We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Max Chapman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Max, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So, what do you think about family businesses? Would you want your children or other family members to one day join your business?

Family is everything to me and I view working with my family as a great privilege. My grandfather started this business with the intention of building something that he could pass down to his children and future generations. Continuing that mission is extremely important to me. That is not to say it is always easy working with family but I believe the benefits far outweigh any difficulties. For us, the key is to make sure we separate the personal and the professional relationship. Our goal is to always make the family stronger and we keep that in mind with everything that we do. None of the professional success is worth it if our personal relationships with each other are not thriving.

Max, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

After graduating from Purdue University in 2014, I began my professional career as an account manager for a specialty chemical company in Chicago. Though I experienced early success in my corporate role, I was never totally fulfilled. Growing up, my brother and I would spend summers working in the family jewelry store but that was more about spending time with our uncles than learning the business. In 2018, one of my close friends asked me if I could help him get an engagement ring because he knew about my family’s business and I decided to help. This was my first real taste of the business and from then on I was hooked. Gradually more and more of my friends were asking me to help them and, combined with referrals, I was building a good customer list and making sales all over the country.

At Chapman’s Jewelry we carry a wide variety of fine jewelry including engagement/wedding rings, necklaces, bracelets, rings, pendants, and more. Combined with the variety of precious metals (gold, sterling silver, platinum, etc.) and precious gemstones (diamond, sapphire, ruby, etc.), I knew I needed some formal education to operate in this complicated industry. Though my father and uncles passed along plenty of their expertise to help me transition into the industry, I enrolled in an MBA program at Loyola-Chicago concentrating on Entrepreneurship and completed a full gemologist program with the GIA.

In 2020 I decided to move on from my corporate career completely and it was the best decision I have ever made for a few reasons. With my father and uncles getting closer to retirement age, they have taken a lot of satisfaction in seeing myself, my cousin Michael, and my brother Arthur join the business and continue what they have built. In a very short amount of time I have seen how deep-seated our relationship is with the city of Detroit and our customer base. When my Uncle Rick unfortunately passed away in the summer of 2022, the outpouring of support and love from the community really showed me how strong that bond is and spoke to the special relationship that we have with our customers. Jewelry is something that is very personal and can mean a lot to the person buying it. We work hard to make sure that buying process is just as personal and goes well beyond just a transactional relationship.

There is no shortage of brick and mortar stores or online retailers in the jewelry industry today. The reason Chapman’s Jewelry is still in business after almost 60 years is because we believe in doing things the right way and focusing on the customer rather than the products. The expertise we have gained in that time has allowed us to supply high quality products that can compete with major retailers. The difference is that we value the personal relationships that we are lucky enough to build while supplying those products. We are beyond proud to be a family-owned, multi-generational, Detroit-based, and black-owned business!

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

During the pandemic we quickly felt the pain of not having our own website or social media where we could connect with our customers. That was one of the first things that I worked on during the lockdowns and I really did it just as a gift for my uncles who were wary of any potential online sales. We built the website in time for the holidays and were all pleasantly surprised by the amount of early success that the website saw. Since then we have seen even more value come from our site now that customers can build virtual mock-ups of custom products on the spot. Beyond that, the site serves as a way to show specialty products that we might not have stocked at the moment. We are constantly working to add more to the site but I am glad we decided to build it on our own which gives us full control to offer what our specific customer base needs.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

As I said, we are extremely relationship based and we try to make sure every interaction we have with our clients is positive. Taking that extra step to make sure people are happy with their purchase leads to a lot of great referrals for us. I am always impressed with the things people say about our work or our family in general when we are not there, it really is the greatest compliment. So when new people reach out online or come into the shop, they always mention who sent them and that immediately makes us feel great. Especially now, since there are so many options to buy either online or in-person, people are not usually buying from us out of necessity but because they have heard positive things from someone else. For any small business referrals are important but in the fine jewelry industry, credibility is a huge. Definitely does not hurt when the referral is coming from a client showing off their new diamond engagement ring!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://chapmansjewelry.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/chapmansdetroit
• Facebook: facebook.com/chapmansdetroit
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/maxchapman10