In its heyday, every store along Chicago's Jewelers Row was packed with customers. The rise of online retail and Covid's impact on life in the Central Business District, however, have led to a need for innovation in one of Chicago's most treasured industries.
Few know this better than Dustin Lemick, a third-generation jeweler whose grandfather started a neighborhood jewelry store in Chicago in the 1950s.
"Jewelers Row is getting crushed right now," he told Chicago Inno. "Going down there is not anywhere close to the same as it used to be. The energy, the activity has come down so much. But brick-and-mortar retail is evolving, and I think there's definitely a place for brick-and-mortar retail especially for the jewelry industry because it's still a touch-and-feel type of product."
Lemick knows Jewelers Row and Chicago's jewelry industry in general need to evolve and become more tech-assisted by using online and marketing tools to drive traffic to brick-and-mortar stores — that's partly what led him to launch BriteCo.
Founded in 2017, BriteCo has built an online insurance platform that lets users quickly see quotes and purchase coverage online. It sells coverage directly to consumers via its website, as well as through its retail partners that offer BriteCo's services at the point of sale.
On Wednesday, the Chicago startup, which is one of Chicago's 23 startups to watch in 2023, announced it is extending its jewelry insurance to include independent insurance agents and brokers in the U.S. Briteco's new Agent & Broker Program allows approved independent insurance agents and brokers the option to offer BriteCo jewelry insurance, including access to the Chicago startup's proprietary technology.
The new program comes at a time when insurance agents are seeing an uptick of changes in the market as well as among their customers who face increasing costs.
BriteCo typically charges 0.5% to 1.5% of the total value of the insured item, which Lemick thinks compares favorably to the 3% range that other competitors charge. By and large, he said BriteCo can cost 50% to 60% less than competitors.
The reason BriteCo is opening up this third distribution channel, along with point of sale at the jewelry store and direct-to-consumer online, is due to the interest he's received from agents.
"We want to be able to provide the broker and our customers with our product," he said. "A lot of people use agents for all their insurance needs, so this is just another tool for the agents to have at their disposal. The other thing is that they don't currently have good options for jewelry and watch insurance — it's a really stale and antiquated space."
While BriteCo's current customer base services a lot of Gen Z and millennial buyers, ranging from 28 to 40 years old, the new program is one way for the Chicago startup to reach an older clientele that may not be savvy online shoppers.
"The folks that use brokers tend to skew older, and they are getting hit with these ridiculous bills with some people having insurance rates go up 60%," he said. "That's where we come in."
