Excerpted from The Golden Touch: The success story of Kalyan Jewellers by Kalyan Jewellers founder TS Kalyanaraman. The book is published by Penguin Business
8 April 1993. The day the world came to know of a brand name: Kalyan Jewellers. Later, many people asked me whether I could sleep the previous night. To be very frank, I wasn’t tense or anxious. But I was very eager to know how the people would respond to our new venture.
I went to sleep as usual. As the inauguration was in the morning, I had to wake up slightly earlier than usual. After practising yoga, I had my bath, said my prayers, ate my food and went to the office.
Murali and Geetha, popular film stars of those days, inaugurated the shop. They came to Thrissur straight from their shooting location in Kozhikode. The designs and trends that Kalyan brought into the jewellery scene began with these two stars.
It was my idea to bring in film stars to inaugurate the shop. For I was very interested in the marketing field. From a young age, I was interested in the life history and marketing techniques of industrial giants. I used to go in search of their books and read them from cover to cover. In them, I scouted for ways to attract customers to one’s business.
The inaugural day rush was unprecedented—something even we never expected. There is not even an iota of exaggeration in this. The price of a gram of gold was only Rs 382!
The first sale was to Sri Ramaswamy Temple. The second was to Dr N.V. Ramani, my wife’s brother. It’s a practice we follow even to this day. Whenever a Kalyan Jewellers showroom is inaugurated anywhere in the world, the first sale always goes to Sri Ramaswamy Temple and the second to Dr Ramani.
The first person among the public to buy gold from our shop was a sixty-year-old lady, named Omana, a regular customer at our textile shop. On learning about our new venture, Omana came to our jewellery shop with her son on the inaugural day around 8.30 a.m. The shop was inaugurated at 9.30 a.m. Omana, the third in line and the first among our customers, bought a gold coin and went home happily.
She was the first link in our global chain of customers, which increases with every passing day. I don’t know even to this day why there was such a huge rush of customers on the inaugural day. Maybe it was because of the Malayali’s craze for the yellow metal. Or it may have been because of our mind-boggling collection of jewellery. The people till then had no other option but to choose from the small shops they frequented. So, when they spotted a treasure chest of wonders, they flocked to our shop. I think this could have been the reason for the unprecedented crowd.
The main attraction of our showroom was its sheer size. Compared to the sizes of other showrooms, it was enormous. To the people of Thrissur, it was akin to viewing the Thrissur Pooram or smaller poorams. Many people flocked to the place only to have a glimpse of the huge showroom—much like going around a caparisoned elephant and feasting their eyes on its size and beauty!
Kalyan, on that day, marked the beginning of a revolution in the gold market. We were the first to employ women in the sales section. The controversy over the enormous size of our showroom refused to die down even days after its inauguration. The words of some seemed like a warning. ‘Swami, what’s built is built. Just because it has been built, it doesn’t mean you have to occupy the entire space. Have your jewellery section in the front portion. Do something else with the rest of the building. We don’t think having a jewellery showroom in the entire building is workable.’ I merely smiled.
A question I had to face many times over was whether I faced any difficulty while diversifying into the gold business from the textile sector. I felt nothing strange while dealing with the yellow metal. As far as purchases are concerned, it’s the same in both businesses. Kalyan Jewellers was the first to go to Mumbai and purchase the materials. Between the two, it could be said there was a greater element of risk in the gold business and the chances of suffering a loss. For, if one wasn’t vigilant enough, one could lose heavily as there was the possibility of gold being stolen. It was easier to steal and tuck a pair of studs or a necklace into one’s clothes than steal clothes from a textile shop.
During the initial years, we lost some jewellery. This made us vigilant. We soon set up CCTV cameras for surveillance. It was the first of its kind. No one had ever thought of setting up such cameras in jewellery shops. We appointed a person solely to monitor the cameras. Pretty soon, two robbers fell into our net.
The news spread like wildfire. There were no more thefts. One day, it occurred to us there was every possibility of employees themselves replacing the ornaments. What if they replaced a 22-carat piece of jewellery with an inferior quality piece from somewhere else? Our reputation would certainly be at stake if such a thing happened.
So, we devised a plan to handle such a situation. We made the barcode compulsory for all gold ornaments. The practice of linking it to the computers had not yet begun. But we carried out inspections using card readers. It was simply impossible to change the bar code of one and put it for another. We can say with pride it was Kalyan Jewellers who first brought technology into the gold business in Kerala.
(Excerpted with permission from Penguin Business)
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