In 1970, Matt Stuller founded Stuller, Inc. Now, Stuller is the largest manufacturer and distributor of jewelry and jewelry-related tools, supplies, and equipment in the United States. With over 1,200 worldwide employees and a 600,000 square foot facility here in Lafayette, Louisiana, Stuller is leading the industry with a focus on quality, technology, and artistry, but more than that a focus on the customer. So come with me right now as we take a look why you're in good company here in Lafayette with Stuller, Inc.
My name is Adam Voss. I'm a traveler, an entertainer, and a man on the move. From the biggest cities to the smallest towns, I'm on the hunt for cool companies and what makes them so successful. Right now, you're in good company.
After my initial exploration of Stuller's facility and being greeted with warmth and hospitality everywhere I went, I had a chance to meet the man who started it all, founder and chairman Matt Stuller.
How old is that lost wax casting process? Oh my goodness, thousands of years. They used to do it in sand.
Matt, you started Stuller in 1970 out of the trunk of your car. Today Stuller has grown to be the largest manufacturer and distributor of jewelry and jewelry supplies in the United States. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey?
Yeah, I would describe it as what a ride! I started out, you know, with a strong belief that we had to always wow the customer. So, we just grew the business to what our customers were asking is what they needed. It's really been a fun and exciting, you know, ride.
Well in this journey, it seems like you've been constantly focused on improving the business from the people, the artist that you hire, the quality of the products and the processes. How important is innovation in your success? It is a constant process of improving, becoming more efficient, better quality, listening to the customer and determining what their needs are, what they like, and more importantly sometimes what they don't like. You know, I kinda look at it as Stuller being an orchestra. There's a lot of great musicians, but it has to all come together in order to make great music. It's really an amazing process to have this large of an organization, although it's still small by big factory standards, of having it so well-connected and most especially the people so committed to deliver to the customer what we promise.
I'm so glad you said that because I am a first timer in Lafayette, Louisiana and it seems as if I've entered the wonderland of southern hospitality. Lafayette has that style about it of easy, wanting to please, and so I believe our geographic location really has a lot to do with the style and the culture of the organization.
I've heard a lot of people today tell me we want to make the customer look good, we want to make them the hero. Truly you can see our wonderful folks on the telephone they really, really want to be an asset to the jeweler that we're dealing with. You know, it's heartfelt.
So now we're touring Stuller's thriving call center and I'm here with the call center executive director Bill White, Bill thanks for having us. Thank you for coming. So how many associates do you have on the floor fielding calls? We have 60 associates on the phone. Wow! The thing that really kinda hits me when I talk to your folks is that they're really focused on customer service. We make sure that our employees are well aware of supporting the independent jeweler; that's our number one customer and of course here in Louisiana, we rely heavily on our southern hospitality. Oh man, and it shows.

Walking through Stuller's corporate headquarters here in Lafayette, Louisiana, the first thing that you notice is the enormity of the space with 600,000 square feet. The main artery, this hallway I'm walking down is a third of a mile long.  It broke ground in 1987 and has had four expansions. And they keep growing. This place is a diamond in the rough. When you walk through the facility, of course it's impressive to see, you know, the gold vaults and the diamond and gemstone areas, but we really have a melting pot of old processes of the lost wax casting processes and we've kind of converted that into the metal molds. And then you move down the line and you'll see a robot walking by delivering product, you'll see all of the latest, you know, technologies - new lighting and new diamond setting benches and cool lasers that are cutting gold plate. Massive mills that are, you know, rolling out fifty, 500 feet of gold wire gold plate, there are so many fun things to see here.
I am now in Stuller's vast fabrication Department to meet with Kurt Jagneaux, now Kurt's been here since the eighties, he's the director of fabrication.
It seems in your, in your metal manipulation department you have so many different machines depending on really what you're...Right, every machine has a function. This is an initial roughing mill. From here it goes to what we call a prefinished mill in the back. Then it goes to a finishing mill where you see Courtney working over here where we maintain a tight gauge control and go to the silling machine where it actually parts the unit in two.
He's putting a lance in there and is liquefying the silicon because it melts off very quickly so he's making sure that's the last thing he does before he does the pour. Hot lava. Wow. So that's a 2,000 degrees? Oh, a little over. how much does this weigh, this basket? Oh, this is probably a good three hundred pounds.
Stuller produces over a quarter of a million wedding bands every year. These bands are largely made through the die striking process? Correct. So why is that? Right. The mindset is that a struct piece doesn't have the internal voids that a cast piece may have so it will last forever just like a man. Well, let's get me a new ring then.
We like to picture ourselves as being the back room of every jewelry store in America, and so many jewelers really depend on us that if I don't have it in the showcase, if I need something, you know, to satisfy a customer's needs, we have these hundreds of thousands of items that are available to the jeweler the very next morning. We really offer our product in three kind of ways, so a customer can look at all of our different catalogs, or different websites choose what you want and you'll get it. However, if they want to change it, we can do that as well where they're saying you know I love this ring, but I need it in a different size center stone. And then the really cool thing today is we can also create it for them. We offer them software where they can show immediate renderings. They don't have to have the product in their showcase. They can do customization hand-in-hand with their customer, and we can manufacture exactly what they want, the way they wanted literally within a handful of days.
So now I'm with Albert Oldfield in the Gemvision section of Stuller and Albert is the senior architect developing Gemvision software for Stuller clients. What are we looking at now, Albert? So we're looking at CounterSketch Studio. I pulled up a couple of search results and we were just playing around with changing the materials in the center of the designs. So this is really intended for the sales associate at the store to kind of drive with the customer? Absolutely, and then yeah once you get the model to the point where you know the customers happy you can just directly order it from Stuller. We're trying to make that fulfillment process as easy as possible. I wanted to add Celtic dragon over a red ruby that the dragon had forged on fire. Here we go. Put that right below the dragon. Albert thank you so much for showing us how CounterSketch can empower real artists to really bring their sketches to life and when I offer this to my wife, she's going to be very impressed. Glad I could help.
I have to ask you a serious question what is the story of the dum-dum lollipop? Oh you would love this. You know in our style we always want to give a little bit of wow, little bit of excitement to our customers, and in south Louisiana, with our French heritage, we call it giving a little lagniappe, something a little extra. So in every package that goes out, we put a lollipop in it to just remind them that we're always there and we want to give them a little bit extra than what they ordered.
As we learned today at Stuller, success is based on a lot of things: quality, innovation, artistry, but most of all putting the customer first with just-in-time delivery, a lollipop, and a great product. Until next time on in good company, we'll see you on the other side of the conveyor belt. Done.