New Owners, a New Showroom, and a Full Technology Rebuild for a Custom Jewelry Studio

Retail is an unforgiving place for technology. When the sales floor is busy, nobody has time to troubleshoot a connection or wonder whether something was recorded. Things simply have to work.

Arney Guess Goldsmith is a custom jewelry studio and goldsmith in Hixson, Tennessee, just outside Chattanooga, and a client we have known for a very long time. When the business changed hands and the showroom was rebuilt, we rebuilt the technology underneath it at the same time. We travelled for the installation and have supported them remotely since.

At a glance

• Business: Arney Guess Goldsmith

• Location: Hixson, TN, in the Chattanooga area

• Industry: Retail, custom jewelry and goldsmithing

• Size: Ten managed computers

• Services: Managed IT, endpoint protection, backup, remote support, network and Wi-Fi, secure local storage, 4K cameras, 3D CAD workstation

The situation

A working retail floor asks a lot of its technology. Staff move around the building through the day, the business depends on its computers being available during opening hours, and a jeweler in particular needs to know that what happens in the store is recorded clearly.

A few specific things had started getting in the way:

• Wi-Fi dead spots in parts of the building

• Unstable connections, both wired and wireless

• A video system that was adequate for its day but aging, and awkward to get into

• No real configurability, so adjusting how things worked was not a practical option

• Footage retrieval tied to a DVR that someone had to physically walk over to and operate

None of that is dramatic on its own. That is exactly what makes it easy to live with for years. But the cumulative effect is a business quietly working around its technology instead of relying on it.

What made this the right moment to fix it was everything else happening at once. The business had recently come under new ownership and was undergoing a significant remodel of the store itself. Rather than modernize the showroom and leave the systems behind it untouched, the owners chose to bring both up to date together.

That is the ideal time to do this work, and it happens less often than it should.

What we did

A modern, secure network throughout the store. We put in an updated, business-grade network covering the whole building, with both wireless and wired access where each made sense. It is current, it is secure, and it is built for what a working retail floor actually asks of it.

Coordination with the contractor and electrician. Because this ran alongside a remodel, the cable runs could go in at the right moment. We worked with the other trades on placement and timing so everything was pre-wired before finish work closed the walls up, then completed the network and tested it end to end once the runs were in. Getting that sequence wrong is expensive, because the alternative is pulling cable through finished walls later or settling for wireless where wired was the better answer.

A state-of-the-art 3D CAD workstation. Custom jewelry design is not ordinary office computing. 3D CAD and graphics work put real demand on a machine, so this was specified for the work it actually does rather than for email and spreadsheets. For a studio whose reputation rests on custom pieces, the design bench deserves as much thought as the sales floor.

A NAS for secure local file storage. This gives the business one reliable place for its files, on their own premises and under their control, and it fits into the backup strategy rather than sitting outside it. For a studio producing design files, that matters more than it would for a typical shop.

4K cameras covering the entire building. The camera system covers the whole property, inside and out, in 4K with no blind spots. Just as important, the footage is genuinely usable. Instead of walking to a DVR and working through it in person, staff can find and view high-quality video quickly when they need to review something.

Storage that grows with them. The camera system started at roughly two weeks of retained footage and can be expanded from there to months, depending on what the business wants to keep. It is stored locally on their own equipment rather than in a subscription service, so longer retention costs nothing on an ongoing basis. The footage stays secured on site and can still be reached remotely when someone needs to look at it.

All of this sits on top of the managed IT we provide day to day: endpoint protection on every machine, monitored backups, remote support when something needs attention, and general troubleshooting so problems get handled before they turn into a bad afternoon.

The result

The dead spots are gone and the network is stable across the building, wired and wireless. Files have a protected home that is backed up rather than scattered across desktops. Clear 4K footage of the entire property is available in minutes to whoever needs it, without anyone walking over to a DVR to get it. And the custom design work the studio is known for runs on a machine built for it.

The less visible result is the one that matters most in retail: fewer small interruptions during the hours when the store is busiest, and less time spent working around technology instead of looking after customers.

"Aaron and his team of IT professionals are the best. Even though my business is located in Chattanooga TN, Asheville Computer Company is taking care of my IT needs remotely. From setting up a new security camera system, network storage, and getting my workstations all up to speed and running at peak performance, they have been amazing!! I would highly recommend Asheville Computer Company for any business IT services. The attention to detail, professionalism, and going the extra step are second to none." Edgar Stone, Owner, Arney Guess Goldsmith

Why this matters for other retail businesses

Two things generalize here.

If you are building out or renovating, involve IT before the walls close. Cable is cheap and easy to run while a space is open, and expensive and disruptive to add afterward. Bringing your IT provider into the conversation alongside the contractor and electrician costs nothing at that stage and prevents the compromises that get made later. A remodel, a move, or a change of ownership is the cheapest opportunity you will get to fix the things that have been quietly annoying everyone for years.

Coverage and clarity are what make a camera system useful. Cameras that cover everywhere, record clearly enough to actually identify what happened, and let your staff pull footage without help are a genuinely different tool from cameras that merely exist. The same is true of backups. Both are worth exactly what they deliver on the day something goes wrong, so it is worth knowing in advance that yours work.

Talk to us

If you are planning a remodel, taking over a business, or simply working around technology that has grown one piece at a time, it is worth looking at the whole picture rather than one problem at a time. Asheville Computer Company provides managed IT services for businesses in Asheville, Arden, Fletcher, Hendersonville, and across Western North Carolina, and we travel for the right projects. Call us at (828) 290-9092 or reach out through our contact page.