A wish, a dream and a push
helped establish Alexander's Jewelry in 1992, in Shrewsbury, PA. Ken had been in
the jewelry business since 1971. He had worked for most of the major chain
jewelry stores prior to our opening Alexander's Jewelry. Trudy had run a 14k
gold home party business for a number of years.
Owning our own business had
been a dream that we had since the beginning of our relationship. In the late
summer of 1992, our son Gregory suggested to his father that we open our own
store after going on sales calls with Ken. Greg, in his infinite child wisdom,
thought that his dad could do the same things that he saw other small business
owners doing. Ken explained the risks of starting up a business and Greg's reply
was, "But Dad if you don't try it, you'll never know!"
We put the wheels into
motion to try and get opened before Christmas of 1992. We were very lucky that
we had a strong support group of friends who all pulled together to help get us
up and running. Our good friend Tom Brown, whose hobby is cabinet making,
offered to help build our six jewelry cases. Every evening and most weekends we
had the neighborhood men working in our garage on the cases.
We had to have invitations
printed, find manufacturers that could supply us with merchandise and a
Christmas flyer, evaluate and purchase a software program and computer for
inventory and sales and find a location that would accommodate us. Somehow it
all came together and we were able to open our first location in Market Square
behind the Mason-Dixon restaurant. It was a small but welcoming 500 square foot
showroom. We were at this location for about 18 months when a store in the main
shopping center opened up. This was earlier than we had planned to move, but we
needed to take advantage of the opportunity. So we moved across the street to
about 1100 square foot showroom. This was home to Alexander's Jewelry for the
next six years. During this time we had a very good customer who wanted us to
move down to her property. After about three years of her pursuing us we moved
to our current location at 435 S. Main St. We moved in on New Year's Day, 2000
because a major winter storm was due to hit us hard on the 2nd., and it did.
Thanks again to special friends we got everything moved into our new store
before the snow came.
We've been here ever since
and Cindy and Charlie are wonderful landlords. We have really grown in the past
few years thanks to all our wonderful customers. We have a comfortable area for
customers to relax, wait and browse through our catalogs. We have
grown to eighteen cases. We have two jewelers on the premises and seven
additional employees. We carry the largest selection of colored gem stone
jewelry in York County. We recently bought a Laser Welder and now can do repairs
that no other jeweler in our area will even attempt.
We have pride in our
hometown and we try to be active in community activities. Ken is a member of the
New Freedom Lions Club, a Boy Scout leader and was Scout Master of Shrewsbury
Troop 90. He is also a Mason at the Shrewsbury Lodge.
Our philosophy is to treat
our customers the way we would like to be treated, or better. Our pricing is
such that you will get a good, fair price every day of the year. We don't play
the mark-up, discount game. We strive to be warm and friendly and hope that we
can be your jewelry store. Come visit us sometime and tell us about yourself and
your family.