To our community and valued customers, thank you for your continued support of McCarty’s Jewelry, the oldest jewelry store in Southern California, started right here in the Belmont area of Long Beach in 1923 by Victor McCarty. For over 100 years now, we have been the little store that could… surviving the many major changes in our world and in the jewelry industry as a whole, particular the massive number of store closures of independent stores like ours. We want to give you an update on our store and some necessary changes to our repair policy.
As many of you know, McCarty’s Jewelry almost closed its doors permanently when previous owner, Page Henley, in his 70’s, tried to retire back in 2019. Listening to the community, Page “un-retired” and kept the store opened, hoping someone would come and purchase the store so it can remain open when he retires. MD Chau, whose marketing company had done work for McCarty’s Jewelry in 2018, was made aware of the situation. MD managed a couple of Jared The Galleria of Jewelry stores as well as Traditional Jewelers in Fashion Island (Newport Beach) after moving to California in 2014 from Washington, DC - this was prior to restarting his marketing agency in California in 2017.
MD met with Page and decided to take on the risk of purchasing McCarty’s Jewelry, in order to keep it open for the community, even though many independent jewelry stores were closing at the time. When Page fully retired in the summer of 2024, sales for McCarty’s Jewelry unexpectedly dropped over $1 million compared to the previous year through Q3 & Q4 of 2024 and Q1 of 2025 - posing a significant challenge for us to overcome. Major changes were made with operations to keep our doors open as a store. We reduced staff and store hours in order to weather the tough economy. Our team became overwhelmed with watch battery changes and many small jewelry repair jobs of jewelry pieces that were not purchased from our store. We did our best to provide these repair services. However, our ability to help our jewelry shopping and custom design customers suffered as a result. After a long period of deliberation, we determined as a team that we needed to make a change.
REPAIR POLICY CHANGE
It starts with us first understanding that we are a jewelry store before we are a jewelry repair shop. Jewelry repair, whether it is a small or a big job, takes up a significant amount of labor, raw material, and maintenance costs. But repair revenue cannot support the store staying open, between lease and staffing costs. Repair jobs were taking up 90% of our staff’s time while only contributing to 25% of the store’s revenue, causing our staff to struggle to serve customers coming in to purchase jewelry and consult about custom design. Even one Yelp review complained that no one was on the sales floor and staff was in the back. The reviewer didn’t know it, but our team members were busy administrating repair jobs. As you may understand from a business health standpoint, McCarty’s Jewelry would not be able to survive if this continued. So, as a business, we have had to make difficult changes to our repair policy in order to operate as a healthy jewelry store and get back to the place where we are providing a high quality shopping experience for jewelry buying customers.
We are no longer accepting watch battery changes. Our watchmaker(s) can only service full watch overhauls. We simply do not have the manpower for the sheer volume of watch battery change requests we get daily.
We only repair jewelry purchased from McCarty’s Jewelry, unless it is a full jewelry restoration project (which is equivalent to a custom design job). This allows us to best steward and protect our jeweler(s) limited time for servicing our jewelry purchasing customers, whose business has faithfully kept our doors opened for over 100 years. This will also allow us to complete repair jobs for our purchasing customers much faster than our previous 2-week window because of the sheer volume of small outside jobs we were intaking.
We will continue to honor our 6-month repair warranty for repair jobs we have completed. If a previous customer needs a different repair job on the same piece of jewelry (not purchased from McCarty’s), we will unfortunately decline the service.
We will continue to offer free jewelry cleaning for store visitors, regardless of where the jewelry was purchased. This courtesy service is simply good hospitality and we will continue to offer this as a store.
A CRITICAL MOMENT IN OUR HISTORY
McCarty’s Jewelry is at a critical point in its history as a retail jewelry store. It needs the support of its loyal customers and community in order to stay open. Customers who understand that, in order for a small business to stay in business, it must make a profit. Customers who will support the store financially, allow it to make a profit in order to maintain and invest in store updates and growth. Customers who sees McCarty’s Jewelry as a worthy luxury shopping destination and will help us reach great heights of success as the oldest surviving jewelry store of Southern California, birthed right here in Belmont.
We have made sure that the store is not “owner-centric” - but about McCarty’s heritage. “McCarty’s belongs to the community” is our mantra. We need our community and our loyal customers’ support now more than ever.
We have direct access to global diamond inventory, natural and lab-grown. No middlemen. No buying department somewhere else. You work directly with us and our team members to pack as much quality and value into your budget as possible!
We can custom make or find any piece of jewelry you could ever want or imagine. And we let you explore freely, generating a FREE 3D VISUAL for anything you can dream up. And we can source any stones you want in your jewelry piece.
We will never gouge you like other stores might. We will be honest with you. Our only goal is to be profitable so we can stay open, make updates, and grow. It’s that simple. We want McCarty’s Jewelry to be a shining example of longevity and success - made possible by community!
We greatly appreciate our loyal jewelry buying customers - thank you for not just using us, but supporting us where and when it matters most. We are committed to serving you - you are our highest priority. We aim to make sure we stay open for the community - to the best of our ability.
Thank you for understanding the necessity of these changes we are making… in order to achieve that goal.
Sincerely Yours,
McCarty’s Jewelry Team