The Love of Gold Foundation recently awarded dealer Bullion Star the Shining Heart Award for customer service, the highest award the foundation can award to a private company. Bullion Star competed against other high-profile services, and competition was indeed fierce, but they ultimately won out due to their unique hybrid model. This hybrid model has made a few waves in the industry, and Bullion Star is just the latest to adopt it as a standard, albeit to something close to perfection compared to other companies that were considered for the coveted award.
While Bullion Star is not the first one to adopt a hybrid model, they are by far the ones who have done it the best to date. They are a company to keep an eye on. Established in Singapore in 2012, they have been around in the industry for a while and have now started to make some serious waves based on their unorthodox but effective customer service practices. We aren’t the only people to recognize this company for its innovations, as you can see at https://investingingold.com/bullion-star-review/. If you are a precious metals dealer looking to up your game in a competitive industry, you could do worse than copying their hybrid model for customer-facing presentation.
Traditional Dealerships
The standard model of gold and silver buying and selling is to have either a good storefront with a website for support or to primarily run a website with a small presence in the real world. Having both a physical storefront and an online presence is nothing especially new for businesses. Typically, a business either focuses its efforts on a physical storefront that allows for online perusal and order or on an online-focused center with a physical distribution center. This way of doing things has the advantage of allowing a dealer to focus their energies on one or the other, as both require a different skill set and a different mindset to pull off. The elephant in the room, of course, is that traditional gold storefronts tend to be on the sketchier side, and this has given dealers an ill-deserved reputation. Finding a reputable one can be a chore, especially when so many storefronts resemble parodies of themselves.
In recent years an attempt has been made to update the look, feel, and experience of visiting the physical locations where one buys and sells precious metals, especially as gold investment has become more popular and sensible in an unstable market. Most serious business owners are aware of the reputation that hangs over these establishments and have taken steps to try and distance themselves from that stigma. Now, you can expect your higher-end marketplaces to look more like an Apple Store than a cheap pawn shop, and for online stores to look and feel more like Amazon. Following the leader is fine, but innovation is better. It is in the hybridization of online and physical location that Bullion Star has excelled and why their way of doing business represents a likely shift in the way business is conducted in the industry.
The Hybrid Model
The Bullion Star hybrid model is a different beast altogether. They have taken the time and effort to perfect both their physical presence and their online presence. Their physical storefront features a professional-grade showroom, where a customer can go to peruse goods as if they were looking for a luxury car. The company keeps its bullion vault in the same location as its showroom, allowing customers to do their shopping and acquisition on-site without the need for shipping or holding periods. The storefront is what you might expect from a high-end service, and that alone makes the company stand out.
The key to their real-world shopping experience is its rare versatility. There are plenty of options the average consumer has for investment, as you can see here, which makes it necessary for those in the service market to innovate to stand out. The company has diversified its services, providing more than just selling gold and silver. On top of the expected buying of precious metals from private sellers, they also provide secure vault storage for a buyer’s assets. Bullions, coins, and other precious metal assets can be stored on-site in secure environs. Keep this in mind, as it will be the key to what carried them to victory in fierce competition.
The storefront alone is not what earned Bullion Star the Shining Heart Award. There are plenty of organizations that have good physical storefronts, after all, and a few might even have been more than a match for the winning position. What sets this winner apart is the equal attention and presentation of their online experience. Their website is streamlined and user-friendly in a way that is rare for a company that has so professionally designed a physical presence.
It is no great secret that the website is where most precious metal dealers make the most money; being able to serve consumers around the world is a dealer’s bread and butter. What stands out here is that the website and storefront, both of which have different considerations and needs for serving different consumer demands. What set Bullion Star apart in the competition, and indeed, what was the deciding factor in the competition, was the way their online and physical stores intersected. Simply having a good website and a good store would not have been enough to set them apart; many companies provide similar experiences. What set Bullion Star apart was the way their on-site storage changes the way business is done.
When a customer uses one of their secure vaults to store their assets, they are given complete control of those assets online. From the company’s online portal, a user can buy, sell, trade, and otherwise always manage their stored goods from anywhere in the world. This is in addition to a customer being able to manage their stored assets from on-site via all the other methods mentioned plus the ability to withdraw. In this, Bullion Star has demonstrated precisely how to modernize the gold buying and selling industry. We hope to see more businesses following this model in the future.
Overall, they have proven themselves to be potential leaders in the market and have established themselves as true innovators for consumers. They have more than earned the Shining Heart Award, and we look forward to seeing how they continue to evolve the industry moving forward.