Lloyd and Beverly Herrera, both natives of San Antonio, are a team that has gone from very modest beginnings to head one of the most successful jewelry operations in the nation. Lloyd’s franchises, like the company – owned stores in San Antonio, Texas are a reflection of the personality, innovation and hard work of these two people. Lloyd and Beverly Herrera met more than 20 years ago when both we
re teenagers working at a department store to help pay their school expenses. Lee High School and Lloyd from Central Catholic and then he attended St. Mary’s University. They dated for five years before they felt they could afford marriage. While in college, Lloyd went to work for one of the major national jewelry chains. Three years later he moved to another chain, and by the age of 21 already was a store manager. He managed stores for one of the chains in San Antonio, New Mexico, Corpus Christi, Laredo and Arizona. Finally, after 10 years with one of the chains and tired of moving about, the couple returned to San Antonio determined to go into business for themselves. Lloyd applied for a Small Business Administration loan and at first was turned down. Then, through the intervention of a friend who convinced the SBA to have another look at his proposal and his determination, the loan was approved. Lloyd and Beverly opened one small store on the Northeast side of San Antonio. For the first two years, they couldn’t even afford to hire help. Both went to the store early in the day and Beverly helped keep it open until time for the family’s two children to return from school. Then she would go home, leaving Lloyd to run the store alone while she tended the children and worked on the books, often until late in the evening.
“I used to pray for a salesman to come along, “ Lloyd is fond of saying, “so I could put him to work and go tot the restroom.”
But through hard work and some extremely innovative merchandising and advertising ideas, the store grew. As the store grew, Lloyd made a thorough study of each step in that growth, making certain it was carefully grounded in sound principles – some of which, though sound, were different from the approaches taken by other jewelers. Everything Lloyd Herrera does is carefully planned and researched. After two years in business with extensive and carefully planned advertising and growth projections, Lloyd found he could open another store in San Antonio. Then there followed another and another. The major breakthroughs that made Lloyd’s Jewelers a household name in South Texas was the first location of a Lloyd’s store in a shopping mall – Sears Plaza on San Antonio’s South Side. Lloyd spent a month mapping traffic patterns, studying the location and showing Sears what he could do. An independent locating in a mall just wasn’t something that was done at the time. At the end of the month, Sears, seeing the homework done, was ready to give it a try. When that store began generating more traffic for the shopping center than other stores in the center that should have done better, Lloyd’s Jewelers began attracting attention. That attention has never waned as Lloyd’s Jewelers expanded to occupy virtually every major mall in San Antonio. Then Lloyd found himself deluged with lease proposals and requests from other major malls across Texas to locate stores in their centers. The Lloyd’s Jewelers franchise package is a result of that demand. Lloyd feels comfortable with the six stores he now owns outright in San Antonio. But he is willing to share his experience and success with other through franchises. As with everything else, when Lloyd considered offering franchises, he researched the possibilities carefully, employed attorneys to develop the plans, and then, when everything was ready – but before offering franchises generally – he market tested the idea. The first franchised Lloyd’s Jewelers was opened in Corpus Christi, Texas in the spring of 1983. During the first six months of business, that franchise, carefully following Lloyd’s detailed instructions and guidance, generated more than $1 million worth of business.
