Meet Garry Zimmerman of Windy City Diamonds

Today we’d like to introduce you to Garry Zimmerman.

Garry, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
My family has been in the diamond and jewelry industry as long as I can remember. My Grandfather started our business. After WWII, my father joined him and together they built a business together. Based on trust and integrity, our business grew, and our stellar reputation was soon known throughout the diamond and jewelry industry. When I graduated from college, I too joined into our family business, and I have 2 brothers that followed me not to long after that. We have worked together as a team for many years now, long after our Grandfather passed away, and long since our father retired. Our father always taught us, “you’re only as good as your word”, so the trust and integrity that our grandfather began with, has been instilled in the rest of us to carry on his legacy.

Our staff is well trained so that all information disseminated is correct and to the point of what we are being asked. We speak our client’s language and attempt to help them in any way possible. No surprises here, we take the time to fully educate someone on their purchase so that they may make proper, educated decisions, insuring their complete satisfaction. Our name goes on every piece of jewelry sold at Windy City Diamonds, so our store Philosophy is that we strive to have every guest walk out 100% satisfied with the jewelry that they have purchased.

Our specialty is custom and semi-custom engagement rings and wedding bands, and all work is done in house. In this way, we may control the timing and the quality of the workmanship. We’re very proud of our abilities to produce exactly what our guest would like, so that they will love what they receive for a lifetime of happiness. Our goal is to be the best at what we do, and within our specialty, we are definitely at the top of the list in Chicago. We began our store with our client’s in mind, aspiring to offer the finest custom jewelry, and have the finest selection of loose, certified diamonds, and all at the right price. It took a long time to reach this point, but, I have been doing this my entire working career, always looking to grow and improve. I want everyone to win, and if my clients walk out happy, then I’m happy too. I don’t believe in standing still, I listen to what my staff and my clients have to say/comment, and I move forward accordingly. I love what I do, after all, how many people do you know that may honestly say that virtually everyone that walks out of their door is happy? I can!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Nothing comes smooth. There has been a learning curve about everything. I started out my career in the wholesale diamond trade. I worked wholesale for many years prior to opening our retail store, and the change from wholesale to retail was not easy. I always believed in working with experts, so we hired well trained people to work in the store, but I needed to learn the ropes, and we needed to learn about safety and security, both of the merchandise, as well as the people. Finding highly respected and trustworthy people is imperative for a retail store like ours and that too took time and the learning curve was very steep with this.

When the world markets crashed after 9/11, there were some lean, tough times, not just for us, but for many Americans. After plodding along for a number of years, we honed in further on our niche market of custom designing engagement rings and wedding bands, and found that we were really good at this. When the world markets crashed in 2008, again most everyone suffered to some extent, but we dug in our heals and persevered to come through even stronger than when we started. We found that we had to be the best and offer the best customer service, anything less and we suffered for it.

Locating and testing our jewelers to be sure that they do excellent work is not the easiest job to do. I went through many, many different jewelers until I found just the right team members, that I knew I could count on to do, not just a good job, but an exemplary job. This was a tremendous challenge, but we made it happen.

The same was true for our sales staff. I wanted my staff to be friendly, knowledgeable and patient so that all situations would be handled appropriately. This too was not always easy, and putting together our sales team took many years and lots of struggles, but we now have in place a team that I’m fully confident will be able to step up to help our client’s in any way that they may need in reference to custom jewelry.

Lastly, we had to work through our computer animated design staff in the same way. Finding well qualified jewelry cad designers is also not easy as they must be creative and well qualified on the different programs necessary in order to complete our designs efficiently and properly. Additionally, they need to be able to understand our clients’ needs and desires when making these designs on the computer and sometimes translating a rough sketch into a proper design may be challenging, but after 17 years, we now have a wonderful, well qualified CAD team that we are happy and proud to work with.

So, let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Windy City Diamonds story. Tell us more about the business.
Our specialty is certainly Custom Diamond Engagement rings and Custom wedding bands. We are known for our ability to understand just what our client’s needs are, and we help them to put their idea’s down on paper. These ideas are then translated into proper form for jewelry, usually with the help of our highly-qualified CAD team. Our goal is to bring engagement ring dreams into reality, and we work hard to give our client’s exactly what they want. This often means not trying to sell what we have in the show case, but rather helping them to build the ring into that special piece of jewelry, designed just for them. I’m very proud that our whole team knows how to educate, how to listen to our client’s needs, and how to help them bring that idea into reality.

Additionally, our team is very well trained in diamonds, and we again take the time to educate our clients about the differences from one diamond to the next, helping them to make their own decision as to which diamond is perfect for them. We don’t tie a ball and chain on anyone, rather our philosophy is to allow our clients to make the best choice for themselves. This ultimately translates into someone walking out of our door fully satisfied with their choice.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I firmly believe in making your own good fortune. Treat people right, without prejudice or bias, truly welcoming everyone, and your true colors show through. Be honest with people and you will always prevail in the end. We have had the very good fortune to work with a wonderful team on our sales and support staff. Working together, cohesively as a team, is easily seen by those that walk into our store. We’re happy to have all of our guests here, and that feeling of warmth is felt by everyone that walks into our store. I know that this seems a bit cliché, but I’m very happy that someone has found us, and we treat them as they deserve to be treated, respectfully and with dignity, and we do everything in our power to make things easy and accessible for our clients. This I believe has created our own good fortune to us.

Contact Info:

• Address: 1 South Wabash
  Chicago, IL 60603
• Website: www.windycitydiamonds.com
• Phone: 312-327-9463
• Email: director@windycitydiamonds.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/windycitydiamonds/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WindyCityDiamonds/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/windycitydias
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/windy-city-diamonds-chicago-5
• Other: https://www.pinterest.com/windycitydiam/

Image Credit:
Miss Motley Photography

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