Jewelry designer turned businessman Vram Minassian has been steadily getting a lot of attention for his craft and the work of the many artists he represents at GRAY Gallery. Starting from a time when Vram singlehandedly crafted his jewelry in his tiny apartment and walked the pieces from shop to shop, he now has celebrity stylists looking for his unique pieces by name to adorn Hollywood’s elite. As he puts it, “I started out as an artist, and as I created more and more pieces and had to hire more and more people to help me with my craft, I became an artist who is also a businessman.”
GRAY Gallery, which first opened its doors in 2010, is now reaching a new level of growth — offering a virtual, interactive gallery and a live customer experience. This experience, which will allow it to reach its sophisticated clientele more conveniently, is made possible by SAP Anywhere, a solution that runs in the cloud and can be accessed through a web browser or mobile app.
Whether they are purchasing a pair of shoes or a piece of original art, today’s consumers expect immediacy. GRAY wanted to deliver this immediacy while still staying true to the tactile, hands-on experience people get when they enter the brick-and-mortar gallery. “We wanted to create another experience to parallel that and offer a realistic reflection of the space we are in,” says Andrew Utas, Director of GRAY Gallery. “With SAP Anywhere, we can create the perfect mirror for our physical space in the virtual world.”
In addition to reaching our existing customer base even better than before, we will be able to grow our offerings by reaching an entirely new group of customers and bringing to market entirely new artists and works.
— Andrew Utas, Director of GRAY Gallery
From Jewelry to Gallery
When Vram first started out 30 years ago, his clients were mostly friends and family. But little by little, he started gaining more private clients through word of mouth and placing his work in posh shops and galleries. Each client interaction cemented his reputation not only for design, but also for personalized service. This stellar reputation combined with a lifelong love for art and design helped Vram form the foundation to become a gallery owner. And so GRAY Gallery was born.
From the outset, the intention of the gallery was to offer customers the personalized service to which they were accustomed but now in a beautiful and unusual space full of art and artifacts. “Because we rely very much on personalized customer interactions, the ability to be personal with our customers is extremely important, no matter the setting,” says Utas.
As the business grew, the disadvantages of running multiple systems for inventory, accounting, customer service, and web presence were becoming increasingly apparent. “We were using multiple systems and patching them together to give a complete experience,” says Vram. For example, customers who couldn’t access the gallery in person would have to call or email gallery staff to see what was in stock. There was no way for customers to remotely view artifacts with any guarantee of immediacy or accuracy. “We wanted a vehicle to reach a lot more people without diluting our personalized experience or diminishing the interaction in any way,” he adds.
Because GRAY currently stocks hundreds of artists’ works and has a customer base of over a thousand different interior designers and collectors, it was sometimes challenging to match up the artwork with the vast client base. “With so many designers, inventory, and clients, retaining that personal touch was becoming difficult,” says Utas.
Without a reliable database, and with data volumes increasing, it became more challenging for gallery staff to efficiently meet their clients’ needs, and Vram soon realized GRAY needed to update its technology environment.
A Simple Solution for a Growing Business
With SAP Anywhere, GRAY now has a complete system that integrates its customer relationship management (CRM), real-time inventory, point-of-sale, and website functionality into one simple-to-manage cloud application. This application does everything from greeting customers in a live virtual gallery to packaging up an item and ensuring fast delivery. And it allows GRAY to better control how it interacts with its clients by gathering information on how they liked a piece or when they received it.
Customers can look through gallery items at any moment and from any place, accessing the pieces at their convenience. “We are using SAP Anywhere as a tool for our clients to interface with GRAY from wherever they are in the world,” Utas says. “They can browse our different pieces, look at details, see multiple photographs, download product sheets, and purchase — all in real time.”
No longer will customers receive outdated or inaccurate information. Everything that happens in SAP Anywhere is a fast and complete interaction powered by live data. “The end-user experience feels like you’re walking into an art gallery or museum with the pedigree of the people who are behind it,” says Vram. “It was important to me that customers didn’t feel like they were just dealing with a vending machine. I wanted to ensure they still have direct contact with the art, the artists, and the gallery, and we found that it’s a welcoming experience complete with everything GRAY was looking for — that is, visual beauty, transparency, consistency, and speed.”
Speed today goes hand in hand with mobility. Since SAP Anywhere is built for mobile, it scales appropriately regardless of what device users are on. “We use the SAP Anywhere mobile app to attend to our customers in the physical gallery to quickly provide them with live information the moment they ask a question. For example, we can see right away whether a piece of inventory is onsite or in our storage facility,” says Utas. “Customers don’t have time to wait for gallery staff to look in a catalog or search a back-end system.”
Keeping It Personal
SAP Anywhere provides more than just a website. The virtual showroom, which officially launched in early February 2016, is intuitive and easy to navigate for end users — even the not-so-tech-savvy ones. It shows customers how to find a particular artifact, how many pieces are available, what a specific artist is currently showcasing, and so on.
Getting started with SAP Anywhere was easy, too. “We uploaded our catalog of goods as well as our customer information to the cloud, and that made it accessible not only on our site here, but from anywhere,” says Utas. “Having a live view of all our inventory and business data at our fingertips 24 hours a day not only allows us to serve our clients in the store, but also enables interior designers and stylists to serve their own clients’ needs.”
This is a massive opportunity for GRAY to expand its audience globally and reach more people than previously possible. “In addition to reaching our existing customer base even better than before, we will be able to grow our offerings by reaching an entirely new group of customers and bringing to market entirely new artists and works,” says Utas.
After just a week of being live with SAP Anywhere, GRAY began receiving multiple inquiries each day from artists seeking representation and from clients looking for jewelry or decorative pieces — a rate much higher than usual. With its CRM and inventory capabilities now linked, the business can better communicate with these new and existing customers more frequently by sending gallery news that’s tailored to their specific needs. This allows GRAY to maintain the personalized service it’s known for.
Running Live Anywhere
With SAP Anywhere, GRAY can scale while maintaining its personal touch. It can also easily manage and strengthen its relationships with customers, artists, and designers. With a simplified technology landscape that manages everything in one place, the focus can remain solely on getting customers the right information in the moment. “When we have the information we need immediately available in the palm of our hand, our staff can concentrate on what they do best — connecting with clients in a meaningful way,” says Utas.
Clients are happy because they are saving time. They can now purchase pieces remotely from their mobile devices or in the physical gallery space from staff members’ tablets. And happier customers not only shop more, but are also a source of referrals. “We want all our customers to feel attention is 100% on them from the moment they walk in,” says Vram. “And we believe that the attention is still going to be 100% on them when they are shopping with us via SAP Anywhere.”
