In the Loupe Exclusive: An Inside Look at Ostbye's Latest Acquisition

Last week it was announced that Ostbye, the jewelry industry powerhouse vendor, had acquired Victor Corporation, the diamond jewelry manufacturer that’s been in business for nearly eight decades, causing customers of each to react with excitement and surprise. The merging of the two feels to be a natural fit, with shared values and less overlap in customer base than one might expect.

Craig MacBean, President and fourth generation owner of Ostbye, recently joined Michael Burpoe, Direct of User Experience at Punchmark, to discuss the recent merger. Read the highlights of the interview below or listen to the full episode here.

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Michael Burpoe: 1:49
And now back to the show. Welcome back everybody. I'm joined by Craig McBean. You know him as the owner of Ostbye. And how are you doing today, Craig?

Craig MacBean: 2:05
I am doing awesome, Mike. It's always the highlight of my year to be able to connect with you on this podcast because you are one of my favorites, so I always enjoy being with you, learning from you, chatting with you. We're lucky to have you, so these podcasts are great.

Michael Burpoe: 2:21
I appreciate that. Thank you so much, Craig. And you know what this is year three of our annual check-in with Ostbye. We normally do it at the end of the year, but I decided to move it up a little bit because this is going to be coming out right around IJO & RJO and I figured that we could get it in right in the buying period. But also, I scheduled this appointment to interview you and then, like two days later, the big news came out. I want to talk about this at first and right in the beginning. So, Ostbye just acquired Victor Corporation, which is a huge name in the jewelry industry. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means for Ostbye and what that means for you as an owner?

Craig MacBean: 3:00
Yeah, so first of all, we're super excited about it! John [​​Youkilis] and I go back a lot of years and I think that's one of the cool things about this industry is just the interactions that we all have, even on the vendor side, the manufacturing side. We might compete against each other, but there's still a friendship and a respect that goes on there. And I got to know John Euclid a few years ago. We served on some boards together and just always admired him, how he ran his company, the success that they had, and you know, over the years we just kept talking and then recently he, I think, had come to the decision that he'd reached that point where, you know, “there's no pockets in a coffin” and maybe it's time to retire and go on to that next chapter in his life, and he didn't have any family members that were interested in going into it. So we started talking and it really turned out to be great.

The more we talked, the more I realized it was a great fit for us for just so many reasons! Their product line meshes with ours really well. They're strong in some areas of the country that we’re not as strong when I ran our customer lists against each other. There really was very little overlap, surprisingly little overlap. So from that standpoint, it really helps us open some avenues into some new stores. In addition, they do some things really well from the marketing side, product side, just like we do. But the ability to combine those product offerings, service offerings and everything that they bring to the table with what we bring to the table, I really think that it gives us a really comprehensive program to support the independent jeweler. And I think, most of all, and you've heard me talk about it core values are just super important to me and I really have a good feeling about what Ostbye’s DNA is. Who we are, and it's funny because those stores that kind of have that same DNA as us are our best partners and you know, just getting to know John and his team and all they do, they really shared the same core values that we did.

Craig MacBean: 5:16
So from that standpoint, just everything about this really made sense… And it's just been, it's really been an honor just to work with John and this team over the last few months to pull this thing off. And what's fun about it is, you know.. sometimes these things can be contentious or things like that. It just never was. It really was two people with the same goal in mind, and that's for the legacy of Victor to continue and to be a part of Ostbye and to make us stronger to be able to support their customers with the same quality service that they've always received and their and their people that we're able to bring on board with us.

It's just and I feel like John's gone from a kind of a colleague to a best friend over these last three months and he's still going to help us here in the next few months as we kind of finalize this integration. So it's been great. I love that, super exciting for us and I'm really happy for everyone involved.

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Listen to the full episode here: