Exclusive First Interview with IJO's New President, Stephen Barnes

IJO, the Independent Jewelers Organization, one of the largest and oldest buying groups in the jewelry industry, has a new president! Stephen Barnes, longtime Punchmark client and friend, was announced as the new IJO President, and has been tasked with leading the organization to new heights!

Michael Burpoe, Director of User Experience at Punchmark, was honored to sit down for an in-depth conversation with Stephen and ask all of the burning questions related to his new position, including what he will prioritize in the short term, how he plans to foster deeper relationships between retailers and vendors, his vision for activating the next generation of jewelers, and the course he plans to set for IJO for the next 50 years.

In his first interview as acting President of IJO, learn about what Stephen Barnes’ vision for IJO includes and what being president means to him. 

Below is a brief snippet of the transcript from Michael’s exclusive interview with Stephen Barnes. Listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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Michael Burpoe 03:21
And having someone such as yourself, again coming from a retail jewelry background and then as well as your background as a advisor with the Edge Retail Academy, has probably allowed you to see kind of the full the full field and kind of provide experiences from you know yourself as well as being an absentee owner, and then you know coaching people through succession and retirement. It's got to kind of make you feel like you're in the driver's seat when it comes to leading an organization such as IJO.

Stephen Barnes 03:54
Yeah, it does. You know, like I said earlier, I feel like that the organization really prepared me. It's grown me up, so to speak, and I can look back at literally the last 25 years and say, oh, that's why I did that and that's why I went through that challenge, because it prepared me for the next step. And what's awesome about personally living and breathing and experiencing all of this as a retail jeweler is, you know, we're like we all face challenges, but going through it, you know, knowing that you've got somebody on your side, knowing that somebody's been through some of those same challenges and helping you along the way, it's great. So now, as president of IJO, I get to lean into those. You know 650 members that we have and you know, when they've got challenges, I've been there, I've done that. I can help them through that. I can see that. Show them that you know what. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Here's the steps that I took, or here's things that I've been through personally that I know will help you along the way.

Michael Burpoe 04:51
Man that's so exciting to hear. We'll get into your history and kind of what makes you the right fit for this position in just a second. But I do want to kind of front load this episode a little bit with just a couple of burning questions that I saw while I was kind of snooping around on the IJO exclusive Facebook groups in Indy and I wanted to make sure I asked them early so that people who are coming to listen to this might get their answers for these questions that they want to ask. So the first one is what does it mean for you to be president of IJO? What will your role be?

Stephen Barnes 05:26
Sure. So one of the main reasons that Jeff has brought me into this role at IJO is number one I've always been a very forward thinker, kind of an out of box thinker. I try to bring new ideas and things to Jeff and many people know or maybe not know this, but I've been quote unquote consulting with Jeff and IJO for probably about seven years now. He brought me in to help kind of give vision to the organization, help him decide how to move things and move things in a positive direction. So just having that clarity of vision of what we want to accomplish is one of the things.

So I've been tasked with lots of different things and I won't go into all of those here, but some of the main things that I see are pressing issues for the organization and that I'm going to be a part of is number one our next generation of jewelers, our younger jewelers that are coming in. They are hungry, they're so creative and I just think that our industry as a whole has not embraced their creativity enough yet. I want to be able to provide them with different programs, with different abilities, to be able to help reach out to, network amongst themselves, so that they can get a solid foundation and know that they've got an organization backing them to say look, we recognize you're a different generation and we can't do things the way we've always done them. So one of my biggest challenges is how do we connect to that next generation, and hopefully I'm young enough that I can create that bridge for that next generation to feel comfortable with it.

Michael Burpoe 07:03
Yeah, I saw that you set up the next generation summit. I believe is the term.

Stephen Barnes 07:08
Well, it's still in the very early planning stages right now. It was an idea. I can't take credit for the idea. It's an idea that has existed out there for many years, but I just never sunk its teeth into it, to kind of give give hold to it. So we're we're in the exploratory stages now, but from the initial email that we sent out to our membership seeing if they were interested overwhelming response that we got from it. So we are trying to plan something for maybe in September I'm sorry, in January for this next generation group. We don't have a place yet, but we're definitely wanting to go somewhere warm to attract people and provide a platform for them to not only network, to get to know other jewelers, but really provide them with some amazing content on what it's like to be a young, 20, 30, 40 year old in this industry and say, hey, here are some tools that you can put in your toolbag to really be successful. Don't make some of the same mistakes that we've made along the way. Let's go ahead and prepare you for that.

Michael Burpoe 08:10
I love that and you touched upon it just briefly at the beginning. What will it mean for Jeff Roberts, the, I believe, owner of IJO, now that you're president?

Stephen Barnes 08:21
Sure, jeff is remaining chairman and overseeing all operations of the company. He's not going anywhere. But Jeff just realized the day-to-day operations, the creativity. He's at a point in his life that he just feels like you know what. It's time for him to step aside. So I commend him for recognizing what's best for the organization, what is best for his membership is to be in that position. So that is where I come in too. So Jeff is not going anywhere and I don't want him to go anywhere. I need to lean in on him because he's been in this industry a lot longer than I have. He's been in this role at IJO, as he was in the presidency role for many, many years before he became owner of the company. So I'm going to be leaning very hard into him to see all those responsibilities that he has that he wants me to do.

Michael Burpoe 09:09
I'm sure that people love to hear that. And finally, my last burning question is going to be what are your main goals for IJO? Is it expansion and growth, or is it, you know, deeper ties? Is it bringing in new ideas or new vendors? What do you see as the main goals for IJO?

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Listen to the full episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4VY0YdCHRgK3rJvB7nzter?si=14ea78fc3ea94b66

Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/in-the-loupe/id1503567454