Artisan Computer 1994-2015

By Alyssa Siegel

 In 1995, Jon and I had two major life events: the birth of our first of three sons, Daniel, and the introduction of Clarity at our first jewelry trade show. As we descended in the elevator towards the trade show floor, I recall being so nervous that we were seriously considering turning around and heading back to the parking lot. But we pulled it off and officially introduced Clarity to the jewelry industry.  

 
Jon & I at one of our first jewelry trade shows


Interest in Clarity was very high. I remember in our early marketing and sales efforts, a main focus was explaining to prospects why it would be good to have a computer in their shops versus doing everything manually in books. Many of our prospects had never seen or used a computer mouse before, and I remember explaining what they were and how they were used. 
 
After showing Clarity at several trade shows, we had large lists of prospects. We followed up and made our first sales. I will never forget the thrill of closing our first sale after a visit to a store in Manhattan. Jon & I did everything we could to contain our excitement until we were a safe distance from the store; then, like little children, we jumped for joy, high fiving each other. The first sign that all our efforts developing Clarity would pay off. (This client is still a customer today, 27 years later!)
 
With my original office mates
The next few years were a whirlwind. Jon was still working at AT&T and I was home with my toddler and infant (son #2, Josh, was born in 1998) while trying to get our new business, Artisan Computer, off the ground. I was juggling caring for my children while working on Clarity and answering phone calls from our first half-dozen or so customers. These were still times long before we had anything cloud-based, and I can recall some highly stressful moments – like when toddler-Daniel was learning to walk, leaned up against the big blue power button on my PC and caused me to lose 3 days of work (I was better about consistently backing up after that!). To this day, we still have clients who claim to miss the good old days when they always heard screaming children in the background. 

Shortly before Josh was born, all employees in Jon’s division at AT&T were offered a buy-out package where they would receive a lump sum payment if they would leave their position. This was a great opportunity for us to both devote all our time to Clarity; however, taking this step was a big gamble. This would mean that our young family would be fully dependent on our income from Clarity, and we would additionally be responsible for paying for our own health insurance. Jon had to decide whether to take this offer by midnight of the deadline day by calling on a touch-tone phone and pressing ‘1’ to accept offer or ‘2’ to decline. This was an intense night. We could not make up our minds. Leading up to midnight we had a series of “influencers” in our life keep calling us to try to push us in one direction or another: 
 
11:30pm Sophie: “You MUST take the offer! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity that you will not have again!” 
 
11:45pm Jon’s Father: “Jonathan, you have a family depending on you and a stable job... it would be crazy to leave... Don’t do it!” 
 
It continued like this, back and forth, until 11:59 PM when Jon was able to bring himself to press “1”. Now we were all in with Clarity and there was no turning back. 
 
Our business, Artisan Computer, continues to operate to this day selling, supporting and maintaining the Clarity software. At our peak, we had in the ballpark of 200 clients: mostly retail jewelers, but also wholesalers and manufacturers. We had five employees and worked out of our office in New Brunswick, NJ. During most of this time, I worked on developing new features in Clarity and troubleshooting/fixing problems while working at home and raising my sons (our third son, Ilan, was born in 2002).  
 
Jon & I during Artisan Computer's early years


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