Jewelry Warehouse set to reopen with new name, owner
For 50 years, Jewelry Warehouse had been a Midlands institution, not only for jewelry, but for sports gear for both the Carolina Gamecocks and Clemson Tigers.
Its “beat . . . “ stickers, with the name of whatever school the team was playing that week, became an institution at every Gamecock home game.
But in May, owner Scott Satterfield closed his two remaining stores — located in Lexington and Cayce — after years of financial problems as he tried to care for his wife, Janice, who died from cancer in 2016.
“She’s healed now,” said Satterfield, a devout Christian, “just not in front of me. But I will see her in heaven.”
The business is healing as well.
Satterfield has come through bankruptcy and the store’s inventory has been purchased from a lien holder by his friend, Lumberton, N.C., jeweler John McNeill.
“We’re blessed the assets have been purchased,” Satterfield said.
McNeill, speaking from his Lumberton jewelry shop, McNeill Jewelers, said he has worked closely with the Satterfields since the 1990s.
“In the mid-1990s, I started a marketing and advertising company doing flyers all over the country,” he said. “Jewelry Warehouse was my largest customer. I knew that it was a very dynamic retail store.”
The store opened on Black Friday to begin a court-ordered foreclosure sale, which will continue until all the merchandise is sold.
McNeill expected the sale would take up to three months. But a block-long line on Black Friday with continuing heavy sales is shortening that prediction.
“There’s been a wonderful reception,” he said. “And there are lots of good deals as well.”
McNeill plans to open the new business as Tradition Jewelers at the same location. It will have the same jewelry and Carolina-Clemson “store-within-a-store” concept, he said.
While the Lexington store at 5134 Sunset Blvd. will reboot, the second Jewelry Warehouse location on Knox Abbott Drive in Cayce will not reopen.
“The landlord wanted to go another direction with tenants,” McNeill said. “We will be actively looking for other locations.”
Satterfield will be kept on as a consultant.
“I have zero ownership,” he said. “But I can give it the look and feel of Jewelry Warehouse. The jewelry business is about love and romance and emotion. And I’m a romantic.”