Despite economic downturn, there’s still a call for the finer things

BRISTOL, Va. – The two oldest retail businesses in downtown Bristol have weathered every economic crisis since before the Great Depression – not by stocking their shelves with life’s basic needs, but with its finer things.
Demand for gold, diamonds and precious gemstones, it turns out, is surprisingly resilient in good times and bad.
Exhibit A is the Pendleton Jewelry Company, founded in 1886 as J.P. Pendleton & Bro., which has the most seniority of any business downtown. Hard on its heels is Ryland & Co. Jewelers, established in 1906, which sells its wares on the same downtown block.
Neither store is operated by the family that founded it, though both current owners are by now longstanding community members.
Robert and Tera Bailey, natives of Muncie, Ind., bought Pendleton Jewelry in 1975, following Robert Bailey’s stint running one of the oldest jewelers in Johnson City, he said.
Frank Molteni inherited Ryland & Co. from his family, which acquired the store in 1948, after leaving a jewelry store in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
At first blush, it might seem counterintuitive for people to buy luxury jewelry at a time of rising food prices, greater unemployment, plunging stock prices and – until recently – record gas prices.
But consider the available alternatives: do you scrimp on an engagement ring that is supposed to be a reflection of your commitment?
Do you tell your love-struck significant other, “Honey, how about forgoing a ring ’til this recession is over?”
Do you buy your discerning mother a knockoff pair of earrings?
Do you get your boyfriend an expensive-looking Rolex from a street vendor?
All reasonable alternatives, to be sure, in times like these. But Pendleton and Ryland have not stayed in business by catering to the skinny wallet; they appeal to – and bank on – the consumer’s high standards.
Indeed, discount jewelers are not the competition, Robert Bailey said in a November interview.
“Our competition is the travel agent, the fur coat store and the Lexus dealership,” he said, naming products that – at least by checkbook mathematics – are rough equivalents.
Even now, as investor and analyst fear deepens over the spiraling economy, the Baileys sound bullish – with just a hint of nerves.
“We always have had an increase,” Robert Bailey began, pausing in mid-sentence to knock on the wooden edge of a showcase – “for all our previous years in sales.”
He maintains there has been no shift in customer preferences for less expensive jewelry, but adds, “I may have a different report in January.”
Down the street, Frank Molteni is more blunt about the economy’s impact on his business.
“Business is much slower,” he said. “It began slowing down six months ago.”

Better with age
Pendleton Jewelry was touting its history nearly 100 years ago.
“During its career of nearly 30 years, this house has accomplished no little to educate the public taste, and afford it opportunities to obtain the choicest goods,” proclaimed a 1915 sketch of Pendleton published in a booklet compiled by the Bristol Board of Trade.
“At the store may be found a particularly well selected assortment of jewelry, a fine selection of loose diamonds and other precious stones, all the leading makes of watches,” the ad continues, listing its silverware, China and sundry offerings.
Robert Bailey, when shown the old sketch, glanced up in amazement.
“Did you know that all of this still stands true today?” he said, beaming.
Well, not quite all. In 1915, the store was run by the brothers J.P. and W.S. Pendleton, and A.C. Pendleton, the son of J.P. It was twice the width of the current location, Robert and Tera Bailey said.
A similar history for Ryland & Co. could not immediately be unearthed. The earliest published reference the newspaper found was in a 1917 City of Bristol Directory, which listed only the store’s name and State Street address.
Molteni was 8 years old when his family bought Ryland & Co. His uncle had owned the lone jewelry store in Oak Ridge, while it was the gated “Secret City” of the atom bomb. The store would have had a de facto monopoly on the jewelry market, Molteni guessed, that ended with the opening of the gates in 1948.
Molteni, a thin-featured, balding man with freckles, didn’t imagine he would one day take the reins of the family business. He studied banking at a small Catholic college in North Carolina, and spent three-and-a-half years as a banker in Roanoke, Va., and two years in the Army before becoming Ryland & Co.’s president in 1969.
The Baileys came to Bristol a few years later, just in time for the exodus of businesses sparked by the opening of the Bristol Mall. With the foot traffic on State Street a fraction of its one-time volume, the Baileys – a diminutive, elegantly-attired couple who tend to embellish and finish each other’s sentences – gambled on the Pendleton business.
It took “audacity,” Robert Bailey began – “nerve,” Tera Bailey interjected – to buy the shop in 1975, when a herd of store owners headed for the mall.
Reflecting on that time, Frank Molteni said, “You don’t have the volume of customers you used to.”

Traditionalists
in the 21st Century
For their historical and physical proximity – they are separated by three storefronts – Molteni and the Baileys don’t acknowledge one another as competitors.
Their customers, they maintain, are loyal appreciators of quality, who eschew buying from super stores and distrust Internet sellers as they do.
“It’s foolish to buy on the Internet. You don’t know what you’re getting,” said Molteni, revealing what could be an anti-digital age bias. He doesn’t use a computer for business, he said, and volunteers that “the Internet passed me up.”
Ditto the Baileys, who have neither Internet access, computer nor cell phone.
“We have a rotary telephone back here,” Robert Bailey said.
Neither Ryland nor Pendleton has a Web site – a shared trait that says something about both their traditionalist tendencies and marketing strategies. But they are hardly carbon copies of a prototypical 20th Century jewelry store.
Pendleton promotes the season’s fads, which this year include colored diamonds: chocolate, espresso and lemon. It is their “one-of-a-kind” jewelry that sets them apart, the couple said, offering as evidence a tourmeline pendant dangling from a yellow-and-white gold chain, framed with a diamond-studded strand. Price tag: $2,780 – which translates, for the curious, into something more than 100 tanks of premium unleaded for a Lexus, according to the latest fuel figures.
Or, for the $2,190 rose gold ring encrusted with chocolate diamonds, you could buy about 547 Venti non-fat double-shot peppermint mochas at your local Starbucks.
Ryland & Co. – which is physically broader – offers a wider array of products: in addition to jewelry, there are teacups, silverware, Christmas tree ornaments, pill boxes, picture frames, China and purses.
One Ryland shopper on a recent November afternoon bought gloves for polishing silver; another wanted a silver spoon engraved.
Carol Bannish, a New York native who has shopped at Ryland for 36 years, came to buy a pair of pearl earrings as a Christmas gift for her daughter.
She comes, she said, “for the quality. It’s always been good. And I like to support the downtown,” she said.
What you won’t find at the city’s oldest dispensers of luxury items are fire sales. But that’s not to say they aren’t jockeying for customers.
Molteni has a plate of miniature muffins and a vat of hot, sugary apple cider to enhance the shopping experience.
And the Baileys, like all good salespeople, are selling a particularly relevant spin along with their jewelry.
“Lots of people’s stock portfolios are going down,” Robert Bailey said. “But gold and diamonds are continuing to go up. In my years in the jewelry business, the value of diamonds has never come down. The things people buy here are things that retain their value or appreciate.”
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