Day's Jewelers: Downtown Diamond
by Michelle Troutman

Day's Jewelers has been in business for nearly 100 years. Having retired due to ill health, in 1914 former sea captain Harry Davidson started the business as a small pawn shop/auction center in Portland's Old Port. His three sons joined him in running it, and by 1988, nearing retirement, his remaining sons Sidney and David had sold it to brothers Jeff and Jim Corey, Jeff's wife, Kathy, and the Coreys' cousin-in-law, Mark Ford. The Corey brothers had grown up in the retail jewelry industry, their father Robert having worked for Day's since he was 10 years old. As an adult, he co-founded Robert's Jewelry with his wife, Enid.

Following in family footsteps, Jeff and Kathy opened Jeffrey's Fine Jewelers in Waterville in 1984, before buying the Day's in Waterville, and later, the remaining store in Westbrook.

The Davidsons followed a set of core values they attributed to their success: the best value at the best price, equal opportunity for everyone to buy fine jewelry (through a large inventory and in-store credit programs), experienced staff, such as goldsmiths and gemologists on site, and an understanding of the sentimental value of jewelry.

Waterville Day's Jewelry store manager Russ Wheeler works to instill these same values in his team. From South River, New Jersey, he attended Seton Hall for two years before leaving to start working in retail. By his late 30s, he had returned to school to get his bachelor's degree from Norwich University in Vermont. "I was always the guy who read more books than anybody else, and it just seemed odd that I never graduated from college."

A roommate of Russ's at Norwich was from Old Town, and his wife, Diane, had friends from Belgrade Lakes. After a vacation in Maine, the Wheelers decided they wanted to return. "I didn't know at the time that we were coming back here to live, but here we are," says Wheeler. "I wanted the brownstone in Manhattan. Diane wanted the farm, so now I live on a farm. She won."

In the process, Wheeler left a job in human resource management at Staples. While in New York, Wheeler also worked for Herman's World of Sporting Goods, on 51st and Third Avenue, one of the richest zip codes in the United States. "It was fun. I had celebrity clients. You sold big ticket. I had to anticipate clients' needs; so it was a whole different game than discount retail, which is 'stack 'em high, watch it fly, stack it low, it don't go.'"

After having worked at Day's for over 11 years, he knows hundreds of people. "It's a great small town experience. I used to eat lunch at Rockefeller Center every day. You can eat lunch at Rockefeller Center and feel completely alone. No one will bother you, no one will talk to you," he says. "But, if you eat lunch in Castonguay Square, four or five people will swing by and say, 'How are you doing, Russ? What's going on?' And, I guess I like that better."

The Wheelers have been married for 24 years and have a daughter, Emily, 20, who helps out in the store on breaks from college. "Em's gift is she walks into a room, and lights it up. She's funny. She's got a great sense of humor; she's a little irreverent about things."

Wheeler believes that Day's operates under an interesting, almost entrepreneurial model. "We're given general performance goals that we have to reach, and then we're given an enormous amount of leeway as to how we're going to decide to reach them, which is a little spooky when you first come here. But it's part of the reason why you get so ingrained in the community." Wheeler hires and trains his staff and is responsible for keeping their skill levels current. "I bet you we handle 20,000 repairs a year, change thousands of batteries, and sell a couple million dollars worth of jewelry."

"I've worked for companies that tell you that you've got to take care of your customers, but they don't really believe it," Wheeler says, laughing. "Day's believes it." They closely monitor their customer service, soliciting customer surveys, and the responses are scored for each store.

Wheeler believes what sets their store apart is their broad selection, their ability to order product from anywhere, to custom design pieces and to fix and repair jewelry on site, and their experienced staff which has professional accreditation, having been there for an average of more than five years.

Everyone who works in the store is a certified diamatologist. Appraiser and Service Specialist Darcy Goode is a graduate gemologist, the jewelry industry equivalent of a Ph.D. The only laser welder in this part of the state works at the Waterville store, Stephanie Casella, who is also a goldsmith and jewelry designer.

Day's also does appraisals. A piece's true value sometimes lies more in the memories people associate with it. Says Wheeler, "In my own life, my grandfather's watch, he paid 55 bucks. He probably paid for it back in the 50s. I've paid probably 400 bucks keeping it running through the years, because it's his , and he left it for me. How many things in your life do you just kind of hang onto like that, and it means that much? That's the power of jewelry."

The Coreys' five other branch stores are in Bangor, Auburn, South Portland, Brunswick, and Manchester, New Hampshire. Day's also operates a "limelight" kiosk in Cambridge, Mass., where they primarily sell the popular Chamilia beads, made of 14 karat gold, mixed gold and silver, gemstones, enamel, Analisa glass, and Murano glass. They can be used to make bracelets, necklaces, or earrings, a twist on the concept of the charm bracelet.

Besides the popular Chamilia line of interchangeable beads, diamonds remain a constant seller, often for special occasions, which amount to nearly half of their total sales.

Russ's outside interests involve being on the Waterville Opera House promotions board, hosting a weekly radio show, and emceeing a social gathering known as PechaKucha. The first of these shows was put on at the Hathaway Center on January 20. PechaKucha Night started in Tokyo, Japan in 2003, intended as a way for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. Its name comes from the Japanese term for the sound of chit-chat. Part of the show involves showing 20 images in 20 seconds.

"Everything's very Hemingway-esque, it's edited down to quick, sharp -- so it flows -- and most of the people who are doing these, either the photography was just spectacular, or they're really funny and interesting, or passionate, and the really good ones, you've got both, so you end up sitting there going, 'Wow.' And then, you have breaks. Everyone sits and talks about it. 'Who are you ? Where are you from?' That helps with that whole social networking thing. I'm just happy they asked me."

Every Wednesday, Wheeler spins a different kind of rock. He hosts the radio show Creative Differences with fellow rock 'n roll fan John Morris, from 10am to 12pm on Colby College radio station WMHB 89.7. "John is the aging rocker, and I'm the new-age, sensitive guy, because I play all the music he hates, and he plays all the music I hate, and so, then we play music and argue about it, which is kind of fun."

Wheeler cites one of the biggest current challenges as the spiraling price of gold. Day's buys a lot of estate jewelry, and sells items of gold mixed with metals such as titanium and boron. Wheeler and his staff hosted a gold buying event on Black Friday, known as Gold Friday, which helped fund local high schools' Project Graduations.

He also works to make the store a less intimidating place to shop, especially for young people. "One thing you hear in this store, that I've never heard in jewelry stores, is laughter. There's a lot of laughter in the store, and a lot of people having fun," says Wheeler. "It's a mix of modern retailing, and the way it probably was 40 years ago sometimes, and when you put the two of them together, you can really have a lot of fun at it."

Day's Jewelers at 80 Main St. is open Monday through Friday, 9:00am to 8:00pm, Saturdays 9:00am to 6:00pm, and Sundays, 12:00pm to 5:00pm. They are open an hour later at night and earlier on weekends during the holiday season: 207-872-9025. www.daysjewelers.com .

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