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Jacques Voorhees, the founder of Polygon, has developed a new AI-powered chatbot that can be installed on jewelers’ websites for free.
Sherpa, which is available on the website of Vorhees’ company, Icecap.ai., answers customers’ jewelry-related questions using content provided by trade associations and different brands.
Voorhees admits that most chatbots are “pretty bad” and “glorified FAQs.” But he says Sherpa is different, as it’s a “state-of-the-art AI-powered chatbot” that retailers will be able to customize to their specifications.
“It doesn’t just go surf the Internet,“ he says. “The jewelers have complete control of it. It starts by scraping the website of the retailer. Then beyond that, they can feed whatever info they want into it. There’s a whole portal behind it that lets them train it.
“It’s very much an AI version of an employee. You can tell it to never call them ‘lab-grown,’ call them ‘synthetic.’ Or vice versa.”
He says the chatbot was designed with a “sales orientation. These things are trained to be salespeople first. They’ll answer other questions, but they still want to sell you something. It’s like your standard salesperson, except it has unlimited product knowledge and never sleeps.”
Icecap already has about a dozen jewelers using its chatbot, which is a “freemium” product (meaning that it’s free, but jewelers can pay for added features). It will also charge brands that provide information to the system, which Voorhees believes is the future of marketing.
“In the future, people won’t look things up on your website,” he says. “They will go to the chatbot and ask the question.
“What that chatbot says, what product knowledge it has, is huge,” he says. “It will be like the wars for shelf space. If you’re an upstream brand, you want to be able to control the conversation [customers have with chatbots]. You will want it to know all about your products. It’s an entirely new mechanism in marketing.”
Krista Olson, the co-founder of Luxury by JCK as well as veteran of Polygon, is Icecap.Ai’s co-founder and chief operating officer.
Two men arrested for allegedly killing jeweler after ramming car into store
Two men have been arrested for allegedly killing a 72-year-old jeweler when they rammed a car into his Sacramento, Calif., store in April, according to the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office.
The purported driver of the car, Alfredo Colmenero-Martinez, has been charged with murder, while Jarren Frazier faces attempted murder and conspiracy charges, the office said.
Scott Guginksy, executive vice president of the Jewelers’ Security Alliance (JSA), tells The Jewelry Wire that robberies involving a car smashing into a jewelry store were a particularly troubling trend last year, when there were 16 of them. So far this year, there have been just three, due to arrests from law enforcement.
Still, he feels that driving a car through the front of a store is such an inherently violent act it was simply a matter of time before it caused a tragedy.
“You can’t take a car and drive it through a store and not seriously injure or kill somebody,” he says. “We’re lucky we haven’t had more people killed.”
These crimes are particularly troubling since not only are they dangerous, they’re hard to prevent, though the JSA says that placing flowerpots or bollards outside a store could act as a deterrent. It also recommends jewelers install shatterproof glass in their front windows.
This is the second jewelry-related homicide JSA has recorded this year. The first was the 35-year-old manager of a West Palm Beach, Fla., pawn shop, who was fatally shot during an April robbery.
Worth a click
A Couture podcast on “New Voices in Bridal” offers some interesting insights on changing behavior among bridal customers, featuring designers Nicole Carosella, David Farrugia, Hiba Husayn, and (outgoing) De Beers natural diamond lead Sally Morrison.
I thought this was typically sharp observation from Morrison about the evolving bridal consumer:
In lots of cases, the woman is making more money than the men. We have data suggesting that lots of women pay for the entire [engagement] ring themselves. It’s not neccesarily public, but it’s a fact.
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Wacky weekend watch
This short, available on TikTok and Instagram, from Luisa Graff Jewelers in Colorado Springs, Colo., is clever and funny. And we’re guessing, kind of true.
Mark your calendar
Responsible Jewelry Transformative, which organizes the Chicago Responsible Jewelry Conference, has launched a virtual book club. The first edition, on Sat., Aug. 15, will tackle the first five chapters of When We Sold God’s Eye by **Alex Cuadros. (**Organizer Susan Wheeler notes that if you can’t make the first one, you are still welcome to join the others.) The final session will include an appearance by the author. Sign up here.
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Today’s jewelry links feature Swarovski, Pandora, Lucara, Claire’s, Mountain Province Diamonds, Fred Meyer Jewelers, Dream Charm Bar, Sean Dunn, Mark Clark, Angelo Palmieri, Michelle Graff, and Vanessa Williams
