Jewelry store gets new life
WOODBURY/Courier-Pos
The city’s only jewelry store won’t fade after all.
When the longtime owners of Saloff Jewelers on South Broad Street retired at the end of March, they feared their business would be no more.
“I was looking forward to retirement, but I wasn’t looking forward to a 115-year-old business just folding,” former owner John Beal said Tuesday.
With the city’s help, Beal last month found a buyer for the business, which dates to at least 1893, when it was known as H.H. Thomin Jewelers. (Beal and his wife, Paula, bought the shop in 1985.)
On Tuesday, new owner Jennifer Bertele said the chance to set up shop in a small town lured her to the city.
“Just meeting the people pretty much set it for us,” she said. “It’s nice to know the (customers) on a personal level, not like a strip mall where it’s one shot and they’re gone.”
Bertele, a Philadelphia resident, has an unusual relationship with the store’s co-owner. He’s her ex-husband, Francis.
They owned a jewelry store in Northeast Philadelphia before divorcing about three years ago.
They remain close friends and business partners, she said.
Main Street Woodbury, a downtown revitalization program, helped seal the deal between the Beals and the Berteles.
JGSC Group LLC, a Pennsauken-based consulting firm, hired by Main Street, shopped Saloff Jewelers to dozens of jewelry store owners throughout the area. JGSC is helping the city with a larger downtown business recruitment and retention program.
“If it hadn’t been for Main Street, this store would have been gone forever,” Paula Beal said Tuesday.
Jennifer Bertele said she’ll keep the Saloff name but does plan some changes, including catering to a younger clientele by carrying items such as beaded necklaces and bracelets.
The store will continue to offer in-house repair services as well as retail sales, she said.
“It’s what people are familiar with, it’s what they know,” she said. “It’s just new faces.”
Reach Tim Zatzariny Jr. at (856) 251-3341 or tzatzariny@courierpostonline.com
