In another life, when I attended Dale Carnegie Sales Training, we learned one of the most important things you can do is to be a resource to your customer, in fact that was the top of the sales pyramid. Once the customer views you as a resource the sky is the limit.
As our business grows my wife and I have become resources to several of our customers. One of those customers recently used us as a resource to provide gems and minerals for her wedding. I have to say of all the times someone has asked us for assistance, this has to be one of the times we were most proud to assist.
The customer's name is Mariko & her fiancee was Nikolas, now husband. They were married a few weeks ago on 4/9/2023. Mariko has been one of our customers for over a year, but all purchases had been made online. I finally met her in person when I exhibited at the Kyoto gem and mineral show last September. It's always nice to meet customers you've only dealt with online.
In December Mariko asked us if we could provide her with gem and minerals for her wedding. She needed about 30 specimens and wanted them from America. It was perfect timing as we had just been receiving lots of old minerals from a miner's collection of San Diego Mine quartz, lepidolite & tourmaline. It was original material he had dug out of the mine about 100 years ago. Here is a link to a book he wrote about his adventures here. So we put a package together and sent it down to her.
We didn't know exactly how she & her fiancee would use them, but she just sent us photos of the wedding and now we know. She designed each gift to be a bit of a treasure hunt for the attendees.
I was flattered when I saw some pieces I had personally collected from the mountains like this amethyst from deep in the California desert. Center, left.
For their wedding gift we sent them a special smoky quartz hand dug by my friend Erik Rose from his claim in San Diego Co. You can kind of see it in the bottom, center of the photo below. I didn't take a picture of it before we mailed it down to them unfortunately.
I recognize many of the minerals pictured as some I had dug and others sold to her.
Since they live in Kyoto we haven't had a chance to meet them. We will be doing the Kyoto show in September of this year though, so then we'll have a chance to congratulate them in person and say thank you for entrusting us to be part of one of their life's most special days.
All photos courtesy of Mariko.
Thanks for reading!
