Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305210281
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When he's not on the sales floor, he's likely to be taking a customer back to the office. There Fink flicks on a ceiling spotlight and pulls a monocle and tweezers from the right-hand drawer.
It wouldn't matter whether the customer is looking at a $600 quarter-carat or a 2-carat round worth $15,000. Fink is likely to say "ah" as the customer admires the diamond.
This is a good-old Southern Jewish boy with a plaque on the wall that reads "Shalom Y'all," a poster of former University of Alabama football coach Bear Bryant mixed in with family photos.
Alabama football and diamonds. The president of Fink's Jewelers Inc. loves 'em both.
On his first buying trip - at age 24 - to Antwerp, Belgium, Fink bought $1 million in diamonds and said he wasn't nervous "after the first day."
He enjoys how big-ticket deals are made in the industry.
"I love that Old World. I've bought a half-million dollars worth of diamonds on a handshake."
And, the traditional parting after a gem deal: "mazel and b'ruchah."
Mazel and b'ruchah mean "luck" and "blessing" in Hebrew; in diamond dealingthey signal "We've got a deal," said Fink.
Pictures of buyers who don't live up to a deal are posted in buying locations like the FBI's "most wanteds" flyers are at the post office.
It's a glamorous world played out in places like Antwerp, Hong Kong and Tel Aviv.
Fink, 33, says he can't remember when he didn't want to be part of it.
Alvin Fink, Marc's father, is chairman and chief executive officer of the nine-store company based in Roanoke. Alvin admits he "sorta considered" other careers, "like an attorney" instead of following his father, Nathan Fink, who founded the company.
But not Marc.
"I knew I could sell from the time I was in the third grade at Wasena School when we had a raffle and I sold 500 tickets," Marc said.
He said he had made the decision to join the business by the time he was in high school.
Marc's sister, Jane, made it equally clear she didn't want to sell jewelry. She is a poet, and lives with her husband and daughter in a New York City loft.
Marc Fink got a degree in business administration at the University of Alabama, went straight to the Gemological Institute of America in Santa Monica, Calif., and then came home to sell diamonds.
"I get excited. I fall in love with a diamond. We fall in love with our merchandise. And we fall out of love if it doesn't sell pretty quickly."
Fink's has done OK at selling. The owners don't like to talk money, and as a private company don't have to. But they let the company's first chief financial officer and vice president, John Carrico, provide these statistics:
1992 gross sales were around $14 million.
Fink's stores last year averaged $1,200 to $2,000 per square foot in sales; the jewelry industry average was $300 to $500.
Carrico is a former accounting consultant in the Richmond office of Coopers & Lybrand. He has an MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia, Alvin Fink's alma mater.
There's also a new hire, Todd Stafford, to oversee the company's computer use so that there can be better tabs on inventory.
They needed the new expertise because the Finks have a plan, and they're stocking up to carry it out.
Fink's wants to become the premiere retail jeweler in Virginia and North Carolina.
"We want to be the best with the best reputation. We want to be the first with anything good . . . the jeweler in the market that everyone is trying to compete against," said Marc Fink.
Before it can happen, Fink said, the company needs additional markets - "perhaps an additional store in Richmond. I think we'll see further expansion in North Carolina, outside of Charlotte."
The company has expanded in each generation.
"You want your own feelings of accomplishment. You want to build your own success story," said Marc Fink.
Nathan Fink began to expand the company after World War II when his son, Alvin, and two sons-in-law joined him in the business.
They put stores in six communities outside of Roanoke.
After Nathan Fink's death in 1960, Alvin Fink and his brother-in-law, Myron Glassner, continued the growth through the mid-1960s until the two men separated the operation.
The Fink's name remained in Roanoke and Glassner stores were in nearby communities.
In 1969, Fink bought the oldest jewelry company in Charlotte, N.C., Garibaldi and Bruns, which he said was comparable to Fink's in reputation. He closed its downtown store and put three stores in malls.
The latest expansion, into Richmond in October, was the first growth spurt since Marc Fink became president.
"We'd always heard Richmond was a tough town, but it had what we perceived as a dominant fine jeweler [Schwarzschild] that wasn't as progressive as we are," Marc Fink said.
He said the Fink's company is the dominant jeweler in central and Western Virginia and in Charlotte.
After looking at demographics and talking to other retailers in the Richmond market, Fink said they decided to open there with the condition that the store had the best location in Regency Square, an upscale mall in western Henrico County.
"If we weren't in the corner center court at Regency Square, we wouldn't be in Richmond," Fink said.
Fink's got the spot formerly occupied by a Zale store. When the Zale lease came up for renewal, Zale Corp., America's largest jewelry chain with 1,522 stores as of 1992, was in bankruptcy reorganization.
So Fink's got the space, which was an escalator below a Schwarzschild store. Fink's also hired the Schwarzschild manager.
Marcia Hersey, a registered gemologist who had worked for Schwarzschild 12 years, said she decided to join Fink's after checking its reputation with friends in the businesss.
Another Schwarzschild employee, Bob Williams, was hired as assistant manager.
Fink said the Richmond store is stocked as fully as any of the company's stores and includes such select brands as Patek Philippe watches that start above $6,000. Fink's is the authorized dealer for the line in Richmond.
He said the strategy was to go into the market with a high profile.
For instance, Fink's mailed 35,000 copies of its Christmas catalog to Richmond-area residents.
"We advertised heavily." He said the advertising expenditure was a higher percentage of sales volume than Fink's normally spends.
It paid off.
The store opened Oct. 1, and in December was third in sales among the company's nine stores, Fink said. He said the company's name recognition in the Richmond area was a lot higher than he and his father anticipated.
Hersey and Williams said people regularly come to say that they remember Fink's from when they went to college in the Roanoke area.
Jack Kreuter, president of Schwarzschild's, said he welcomes "the challenge."
"Our company has been here 97 years, and since they opened in Regency Square mall, our store in the mall has had substantial increases every month," Kreuter said last week.
He said his company hasn't done anything different since Fink's came, but that Fink's has.
"We have special programs with engagement diamonds, helping young customers with financing when they need it. Their program is remarkably similar to ours," said Kreuter.
He said his company also has had a May "watch month" promotion for several years and "now Fink's has a May watch month."
By standards of the Center for Family Business in Cleveland, Fink's is not really in its third generation. Le'on Danco, founder of the center, says that as long as the previous generation is still active in the business, it's not in the next generation.
Alvin Fink is still very much active, but he said his health has been bothersome. He's getting therapy for a tennis injury to his back and, for the first time since 1960, is "considering going somewhere warm in winter."
Anyway, Alvin Fink said he has given Marc more authority than his father gave him at the same age.
Marc Fink said he had to assume a lot of responsibility quickly because his mother, Marcia, was ill when he joined the business and his father was under a lot of stress.
She died in 1989, after a long battle with cancer.
"I think I've probably had more responsibility than most people at a very young age," he said.
He said he and his wife, Suzy, "felt like we weren't leading the normal life of a young couple."
After his mother's death, the company was hit by recession.
"The recession was one of the best things that happened to me. I thought [the jewelry business] was a walk through the park until then," Marc said.
He said the company had one really tough year. He and his father and everyone else took cuts in income, and every effort was made to trim expenses.
"We got competitive bids on all line items, even toilet paper," said Marc.
Fink's had a "phenomenal turnaround in profit in the last fiscal year as a result."
Both Marc and Alvin see no problem with two generations running a company together. They believe they complement each other.
Elizabeth Mackie, who has worked at the company since 1947 and taken dictation from Nathan, Alvin and Marc Fink, lovingly described each as a compassionate, impatient workaholic who likes order and "wants everything done yesterday."
They insist they're different.
"I love to sell, and he loves to find an item we can sell a lot of," said Marc.
"My father is incredibly observant and very creative. He is a merchant. He wants to buy jewelry, advertise jewelry and surround himself with people who will do the rest," he said.
The two are much alike and like Nathan Fink in their commitment to their industry.
Right after World War II, Nathan Fink helped to establish the Diamond Council of America, which offered courses in gems and diamonds oriented toward jewelers, not industrialists.
Alvin Fink has been an officer of the Retail Jewelers of America Inc. since 1959; he was president in 1975 to 1977. Marc Fink is a member of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee, which is like a Better Business Bureau of jewelers.
In 1989, Marc was elected to membership in the Young Presidents' Organization, an association of young chief executives who have become presidents of their companies before they are 40. Alvin Fink had been elected to the group in 1967.
"It's nice to be following your father," Marc said.
by CNB