Wendy Stueck
Monday, June 28, 1999

Vancouver

Name: Michael Drechsler, 43

Business: Michael Drechsler Jewelry Ltd. of Vancouver. Mr. Drechsler makes fine jewelry and since 1996, has been conducting business on the Internet, through his //www.3Djeweler.com Web site. Mr. Drechsler also designs Web sites for jewellers and other clients, and gives presentations to industry associations about Internet applications for the jewelry business.

Quote: Mr. Drechsler on his "typical" client: "I'll be in a beautiful $5-million house in West Vancouver overlooking the water in the morning, and in the afternoon I'll be under the Granville Street bridge dealing with my Hell's Angel client. People are people. They all have mothers, they all have anniversaries."

Road travelled: At 16, the U.S.-born Mr. Drechsler went with his mother, a graphic artist and painter, to a night school class in jewelry making in New Jersey. Both generations of the family got the bug. After obtaining a degree in art from New Mexico Highlands University near Santa Fe, Mr. Drechsler moved to Vancouver in the late seventies, where his mother had previously opened a jewelry store.

Mr. Drechsler began working in the jewelry business at another store, and in 1981, went into business with his mother under the banner of Drechsler & Son on Vancouver's tony South Granville Street.

After his mother died in 1995, Mr. Drechsler moved his store and workshop downtown. He found his clients were often reluctant to pick up or deliver valuable jewels and began to offer an informal delivery service. Once in clients' homes, he would often receive more work, as relaxed customers would, for example, bring out grandmother's ring and ask him whether he had any ideas about a new setting.

By 1996, he decided he didn't need a bricks-and-mortar base, and closed his studio. At the same time, he began exploring the Internet and computer design, including software programs such as TrueSpace, a three-dimensional authoring tool made by Caligari Corp. of Mountain View, Calif.

For someone accustomed to working with pencil and paper, the software was intoxicating. "After spending my whole life drawing in two dimensions, it was shaking. I didn't sleep for a month."

By design: Mr. Drechsler launched his Web site in 1996, and calls it a work in progress. Currently, his days are filled with a mix of custom work for local clients, on-line collaboration with cyberclients and Internet consulting.

Discreet by nature and necessity, Mr. Drechsler says long-time local customers still form an important part of his clientele, even as his on-line business grows.

Currently, for example, he's working on a $60,000, 14-carat emerald and diamond necklace for a Vancouver customer. Mr. Drechsler estimates it will take about 200 hours to complete the hand-wrought object.

While reluctant to discuss revenue, Mr. Drechsler says his decision to close his store and move his business home -- and onto the Internet -- has worked out well financially. Last year, his goal was to attract 100 on-line customers. He says he didn't quite reach that target, but expects to in 1999.

He has one item, a family pendant, that he produces in quantity for retailers in Canada and the United States. The majority of his work is done one-on-one, collaborating with a customer to create something they both enjoy.

"When I'm working with somebody, it's really about making sure that the design works. . . . So that person can get a lifetime of enjoyment out of it."

While he believes that three-dimensional modeling software helps him give clients a better idea of jewelry-in-the-making, he still maintains a portfolio of photographs and drawings. "The biggest design tool is common sense."

Setup: To communicate with cyberjeweller colleagues and with prospective customers, Mr. Drechsler relies on three networked personal computers in his home. He has a laptop he can use to show clients a work in progress.
Challenge: Keeping up with requests for information generated by his Web site. He doesn't list prices on the site, so prospective customers must first enquire via E-mail or telephone. Mr. Drechsler feels the policy helps weeds out idle inquiries, but admits that it sometimes takes him longer than he would like to respond to E-mail messages.

His passion for computers has trickled over to his staff, including a part-time bookkeeper in her 70s who has worked with him and his mother. A few years ago, Mr. Drechsler says, he had difficulty persuading his bookkeeper to use a computer. "Now, if her E-mail goes down, she goes crazy."

Biggest success: Finding new ways, including computer graphics and Web design, to deploy his creative energies -- and building a business that is engagingly unpredictable. Mr. Drechsler has delivered diamond rings at midnight, discussed designs via E-mail with German jewellers and sold a set a lapis earrings to a woman in Atlanta who came across his Web site by chance and later followed up with an order for a matching pendant.

Mr. Drechsler has no regrets about putting his portfolio on-line, even though he admits that customers could always take a look at his design and ask another jeweller to make it. In the long run, he says, he still wins, even if only one out of every 1,000 surfers who comes across his Web site actually becomes a customer.

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