Kate Peterson, the veteran trainer whose perceptive commonsense advice made her one of the jewelry industry’s most respected authorities on sales and management, died on April 11, following a fire at her Maryland home. She was 64.
The fire, reportedly caused by a malfunctioning lamp cord, also killed three dogs and injured several other people. A neighbor has set up a GoFundMe to support her family following the tragedy.
Raised in a “blue-collar” household, Peterson had a wide-ranging education, receiving a degree in biology and chemistry from Thomas More College and then studying management at Georgetown University and industrial psychology at Rutgers. But she always remained loyal to the jewelry industry, where she got her start working at a jewelry store at age 16.
She continued working in jewelry through high school and college, and spent 14 years at J.B. Robinson, the Midwest chain eventually purchased by Kay. She later became Kay’s director of training, then director of training for Sterling, then vice president of training for Littman Jewelers.
In 1998, she cofounded Performance Concepts, a consultancy focused on education and business development. One of her first clients was Littman, the company she’d left before going on her own.
“Instead of filling my position as the vice president of training, [Littman Jewelers] simply outsourced and hired my company so I pretty much got to keep my job and start my company at the same time,” she said in 2018,
Performance Concepts differentiated itself by making sure its employees had true field experience.
“Everyone who’s part of our team has spent time a good amount of time working in retail, working with customers, working with salespeople,” she said. “You’re not going to be able to train on management if you haven’t managed a group of retail salespeople, because they think differently and behave differently. We work very hard to make sure that what we talk about and what we do is reality-based. It’s much more successful that way.”
In 2007, Peterson spelled out her “10 essential truths of management and leadership.” Among them: “For every problem, there are at least three possible solutions,” “We seriously underestimate the impact we have on the people around us,” and “We have no real understanding of our capabilities until we are tested.”
Peterson was a frequent speaker at trade shows and webinars, and wrote for a variety of publications, including InStore.
Longtime friend Terry Chandler, president of the Diamond Council of America, tells JCK: “One often hears when members of our community pass, ‘They will be difficult to replace.’ Nothing could be more accurate than with the loss of our dear Kate Peterson. Kate had a unique, fundamental grasp of the jewelry retail industry. She was instrumental in helping thousands of retailers grow their businesses and manufacturers build their brands.
“Kate was obsessed with being current and relevant. She was notorious for tweaking and editing minutes before a presentation. When we presented together it would scare me. She would say, ‘Got to have the latest information, Terry, we owe the audience that.’ Never trite and never dated, her content was always fresh and up-to-date.”
A note from son Nick Peterson called her “the smartest person I’ve ever known”—who wasn’t shy about displaying her intellect.
“She lived her life on her terms, and wouldn’t let anyone tell her otherwise,” Nick said. “In the face of adversity, she built herself into a globally known professional in her industry, always stopping to see, and appreciate, the world on her travels.
“She loved her friends, her family, and her dogs fiercely, and she will be missed.”
On a Southern Jewelry News podcast last month, Peterson said: “I’m really very blessed.… I have been in this industry since I was a kid. I have had so many kindnesses, and so many people just look out for me, and do things to make sure that I was okay.… My clients do kind things for me every day.”
But to her, helping others was just as important.
“I could measure my success by my own successes. But with the work that I do, I get to measure my success by everybody else’s,” she said on the podcast. “So I just don’t get to enjoy my [success], I get to enjoy everybody else’s. And it’s just a lot bigger that way.”
Kate Peterson is survived by her sons, Nick and Kevin, and niece Marylee. Memorial services are currently being planned.
(Photo courtesy of Performance Concepts)
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