Cleveland Jewelry Designs Is a Daughter-and-Pop Place

Alan Novello calls himself "old school" because he learned the jewelry business from the ground up, selling gold chains as a traveling salesman. Finding customers for his company, Cleveland Wholesale Jewelry, was no picnic.

"I drove to Nashville and visited every jewelry store on the way, and didn’t sell a thing," he recalled. "I was new and people had to get to know me." It took a couple more trips before he made a sale.

Fast forward 32 years, and Novello’s in the jewelry retail business with his daughter, Niki Alan Novello, 26, and the store is called Cleveland Jewelry Designs, 5148 Mayfield Road, Lyndhurst. "I stopped traveling when Niki was born," he said.

Niki Alan – named for her father, of course – is a recent graduate of the esteemed Gemology Institute of America, and studied jewelry making and metal-crafting at Kent State University.

"She’s added a new dimension to the store," Alan Novello said with pride. "She’s young, she connects well with people, and she does wonderful design work."

Niki Alan is still giddy about her experience at the gemology institute, in Carlsbad, CA, where she spent six months learning to identify colored stones and grade diamonds. "I went on scholarship," she said. "It was like winning the lottery, there were so many applicants."

She mused about how she’d be different if her father hadn’t been laid off in 1979 from the Cleveland Water Department – where he worked as an environmental engineer – and he hadn’t gone into the jewelry business.

"I grew up here. I remember when I couldn’t see over the top of the counter," she said. "I always wanted to be a jewelry designer."