Marshall's Jewelers in SLO celebrates 125 continuous years of business

Few businesses can say they are celebrating their quasquicentennial — 125 continuous years of business — but Marshall’s Jewelers in downtown San Luis Obispo is doing just that this month.

Opened in 1889 by Azorean immigrant Manuel Marshall, the business has gone through four owners, four locations and a handful of major recessions.

Current owner Jeff McKeegan said the key to surviving the tumultuous economy is one thing: Being part of the community.

“We see so many people and so many generations of the same families through the years,” said McKeegan, who took over ownership of the store in 1993.

“For example, we had a young fellow come in last year with a little bit of an attitude — really sullen,” McKeegan recalled. “As we spoke with him, he told us that he wasn’t from around here, but he absolutely had to buy an engagement ring from (Marshall’s). It turns out, his girlfriend’s mother’s engagement ring had come from here, and her grandmother’s and even her great-grandmother’s rings had come from here. It was a family tradition to have an engagement ring from here, and he couldn’t go anywhere else."

“Owning this business isn’t like owning some shop on the corner; it’s about being a fixture in the community.”

But to stay a community fixture, Marshall’s owners have had to adapt to the times.

By the time he took over from previous owner Clifford Chapman, McKeegan had already weathered a small economic recession during the 1980s under Chapman’s supervision, and learned an important lesson: “It wasn’t about hunkering down and waiting it out,” McKeegan said. “It was about going out there and being proactive.”

At the time, Chapman and McKeegan, who was being groomed as Chapman’s protégé, went to Los Angeles to buy cheap fabric to recover the jewelry displays and “freshen up” the store, and invested more into the business’ custom jewelry-making.

“It’s really the custom work we do that has kept us going through these times,” McKeegan said, noting that before most of the custom work was just putting a jewel in a pre-made setting, whereas now the store designs its own settings in-house.

“During hard times, jewelry is usually the first to go and the last to come back but when people are going to spend a thousand dollars on something, they want it to be unique and special to them.”

Although the most recent recession hit the business hard — “It was a touch and go thing for a good year-and-a-half there, I don’t mind telling you,” McKeegan said — Marshall’s has rebounded. It is performing slightly below what it was pre-recession, he added, declining to disclose annual revenue or year-over-year percentage growth.

Now that the economy is looking more solid, McKeegan said he is looking toward the future of the store and its ownership.

All three previous ownership transitions have occurred like McKeegan’s: the owner trains a protégée for several years and slowly transitions the store over to the new person. McKeegan said he currently doesn’t have anyone in mind, because the economic situation is more firm, but he hopes to hire a couple of new people —one of whom may eventually replace him.

“The whole goal is to make the transition as seamless as possible,” he said. “We’ve had years where people would come in and not even know that there was a different owner. That’s what I want to do.”

Marshall’s Jewelers will be celebrating its 125th anniversary throughout this month with special events every Wednesday at the store, located at 751 Higuera St. For more information, visit http://www.marshalls1889.com.

This story was originally published December 5, 2014 at 9:39 AM with the headline "Marshall's Jewelers in SLO celebrates 125 continuous years of business."