Editor’s Note
**Editor’s Note:** Tammy Haggerty’s story is a testament to resilience and ingenuity. Faced with a summer of road construction that could have crippled her business, she turned a challenge into an opportunity—proving that creativity can pave the way through even the toughest obstacles.
Tammy Haggerty has successfully steered her five-year-old jewelry business through everything from the COVID-19 pandemic to traffic-slowing road construction. When the usually-busy five-lane road in front of her Canton jewelry store was disrupted by a summer-long replacement project, Haggerty didn’t adopt a defeatist attitude. She created a construction sale, offering customers who navigated through the Canton Center Road nightmare a chance to win an amazing trip to Boyne Mountain. When the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged numerous small businesses, Haggerty found ways to move Jacob Matthew Jewelers (which she named after her two sons) through the once-in-a-century crisis with a successful blend of creativity and ingenuity. Now, as inflation rears its cyclical shadow across the country, Haggerty continues to set a positive example, serving as a diamond in the rough.
Haggerty’s initial brush with the jewelry business came at the age of 18 when her mother — who managed a jewelry store — asked her to help. “I fell in love with it,” said Haggerty, who enrolled in the Gemological Institute of America based in Carlsbad, California and became a licensed gemologist. Not long after, she was hired by a world-renowned jewelry company and — at the age of 23 — found herself managing a store by herself in Pittsburgh. Following stops in other Rust Belt cities, including Cleveland, Haggerty moved to Canton, where her business has become the go-to place for fine, everyday jewelry.
Haggerty is constantly adapting to the changes emerging in the jewelry industry. The latest is the heightened popularity of lab-grown diamonds, which mimic natural diamonds in look and structure but are created in a laboratory using either a chemical or pressure process.
Haggerty has earned a reputation throughout Wayne County as a friend and giver to non-profit causes, particularly those related to veterans. Her 3,000-square-foot store even offers 20% discounts to military veterans.
Like most small-business owners, Haggerty is battling the costs of inflation. One example, she noted, was the rising cost of decorative ribbon that has escalated from $5 a roll to over $15 a roll.
