When asked to design the SUETABLES Vancouver store this past year, we were thrilled to answer the call! SUETABLES founder, Sue Henderson had a vision to recreate the same look and feeling we had achieved together for the Toronto shop back in 2019. It was important to give the same wonderful and warm customer experience in Vancouver, as we achieved for her Toronto customers.

Due to Covid, the entire design process and coordination was completely done remotely, but despite any restrictions, we got the job done and the results are stunning! We worked with a fixture manufacturer in Vancouver, a Graphic Design Company in Germany and a local Graphic Install Company in BC.

It was truly a team effort and together, we made the dream work!

Aesthetically, the aim of the design was to create a space that is crafty, modern, beachy and most importantly instagramable! From an experiential perspective, the approach was to have a space that the “Suetables Girl” can discover new accessories, engage with the product and have a personalized in-store experience, that is meaningful to her and who she may be shopping with.

The store is organized and categorized with call-outs above each product section, and feature displays around the store are the newest addition to the layout. This provides an opportunity to highlight the accessories of the month!

Our favourite feature? We love the "try bar"; where customers can have a seat and try on the plethora of rings, and accessories, while also grabbing a perfect selfie moment within the SUETABLES experience.

We sat down with Founder Sue Henderson to discuss how the new Vancouver space and upcoming plans for her growing brand SUETABLES.

ND - We loved working with you and your team on this project (our 2nd together!) and the result is a stunning space that you and all your clients love. Do you have a favourite part of the space - a sort of nook that you spend a lot of time in?

SH - We loved working with you too! My favorite place to spend time is on the stool at our hand stamping station near the point of sale where customers check out. The location allows customers in line to see us hand stamp and learn more about the brand with one ‘bang of our hammer on the jewelry’ creating an interactive experience. There is also a stool for our customer to sit down and watch us hand stamp. It is also a great working space to hand stamp online orders as customers browse. It creates conversation and brand learning...while being productive yet available to customers in a natural/authentic “non salesy” way.

ND - How do you find your gorgeous jewellery is experienced by shoppers in your new space? Are there any elements in the design that you feel help to bring out the beauty in the pieces?

SH - Nickeisha designed pin letters to be placed above designated area: ‘new arrivals’, ‘personalize’, ‘love create shine’ (our tagline), ‘apparel, ‘cards’ and 'try bar’ - to try on rings. As jewelry is tiny this allows us to organize our displays and also guides the customers and allow the jewelry to stand out more. As we have expanded to four stores, these “stations” allow us to really work out similar displays across the four locations and bring the brand experience that people see online at our stores. It is amazing what a bit of organization can do for the brand and how it has made creating visual “streams” across all channels. Nickeisha also recommended more photography (that we use online) to be used as part of the displays. This allows us to target the jewelry we want to sell more of and also utilize our beautiful photography in the store. In doing so, it is also helping us streamline our jewelry and helped us realize that “less is more” when it comes to the number of designs we carry. This definitely makes it easier for our customers to shop.

ND - You’ve been a jewellery designer and curator for over 17 years now! Congrats, this is incredible. Why do you find it to be so important to have your own stores, vs focusing on wholesale for your brand?

SH - Yes, I started as a basement hobby business and grew the business as my children grew. We used to wholesale and just sell online for many years but abandoned that model in 2016 to focus on selling at retail. It changed our business when we opened our first store. Customers wanted to come and see us and have conversations with us. How to build a community around a brand keeps evolving. Hundreds of years ago it was the market bazaar, then it was the printed word, then radio and TV and then it moved online to the digital landscape. Today people talk about everything being digital like the campfire gathering but it’s online. While that is true, I believe that is evolving too. The digital landscape has become so crowded and for a small company like Suetables the cost per click becomes harder to gain in such a flooded environment. There are thousands of beautiful online jewelry brands but very few of them have shops where you can see the quality of the piece and talk to someone about the occasion you want to mark with jewelry.

Our shops are also part of the personality behind our brand. Bricks and mortar is so important to who we are and how we interact with our customers. That is our logic behind continuing to open stores and our strategy is paying off. Local stores are closing all around us and we continue to open them - including our Vancouver store in the middle of the world’s worst pandemic.

ND - A lot of retailers have had to be very creative during this pandemic to make things work. What have you done to innovate for SUETABLES to keep thriving?

SH - We saw the pandemic as a chance to infuse our community with happy stories about our meaningful jewelry. We used our stories as “conversations” to let our customer know we would continue to be there for them - to support their occasions and moments which were more important than ever as our social landscape changed. We increased our social media stories showing what we had for sale and we continued to launch new jewelry and collections to keep it fresh. We also launched face masks and beautiful face masks chains that are a top seller. We were available by phone, email, online and for curb-side pickup. I even had a link to my direct email on the web site for “design advice” and would often call customers to help them pick out the right gift. There are not a ton of brands where the owner will email you with gift ideas. In return, our customers were there for us. It meant everything.

In addition to opening the Vancouver store in December 2020, after the first lock down we launched a new (more intuitive) web site as we saw our local customers move online for both curb-side pick and orders world wide. We were surprised how many people from our community ordered online and really began to understand the community we were creating. As people felt the uncertainty of the world and economy around them, they also liked that our jewelry offered “affordable good-quality pieces”.

We also completely did a “face lift” for our Montreal store with Nola Designs - all new fixtures and display tables to make it look more like the other stores Nickesha designed for us. We also updated displays that reflect our social media stories and emails and painted all the other stores so they would look fresh when we re-opened. Nobody wants to come back to a dusty tired store after lock down. People want to be inspired.

ND - We are now finishing up our 3rd project together (this time in Montreal!) which is almost complete! Your growth is so beautiful to watch. Can you tell us, what is next for you and SUETABLES?
SH - As my background is in communications, branding and marketing, we place a ton of importance on this aspect of the business. We want to continue to improve the look and brand feel of all three stores making them more consistent with each other in terms of display and the stories around how we talk about our products (both in store and online). In keeping with our brand and the amazing conversations we have with customers about their lives, we are investing a lot more in our line up of personalized jewelry and this will roll out before the summer. It is exciting. You will have to visit us online or instore to find out exactly what we are up to! We are also working on an interactive live experience for Mother’s Day. And yes, we are open to opening another store location. We are already having conversations about this.

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