being a second- or third-generation jeweler -- Todd sorted through a pile of gold, diamonds, & red herrings to find EXACTLY the right-for-me ring.
We're sitting in that bright, sunny showroom, drinking coffee & champagne (respectively), and what we think we're doing is coming to see 18-someodd model rings & color them all in and deliberate all day. Todd says casually, "Oh hey, we just got some new rings in -- I want to show you something." And he comes back with The Ring. It's so absolutely perfect that I don't even bother to contain my enthusiasm. Todd hands me the Sharpies. I doctor up the model. Having now seen this thing, I am done with compromising. And just like that, Todd gets on his computer & finds the right kind of stone in the right color in the right size for my setting, and somehow manages to bring it all in under the $number my partner had quoted for a budget. (And then we bought some wedding bands.)
This, finally, is Story #2. There are two ways to run a jewelry business: one is where you take every customer for as much as you can get (because you've got high overhead & you know like 1/3 of them are going to default on those credit cards), and the other is the relationship model -- where you get to know people, and where they keep coming back to you (and bringing their friends & family) because you're just that awesome. Case in point: My family's been buying jewelry from Todd for 35 years, & I didn't live anywhere near the Twin Cities when all of this was happening. There's still nowhere else I would have gone to look for a ring, & nowhere else I would have found *this* ring.
And yes, I'll be back. :)
