Helena Crotl, a PR strategist for fine jewelry, coined the term "pre loved" to rebrand a pre-owned jewelry e-tailer and now works at her husband's atelier, David Allen Jewelry. She explains why Instagram works for jewelers and discusses opening a New York office for Luxury Brand Group.
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Welcome to PR Spotlight, the show that profiles the leading public relations practitioners in the world.
Our special guest today on PR Spotlight is Helena Crotl. She is a longtime expert on PR and communications and brand strategy for fine jewelry. Now, Helen, a lot of people go into PR thinking it's going to be fun, glamorous, exciting, and they get put in a position where they are promoting mutual funds all day long or telecommunications services. You actually ended up in something that most people consider glamorous and fun. How did you end up in that niche?
Hi, T.J. well, it's an amazing story. Fashion was always my passion, and I thought I was going to go into the fashion industry. And when I was still studying in college, I realized I like money too much and so decided not to be a designer. And I ended up studying textile marketing and minoring in business. My first job out of school was, in fact, at a PR agency where all the clients were in fine jewelry. And from that point on, I just couldn't get enough of the fine jewelry industry, which is not actually very much like the fashion industry.
Alina, who are you working with now? And walk us through your typical approach to getting them placements and helping them build their brands.
So it goes back, actually, about a year ago, I took a chance. I wanted to refresh my own brand and step outside of normal communications. So I took a job with a company that was an online fine jewelry store selling Pre loved jewelry and watches. And it was a departure for me.
Only because I read it Pre loved.
Pre loved, which was my term that I made that I sort of branded them as being the experts because it's pre owned, simply Pre owned jewelry and watches. And I decided that we needed a sexier term because pre owned sounded sort of dingy. Pre owned to me has a bad connotation, but pre loved sounds like something that we all want to know more about. And so many times, just as you did, people, editors, stylists, communicators, media outlets would say, what exactly is pre loved? And I would explain it to them. And it begged the question, tell me more. So what I really wanted to do with the company was help them rebrand themselves, take out any bad connotation, be the creative director of some of their brand initiatives because they didn't have a brick and mortar and they certainly didn't have a huge reputation in the industry, but wanted one. So for a year, I helped them relaunch their business and become an expert in the field of fine jewelry, become reputable, and also just refresh their brand to make it a little bit more interesting and modern and sexier to the news media. And my contract ended in the end of the summer. And so once again I thought to myself, what do I want to do when I grow up? And all of my experience came to a crescendo and came to a head actually when I looked really in my backyard and saw that my husband's business, he's a master craftsman, fine jeweler, David Allen Jewelry. He was on the brink of really launching his brand into the next stratosphere. So we put our heads together and I decided that I joined his team. And so that's my next endeavor this coming fall. And I'll.
And I take, I take my hat off to anyone brave enough to work.
With a family member.
I once worked, I once worked with a close family member and let's just say chairs were flying through the air and I wasn't the one, I wasn't the one throwing. That's all I'm going to say.
I believe that.
But I love your, I'd say I love your expression of pre loved. There's a part of me thinking, well, back when I was single and not a young fellow, I should have told people, oh, I'm not old.
I'm just pre old. It can work.
So how do you work for a close family member? A lot of PR people, PR strategists are often called upon to do that. On the one hand, you want to help someone you love, it's in your interest that the business goes well. And yet it can be hard giving advice to the people you're closest to.
Well, for us it was a no brainer. So I thought long and hard about it. Obviously my husband's been pitching me over the course of five years to come work with him. And I said, you're not ready. It wasn't in a demeaning way. It just meant I didn't think that he was ready to take his brand to the level that I saw potential where he could go. And so as I've crafted my skills and honed in on what it takes to, to become a successful branded jeweler, I thought to myself, well, I have all these skills and these are skills that he needs for his business. And the main reason why I thought it would work was because I have no desires to be a designer and he has no desires to be a brand expert. So we have our respective categories of what we're supposed to be doing and we come together and he asks me about design sense and I ask him about positioning and where he'd like to see himself. So I think when there's not a lot of crossover with regard to job tasks, that's when it really works.
So tell me more about Instagram. Some of our listeners might not even be familiar with it. I mean everyone's heard of it, but what is it? What's unique about it? Why does it work for people in the jewelry space?
Instagram has been such a wonderful place for jewelers to show their work without having to spend a lot of money or time on website development. Quite frankly, the fine jewelry industry is one of the more old fashioned industries and they have really embraced Instagram and the reason why it's been so successful as a platform for fine jewelry is because it's all about the picture. So it's really all about the beauty of the piece of jewelry. So that's one of the freshest ways I think for jewelers to modernize their businesses, get out there without having to spend a whole lot of money, especially if you're a small business. But also it's relatively inexpensive because you're just simply showing the master beautiful work that you're already creating with regard to jewelry.
And we're going to provide a link in the show notes to the website so our listeners can take a look at the pictures of the jewelry and see for themselves. What other projects are you working on these days?
I have another really exciting project which I'm excited to embark upon which just began. A very reputable and well known company called Luxury Brand Group just opened their New York office. So I'll be helping with new business also brand strategy for several different fine jewelry companies. And the reason I'm excited is because there is such a beautiful reputation of this company who has been in the fine jewelry industry for 20 years. And the founder Frank Proctor is also a communications expert as he once ran the platform Platinum Guild International and he was my counterpart at PGI while I was at Jewelers of America.
Appreciate the update there. Helena, thank you so much for your time today. We appreciate your expertise.
Thank you so much tj. Nice to connect with you.
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