The long and short of it is...Yes you can. There are many companies taking advantage of online consumers who may not have a local jeweler nearby. It's always nice to deal person to person but it may not always be possible. Many large companies including Tiffany & Co, Carat Lane and Blue Nile have a large online presence. We took this into consideration when we decided to launch Legacy Findings on a larger scale and sell, high end luxury jewelry findings. We knew we had to have an on line presence to sell our products because our jewelry findings are targeted to the luxury market. We do have a large client base in NYC, but there are luxury jewelers all over the country and even as far as Australia who are looking for platinum jewelry findings or 18 carat gold jewelry findings. What we found to be most successful is a combination of online ads, magazine ads and meeting customers in our offices. Even if our customers finds us on line, many times they like to call to make the initial contact especially if they have technical questions. Having a liberal return policy is also key to starting an online business. The genie is out of the bottle as i see it and to be competitive one must think about a good website.
McKinsey & Company expects the luxury category’s share of online sales to double, from 6% to 12% by 2020, and for 18% of luxury sales to be made online by 2025. That would make online luxury sales worth about $79 billion annually. According to McKinsey, this would make “e-commerce the world’s third-largest luxury market, after China and the United States.” Such growth has resulted in established jewelry retailers scrambling to get online and newcomers flooding into the space.