The retail operation is just the tip of the iceberg at Pickens, Inc. Jewelers. Long before it added retail to its profile and moved to Atlanta’s upscale Buckhead district, Pickens was a thriving trade shop located downtown. And behind the scenes, the shop still reigns.
The founder, the late Walter H. Pickens, Sr. – who had started out as a bench jeweler before World War II and returned to the trade after a stint in the Navy – worked the shop at Albert Wyatt Jewelers in the 1950s, later became shop foreman, and bought the business in 1973. After incorporating in 1979, his son Walter H. Pickens Jr. became a GIA Graduate Gemologist and came away from the experience thinking it would be good for business to introduce retail into the mix.
Third-generation jeweler Hays Pickens – W. Hays Pickens III, also a GIA GG – describes it as a timely move: “Back in the 1970s a lot of businesses were moving out of downtown Atlanta. The same thing was happening in big cities around the country.”
Pickens says the Buckhead location offered residents an alternative to downtown during a time when downtowns were losing appeal.
“I think by relocating, we moved to a more affluent area where somebody could walk into the store,” he says.
Pickens says his father saw retail as an opportunity for growth.
“Repairs are great, but it takes a lot of repair accounts to make up one jewelry sale,” he says. The same can be said for doing appraisals, which can take days compared to the comparatively quick process he experiences on the showroom floor.
As a newer retail store in the early 1980s, Pickens, Inc. took a while to establish itself, and the trade roots still run deep.
Behind the boutique-size front with 10 showcases is a shop that occupies more than half of the store’s square footage. Of the company’s 15 personnel, which includes Hays and his parents working the front, eight are bench jewelers and two are polishers.
Much of the repair volume is for local and regional wholesale and retail clients, with some accounts going back to the 1950s downtown operation, when the business was still Albert Wyatt Jewelers and Pickens’ late grandfather worked the shop.
“We only advertise for the trade,” Pickens says. “We do repair work for more than 70 stores, mostly in the Southeast, but also Ohio, Texas. We have clients in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, all over the South.”
In contrast, Pickens, Inc. doesn’t do billboard, radio, TV, or any other kind of advertising for the retail side.
“As time has gone on, we’ve been able to grow our brand organically. … We’re a multigenerational business and we rely on word of mouth. We send out a mailer for our summer sale and for our trunk shows.”
Another integral part of the business is Walter Jr.’s wife and Hays’ mother, Kim. Initially she was brought in to temporarily fill a void on the administrative side, but over 20 years later her role has grown significantly. Hays says that in addition to her administrative duties, she “primarily curates what the store displays in its showcases and is arguably, the best salesman in the store.”
Both Hays and Walter Pickens, Jr. have run marathon races. Hays ran 12 marathons by 2018, while his father, at 64, has completed 60 since he started in his 30s. The elder Pickens is coming close to running marathons in every state, but South Dakota has so far played hard to get.
“He just went to South Dakota last year, but they had severe flooding in Sioux Falls and only did a half-marathon,” Hays says. He tried again in May. “A windstorm knocked out all the power. … So now he’ll have to go back again.”
Hays says his father hopes to finish out his 50 states this year, with Hawaii as the most exciting stop remaining.
For the younger Pickens, who enjoys the interesting showroom customers and industry veterans he meets, all those marathons make for great conversation in the store – the best advertising there is.
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