Ramstad: Wixon Jewelers, a destination for luxury, celebrations and petting dogs, is closing

Dan and Hope Wixon sent an e-mail to customers about the decision a few weeks ago. The reaction was shock, tears and even anger from some. Now, they are ready to tell everyone.

Wixon Jewelers will close in May. The store on Lyndale Avenue in Bloomington is one of the most luxurious in the Twin Cities, though it may not seem like it from the street.

It’s undoubtedly the only jewelry store in the world with Rolex’s golden crown logo and a pair of black and yellow Labradors on the big sign out front.

Business is great, the Wixons say. They are just at an age — Dan is in his 70s — when it’s time to retire. The couple have 13-year-old twins and they want to no longer miss important moments with the kids because of work.

“It’ll be a little bittersweet. It’s hard to leave. There’s already been tears falling abundantly, absolutely,” Dan said as he, Hope and I talked last week in the “Switzerland” conference room at the back of the store. “I’ve never in my life had a month off. I can’t imagine.”

Hope said, “We just had to jump, just go for it because we can always find an excuse to stay. We’ve got five important years with our kids and that’s our focus.”

As in most metropolitan areas, the Twin Cities has several luxury jewelry stores owned by a single family for two or more generations. By contrast, Dan and Hope created Wixon and made it a rare store with a less than 50-year history to be trusted by some of the world’s leading jewelry designers and brands.

Opened in 1988, Wixon Jewelers by 2000 was both sizable and well-regarded enough to forge relationships with several leading Swiss watch brands. Rolex came first, followed by Jaeger-LeCoultre and the most exclusive of all Patek Philippe.

Wixon Jewelers is the only store in Minnesota with JLC and Patek watches. Operating in the rarest air of the luxury realm proved hugely lucrative, but carried a tradeoff that affected the store’s fate.

Those Swiss brands keep their dealers on a tight leash with one-year contracts and annual reviews. When a store changes owners, they leave it and wait for the new owner to establish themselves before thinking of coming back.

That made selling the store improbable at best and likely impossible. With so much revenue and goodwill disappearing, chances were slim the Wixons could come to terms with a prospective buyer.

“It’s the nature of the business that that just doesn’t work,” Dan said.

The Wixons credit their two dozen employees, including sales representatives, in-house watchmakers and goldsmiths, for helping them maintain a relationship with the watch brands for a quarter century.

“That’s why we don’t have two stores,” Dan said. “We can only do this out of one. We can’t put together another group of people as spectacular as this.”

“We hire the best from front to back,” Hope said. “And it’s having us in the store too. We are all hands-on. And some company, whether it’s a chain or an individual, can’t come in and just do that. They can’t be Dan and Hope. They can’t figure out the whole way we all work.”

Through the years, their Labradors also played a role, currently Timmy Walnuts and Joe Dynamite. Some customers call ahead to find out if the dogs are in the store before they visit.

“You walk in those double doors and, if you’ve never been here before, you can be kind of intimidated,” Hope said. “We might have beautiful, spectacular things, but we’re just regular people loving our dogs.”

The couple run the business so closely, they finish each other’s memories and thoughts about it. They sounded almost as one describing their love for colorful gemstones.

“We both love color and gemstones became another niche,” she said.

“Diamonds, many people do that well,” he said.

“You have to develop what I call ‘color eyes,’” she said.

“You have to stay in it. You can’t take a break. You need to constantly be focusing on the trends,” he said.

Dan grew up in Ghent, Minn., a town of about 300 near Marshall in southwest Minnesota. His father was a butcher who worked all hours and days to help farmers and customers.

“He was a really good businessman with a high standard, which I like to think we’ve carried through,” Dan said. He keeps a photo of his father in the break room.

After serving as an Army medic during the Vietnam War, Dan returned to Minnesota and for much of the 1970s and 1980s worked in the antiques business. By handling estate sales, he learned about jewelry. When he finally opened his own store, it occupied just a portion of the building on Lyndale, though he knew he wanted to do more.

“Every jewelry store out there stops at a certain level, and that is always dictated by the mentality of the owner,” Dan said. “If the owner is a guy who repairs jewelry, he’s going to have a repair jewelry store. If the owner is convinced that he can’t sell two carat diamonds, that’s where he stops and he’s a one carat diamond jeweler. You just can’t limit yourself like that.”

It took a lot of work, Hope said. “People look at where we are now and have no idea the sweat equity, the sleepless nights, the 80-hour weeks,” she said.

Now, the Wixons will put that energy into driving their teenagers to volleyball, baseball and other activities.

“There’s a lot of changes that go on in their teenage years. We want to be engaged,” she said.

“We want to be there and not be the person who has so many obligations,” he said.

“Be at work. Be in Switzerland. Be on a buying trip,” she said.