Signet Jewelers CEO Gina Drosos joined Yahoo Finance to discuss holiday shopping amid the pandemic.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Signet Jewelers posing a big beat on earnings, and numbers this morning showing a very strong start to the critical holiday season comp sales. One of those metrics that outperformed jumping just over 15% during the quarter. For more on this, we want to bring in Gina Drosos. She's the CEO of Signet Jewelers. We're also joined by Yahoo Finance's Julia La Roche. Julia, take it away.

JULIA LA ROCHE: Thanks so much, Seana. And Gina, thank you so much for joining us, again, to discuss the latest results. As Seana was referencing, comp store sales growing more than 15% in the third quarter. And of course, I always enjoy our conversations because you get a nice read as to what's going on. And of course, during COVID, during quarantine, I imagine there are a lot of consumer trends you're seeing, more engagements. Tell us what you're seeing in the jewelry business today.

GINA DROSOS: Well, sure. Hi, Julia. It's great to be on again. We were very pleased with our third quarter results with comp sales. As you said, up over 15%. Our e-commerce sales were a strong story, up over 70%. And we also saw positive sales in brick and mortar. We actually saw that across all parts of our business.

So bridal was very strong. We had anticipated this. Our customer research indicated that of couples who are within 18 months of getting engaged, more than half of them were deciding to quarantine together. And we also knew that 93% said that their relationships were equally as strong or getting stronger. So we anticipated more engagements and got out in front of that with great new bridal lines, beautiful product, more customization options, and targeted marketing to couples who were in the stage of their relationship.

We've also seen those strong sales in fashion jewelry. And I think that's a function of two things. One is, you know, people are expressing their style with earrings and pendants now, not with shoes, when we're all on a Zoom call like this. So we're really seeing a surge in those two elements within our business.

And finally, we knew that customers would be shopping longer this holiday season. More than 60% of jewelry customers said that they would be in the market early, starting as early as August or September. So we've really changed the way we think about holiday. It's not just a fourth quarter phenomenon. We've been thinking about the third and fourth quarter together as the holiday season.

JULIA LA ROCHE: And, you know, Gina, as long as you and I have known each other, we've talked about the transformation that you have, going on your path to brilliance. And technology has been a huge component of that. As you were just referencing, the e-commerce numbers looking strong, using some of those virtual consultants. We're talking about a huge trend going on across retail in general, as it relates to technology.

And, you know, historically, folks have avoided buying big ticket items like jewelry online. I would like to understand a bit more how you're using technology to kind of change the game there and-- a two-part question here-- how are you using technology to kind of gain more share with some of your competitors have really experienced some weakness, including kind of losing talent, I guess, closing. And then you have more, I guess, space to bring in more customers. How are you using technology to do that?

GINA DROSOS: Well, Julia, you're right. I mean, this is not a reaction to crisis. This is a strategic and intentional [INAUDIBLE] to build a significantly better digital business at Signet. We've been on the path to brilliance transformation for now in our third year. And we've been making investments in platform technology.

What's unique this year and what's really allowed us to accelerate is bringing technology to our field team and creating virtual selling as an important part of our offering. We've added a lot of new tools also for visualization. When customers buy jewelry online, the two things they're looking for is advice and a trusted relationship and being able to visualize the product. And that's where Signet has really excelled.

Now it's the combination of that and our optimized store footprint that I think is the real long-term competitive advantage for us. For example, we know that most of our e-commerce sales come within 30 miles of a store. So jewelry has been very slow to become more digital, but I think it's really an omnichannel story. And that's where Signet can win. As to--

SEANA SMITH: Gina, talking about that omnichan-- just talking about the omnichannel story, I mean, it's interesting because we've seen a number of retailers, not so much in jewelry, but a number of retailers slimming down their brick and mortar presence. And I know you tend to be doing that. You're moving out of malls.

But you still, as you point out, in order to drive some of those sales, especially in e-commerce, a lot of that coming in within-- whether or not you're within a certain distance from an actual brick and mortar store. What do you see that landscape looking like when you look five to 10 years down the road in terms of your strategy?

GINA DROSOS: Well, I think we're creating the tools now that are allowing customers to feel much more comfortable making a big ticket purchase online. But there's no replacement for that relationship that they have with [AUDIO OUT]. We've empowered more than 3/4 of our field team to be virtual sellers. We now have over 700 virtual sellers who are dedicated just to that. But we have over 20,000 of our jewelry consultants and store managers across the country who are selling virtually.

And that's great. They can have a clientele of customers that they meet with physically and an entirely separate clientele of customers that they serve primarily virtually. So that's a breakthrough, I think.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Quick question for you. Have you ever-- do you keep data on what percentage of deals are bought, for instance, without the customer actually trying on the piece of jewelry or physically seeing it? And is that something you can share with us?

GINA DROSOS: Well, we believe that some of the virtual tools that we're providing to customers actually do give them a sense of trying on the product. For example, you can now take a photo of your hand and upload it to our website and try on rings that way. And we also show the size of earrings on a person so you can get a sense for that.

But it's hard to know precisely how many people are in a store and then buying online or who's searched online and bought in a store. What I can tell you is that of all categories, you know, apparel, electronics, et cetera, jewelry is one of the categories where people have the most integrated journey.

I did want to come back and answer Julia's question that I missed before. We're also using data and analytics to target customers in trade areas where other stores are closing. So unserved jewelry customers, we can now go after in a geotargeted way. And we're also hiring talent when their jobs are cut. So it's really a wonderful competitive advantage for us, the way we're able now to use data and analytics in the jewelry category.

SEANA SMITH: All right, Gina Drosos, CEO of Signet Jewelers, and Julia La Roche, thanks so much for joining us this afternoon.