A Mt. Pleasant couple believes the time is right to retire after 41 years in the jewelry business.
George and Colleen Wood closed Wood’s Jewelers at the Countryside Plaza in East Huntingdon on June 5. They had been in business there for 33 years after moving from Main Street in Mt. Pleasant.
“It’s been emotional. We’ve seen a lot of regular customers … people coming in to say goodbye.
“It’s been amazing how many people have come in and told us about how they bought their high school class ring or their wedding bands here,” George Wood said.
Colleen Wood said their daughter, Stacey Wood of Columbus, Ohio, came home just so she could walk around the store one last time.
“It’s bittersweet, very much so,” Colleen Wood said.
The glass showcases still held jewelry and watches last week. In the rear of the store, shelves and walls were adorned with plaques honoring people for their achievements and trophies for all kinds of sports.
While his jewelry business faced competition from big-box stores and online retailers, Wood said the key to success for his retail business was what bigger outlets and online ordering cannot offer — customer service.
“We tried to do whatever the customer wanted,” George Wood said.
The formula worked because “we’ve grown the business over the years,” he said.
Transition from grocery to gems
George Wood has spent his entire career in retail, but he wasn’t always selling jewelry, watches and trophies.
Wood began in retail by managing his parents’ Super Dollar supermarket in Mt. Pleasant in the 1970s and 1980s. That was going well until his parents decided in the mid-1980s that it was time to retire and closed the store.
That forced Wood to reinvent himself, transitioning from a supermarket manager to a jewelry store operator when the couple bought Frey’s jewelry store on Main Street in Mt. Pleasant in May 1985.
He recalled how he went from operating a business where the daily cash flow from grocery customers was in the thousands of dollars to a mere $55 the first day he opened the doors to the jewelry store.
Having no prior expertise, he traveled to Lancaster to learn how to repair quartz watches. He recalled being one of the youngest people to learn how to fix new quartz models, which had fewer moving parts and more electronics.
“It’s becoming a lost art,” Wood said of the skills needed to repair watches.
Overcoming downtown disaster
Wood was forced to move his business when a fire in downtown Mt. Pleasant destroyed his building in October 1992. The blaze ruined all of the inventory in a newsstand he owned on Main Street and about 80% of the inventory in the jewelry store, he said.
Colleen remembered the fire occurred at night, but she still sent her son, Ben, to school the next morning because the Mt. Pleasant Area Vikings had a football game to play and he was a member of the team.
They relocated to another site on Main Street in Mt. Pleasant within two weeks and remained there until May 1993, when they moved the store to the Countryside Plaza.
Selling off operations
Wood said they have sold the trophies, plaques and awards business to Unity Printing near Latrobe, which already has moved the inventory to its offices along Route 981. Wood added they still hope to sell the business and remaining inventory to a buyer who wants to operate a jewelry store.
The Woods said they look forward to taking some time off after working 12-hour days, six days a week.