Originally founded in Germany in 1995, the company launched the first version of its software the following year, with a public exhibition debut in 1997 at the Inhorgenta trade show at which it received a very warm welcome.
The software quickly established itself as a favourite with German jewellers, and the company soon began introducing innovative features such as electronic delivery notes and articlebases, which allowed suppliers such as Swatch, Swarowski and Thomas Sabo to provide their item databases for direct import into the Clarity & Success software, saving their customers time and avoiding typing errors.
By 2001, business had expanded across Europe into Belgium, France, Netherlands, Austria, Greece and Spain, with the UK office being founded in 2003 by John Russell and his daughter Karen, who still heads up the UK office today with the German office in Halle Westfalen managed by Sandra David.
More expansion globally followed and by 2004 Clarity & Success had sales in Gibraltar, Italy, Mexico and the USA.
In 2019, Clarity & Success acquired Bransom Retail Systems, making the company by far the largest provider of jewellery stock management systems in the UK. Other acquisitions in Germany included the Terra Software brand which provided niche software for garden centres and nurseries.
The latest version of the software, Evolution, is the third-generation of the software and is now being installed in both new and existing customers on a weekly basis, with both Bransom bsmart and Clarity V2 users migrating to the new system and discovering the power and simplicity that Evolution offers.
What does the future hold for the company?
“Our Evolution platform is under constant development, responding to customer requests and market trends.” Reports Karen. “We expect to release our Pawnbroking system based on Evolution later this year and have had a very favourable response from our existing Bransom Pledge clients. Already we have released a Buy-In module for Evolution which allows all jewellers to accept and trade in second-hand jewellery. We see a very strong future for the software and brand in the markets.”