Jewellery Merchandising and Sourcing Just Got Easier

With the addition of finished jewellery, the VDB App and Platform is the most robust search and sourcing environment for the jewelry industry.

What is it? Sourcing and trading app for finished jewellery. Part of the overall sourcing and trading system offered by VDB, which also includes diamonds and color gemstones.

Why is it different?

• Open to any jewelry brand, manufacturer, or designer
• VISUAL search. When filtering, the result is full product images, and not just a “grid” or spreadsheet of products listing specifications (like Rapnet and other search providers). The visual quality of the images on the site is overall very high, and includes lots of 360-degree video images as well.
• Highly affordable for even the smallest designers to put their entire collection online and get it in front of tens of thousands of retailers.
• Great way for brands/manufacturers/designers to find new retailers. It’s like a 24/7 trade show
• Great way for retailers to offer a much larger, more “searchable” finished jewelry selection without investing in the inventory.
• Helps get around some of the consignment problems for small brands/designers. Rather than having to put a lot of consignment inventory out there (at tremendous expense, which is extremely difficult for small businesses to finance), they can arrange for quick shipments to show desired pieces to interested customers, using a more temporary memo system like the diamond vendors use. This could be huge for small brands and retailers – disruptive, even.

Jewellery manufacturers and suppliers are finding it more challenging than ever to find new B2B clients and keep their attention, and retail jewelers cannot get consumers in the store without offering extensive, searchable inventories. Online is becoming the way both B2B and B2C buy and sell, and those online tools must work as well on smart phones as they do on desktop computers. The VDB App and Platform makes the online sourcing and selling process easy, affordable, and fun. And now, in addition to diamonds and color gemstones, VDB is offering finished jewellery – becoming the jewellery industry’s most complete digital partner for all-things-jewellery-merchandising.

For retailers, this feature means they can offer thousands more finished jewellery items to their customers. No more digging through individual supplier websites or pulling brochures and catalogs out from behind the counter. The salesperson can just fire up the VDB App on their tablet or phone, and have fun filtering, searching, and browsing finished jewellery with the client beside them. White label options from VDB make it easier than ever for jewellery retailers to share the VDB experience on their website or offer their own custom app through the Apple and Google Play stores.

For wholesale, the finished jewelry feature becomes a 24/7 trade show. It’s a fantastic way to offer a constant live inventory online, in front of the over (XX,000??) retail jewellery users of the VDB App. White label options are also available to suppliers and manufacturers of jewelry. Participation in the platform is currently still free for suppliers (with the exception of white label, which offers several different price options). All it takes to get a company’s inventory into the VDB platform is a product information spreadsheet – no coding or technically challenging activities are required.

Whether a company is selling B2B or B2C, all businesses today must offer an online experience that features video, strong images, the ability to search using visuals (rather than just words), and the ability to easily communicate with a real person – while never leaving the application. The VDB App is the only jewelry industry platform that delivers on all points of the jewellery merchandising offering (diamonds, gems, finished jewelry) using the best online try-before-you-buy features. VDB is committed to providing the technology the jewelry industry must have to compete in today’s highly competitive online markets.

In this brave new world of long-tail merchandising, suppliers and retailers can gain entrée to the millions of consumers by putting their entire catalogs online. Building the apps and online database infrastructure to market this way is expensive, time-consuming, and requires a significant ongoing investment to keep up with changing technology, search engine, and customer demands. The VDB App and Platform offers an attractive alternative to this investment, by taking on the entire responsibility for the technology, and offering it in many different configurations from a free version to white label options.

VDB will demonstrate its suite of online jewellery tools at the upcoming Centurion and RJO shows.