NUCLEAR PHYSICIST TURNED JEWELLER
What’s the biggest difference
going from being a nuclear
physicist to running a jewellery
store?
Physics is an area that is
dominated by numbers and
formulas.
Leaving
quantum
physics aside, things making
sense and applying logic allows
you to tackle any problem
you may face. In the jewellery
sector, you are confronted with
aesthetics. Beauty is in the eye
of the beholder and this is hard
to quantify in numbers and base
your business decisions on. This
aspect still presents a challenge
32 JEWELLERY FOCUS
to me: you think you have the
most stunning piece of jewellery
in front of you – and it doesn’t
sell, and vice-versa.
Are there any skills that were
transferable from being a
physicist to being a jeweller, if
so, what?
Interestingly, being a physicist
has its advantages even in an
industry that relies on good taste
rather than hard science. A great
benefit my education brought was
that you learnt to solve problems
on your own rather than having
to rely on someone presenting
‘‘
Beauty is in
the eye of the
beholder and
this is hard
to quantify
in numbers
and base
your business
decisions on
‘‘
FEATURE
the solution to you. You are also
dealing a lot with technology and
computers and we use this to our
advantage as an online retailer.
For example, I had to learn
from scratch on how to build
a website and the learning
paid off as we can avoid off-the
shelf websites that come with
subscription fees and often have
a rather sluggish performance.
This approach saves us costs
and we are in full control of
our websites.
Having a good grasp of
computers also helped us to
streamline many time-consuming
February 2018 | jewelleryfocus.co.uk