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To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (38461)	2/7/1999 9:40:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 164684

Yeah but why dont you put your stores online? You seem to know how to do it already.... just pull all the Bezos "tricks" (I dont think hes a scam but you seem to, so ok) - maybe you'll become a billionaire! Dont forget your SI friends when that happens. Michelle, I am not sure if you are being sarcastic or what your purpose may be. I do have plans to place a small web site with basic information about my stores, pictures of mostly gold products, a small order area for convenience but that is all. It is not even clear to me how people would locate my site since any domain name close to the names of either of my stores are used. I would place a site their basically to have a presence on the web. National Jeweler Magazine has articles about jewelers on the web and it states they are selling merchandise well. I am personally a little skeptical since the information that was provided was by the jewelers themselves. That is no difference than having information from Bezos. My plan when entering the jewelry business was not to "pull tricks." My plan has not changed either. I am hung up on the issue of the ethics which is something I and my employees regard very highly. My stores are both within the top 1% of retail jewelry stores in volume in the entire United States. Yet, both are in small towns. Every employee I have is a GIA graduate or at least is presently working towards that degree. This way we can provide our customers with service that has a great deal of knowledge and we can dislose properly the exact product we are selling. The very last plan on my agenda is to be grouped in the link shown below. national-jeweler.com Jewelry is not a commodity.Maybe watches of a certain brand and model are but most everything is not. It is my opinion that the net is a great forum for the exchange of information but only certain products are suited for sales on the net. Jewelry is not one of them. Jewelry is a touch and see experience. Interestingly enough, I have sold a fair amount of items via the internet and all have been unsolicited. Names do not matter here because that is confidential but suffice it to say that people from SI have contacted me via private email and asked about certain products. If I feel comfortable with that individual, I mail to them a selection of the product in which they are interested taking a chance of never receiving back thousands of dollars of merchandise. In every case, the individual has chosen one of the items I have sent and mailed to me the money for the product they kept. On average, this speaks extremely highly of the typical SI poster. My closure rate is also 100%. Back to the point in issue. I am not a national retail chain. My market is generally local and I am back to the quandry of how would people stumble upon my site. One is through the URL in my paper, radio, direct mail advertising and signs in the store. Of course, those people already know about us. The last thing I would want to do is take my stores public. I doubt that would succeed, I do not have the knowhow and how am I to convince an underwriter why I need the cash and convince the investor why they want to buy my stock? I chose to be the dominant retailer of fine jewelry in my markets and if I desire to expand, I will open additional stores in additional markets. Just one final comment. I bought David Jewelers in Meadville in 1976. At that time, there were eight other competitors all competing for the people in the surrounding small towns and in Meadville itself. Now there are only four total stores in my market. I command 80% of the market. I hope the other three do not fold due to the fact that people will go out of town to compare jewelry if we are the only store in this market. My store in Erie is in a larger market so our dominance is not as significant although it is still major. Glenn