Rio Grande and the Land of Enchantment

The “Land of Enchantment” describes New Mexico’s scenic beauty and its rich history. In the center of the state is a true Southwest city – Albuquerque, with the historic Route 66 running through it. This is my new home…and Rio Grande my new employer.

Since 1944 Rio Grande has been successful in bringing customers the best in jewelry findings, gemstones, tools, jewelry supplies and equipment, and the packaging and display items essential to any successful jewelry business. Through their print jewelry catalogs (count them, there’s four!), and also through the online shopping experience, Rio Grande offers an unequaled selection of top-of-the-line products, competitive pricing, excellent service, ordering convenience (live operators in Albuquerque or 24/7 online) and fast product delivery.

In September I joined the Marketing Team at Rio and got involved with the Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and Social Media efforts. One of the (many) reasons I was attracted to Rio was that The Bell Group (Rio Grande’s parent company) operates with a highly evolved approach to participative management. The company is Principle based, rather than rule-based, with 15 principles serving as the foundation for all business and interpersonal decisions. The quality of life and work at The Bell Group is very high, and the company prides itself on its stimulating and collaborative environment.

Rio Grande is very active in the social media side of the Internet. Our FaceBook page (http://www.facebook.com/jewelrysupplies) has more than 5,000 followers; there is always an active dialogue on Twitter (http://twitter.com/riogrande1944), and this past week we launched The Studio – Rio’s Blog (http://riograndeblog.com/). In my humble opinion, what separates this jewelry blog from all other jewelry blogs is that we have so many talented contributors. Keeping a blog fresh and up-to-date is always a challenge (ask any blogger), but at Rio we have an extraordinarily large pool of subject-matter-experts willing (and eager) to share their jewelry insights. So-much-so, that we have four categories on the blog – Be Mused, Inside Rio, Know-how and Spotlight. Three times a week (…yes, I said three times a week!), we will be posting to our blog. Please sign up and comment; this is a two-way communication channel.

Oh, did I mention that Rio’s manufacturing facility is now powered by the sun? We installed more than 5,000 solar panels atop the Rio parking lot—that’s the largest commercial solar array in New Mexico!

I gave up sunny Southern California for sunny New Mexico – and glad I did!