Avery in the News

Beauty by Design

Kerrville Daily Times, December 18, 2004
By Gerard MacCrossan

There’s probably no telling how many pieces Jim Avery has been responsible for since the summer of 1954, when he designed his first piece of James Avery Craftsman jewelry. The best-selling design is well-known, however — a simple ring with a cross etched through it.

“It’s a testament to simplicity and design. It’s our No. 1 seller year after year,” said company president Chris Avery, who runs the family business his father founded in a garage 50 years ago as a one-man operation.

For women — and men, too — having James Avery’s headquarters on the northern outskirts of Kerrville is a blessing. Many times, a man will make the short trip up Harper Road for a birthday, anniversary or Christmas gift that keeps him in the wife’s or girlfriend’s good books.

However, with close to 1,000 employees in factories in four Texas towns and almost 40 retail stores in the southern United States, catalog sales and Internet sales through www.jamesavery.com, it is not only Kerrville-area residents who recognize the reputation of James Avery.

Avery jewelry is distinctive, but through five decades and the transition from small-scale production to mass manufacture, quality and freshness has not been sacrificed.

“We’ve kept it fresh because of the way I started out,” Jim Avery said of designing jewelry that is meaningful to others, but also is meaningful for himself.

Much of the company’s reputation can be attributed to pieces with religious symbolism. However, Chris Avery said that only accounts for about a quarter of the Avery pieces sold each year.

“Seventy-five percent of our sales are secular, but 75 to 80 percent of our customers are of very strong faith,” he said.

“I appreciate faith, especially the Judaic faith, but I appreciate all faiths,” said Jim Avery.

However, designing religious jewelry didn’t come about because of a hard-nosed business decision to find a niche. For the young Jim Avery in the ’50s, using religious symbolism in design was part of his return to Christian faith after years of agnosticism.

“It’s something I thought important to me,” he said.

The three-pronged candlestick that Jim carved on the first James Avery Craftsman sign was a symbolized that return to the faith and belief in God as a Trinity, and has served as the company’s trade mark ever since.

“I had no intention of (the company) growing to this size,” he said. It was three years before he hired his first employee, Fred Garcia.

“In the garage, I served one person at a time,” he said. “I couldn’t do that as our numbers grew.”

At the Kerrville headquarters, a design team is continually dreaming up new individual pieces and lines of jewelry.

“Part of the problem,” said Paul Avery, company vice president, “is when a new design comes in, something else has to be retired.”

About 150 pieces per year are approved for production.

“We don’t have a set number (of new pieces each year),” Chris Avery said. “We want a number we can do well and execute well.”

Although it has been many years since he held sole responsibility for design, at 83, Jim Avery is not retired just yet. He still designs and brings his work to regular meetings where all the potential pieces are critiqued, tweaked or rejected.

“I don’t aspire to a yacht or a ranch.” he said. “This is my life. I enjoy coming to work. I think my role here is to inspire others.”

Part of his inspiration, he said, comes from letters written by customers telling their personal stories.

As the company’s reputation became known and customer demands required production to increase, Avery spread out from Kerrville opening production facilities in Fredericksburg, Comfort and Hondo. Chris Avery said maintaining plants at a manageable size where a camaraderie could exist was important.

“We want to maintain our quality and be a great company for our employees,” he said. Adding a few new retail stores here and there and a managed annual growth helps the company stay viable in its market, without risking the commitment to quality, he said.

At times, cyclical forces in the market have forced some backward steps. However, some of the employees who left the company during a 2003 downturn came back to the company as production picked up again.

Chris Avery said the company’s competition has increased during the last 10 to 15 years.

“We’ve probably been hurt some by our low-key approach,” he said. While Avery has been philanthropic in the community where production and retail facilities are located, it has tithed in a quiet fashion, often in the form of scholarships to graduating high school students.

With 50 years of success behind it, the future looks promising for James Avery, as it will be known in the future. Texas has been fairly well conquered, but there are still 47 states without James Avery stores, and then there is the rest of the world.