Made in the Hudson Valley: Brothers share passion for custom jewelry-making at D'Errico Jewelry in Westchester County
D'Errico Jewelry has two locations.
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Glistening gemstones greet you as you enter D'Errico Jewelers, but behind the scenes, brothers Sal and Richie D'Errico are hard at work to bring even more of those types of pieces to life.
"We call it a marriage because I'm more in the showroom and he's more in the shop and operations," said Sal D'Errico, who co-owns the shop with his brother. "We both have our own areas that we're better at. So, if there's a client in the front, you'll hear my name screamed out. If there's something with operations in the back, his name is screamed out. It just makes us work together really wonderfully."
In the words of their fellow employees, Sal is the face of the shop while Richie is the hands.
"My brother's four years my senior, and [when] he started high school in the Bronx, he took a shop class," Sal D'Errico said. "It was a jewelry shop class. He made a ring out of a spoon, and then he figured out how to set a stone in it. [He] started working in a jewelry store as a kid, right on Westchester Square, and then he would go back and forth to the city to drop off the jobs and pick the jobs off from the manufacturers and the repairs."
Richie D'Errico's lifestyle soon influenced his brother to join him in the jewelry game.
"At home…he had a little jewelry bench in [our] bedroom," Sal D'Errico said. "I just watched him working, and then when I was about 17, we started working together. Then, the bedroom shop became very busy, and my mother said, 'You're wearing out the carpet on the stairs. Get that shop out of the house.' We bought a one-family house across the street, rented upstairs and made our first jewelry shop in the garage."
That is how it's been since 1988, when the two brothers opened their first shop in the Bronx. They then moved to their main spot in Scarsdale a decade later, a place that feels like home.
"It feels like Manhattan," Sal D'Errico said. "There's a lot of customers from New York City because we're from the Bronx...and it just brought people to the store."
Another draw about the business? Its design to look like a log cabin, which invites customers inside without being too intimidating.
"We wanted someplace that was warm, welcoming [and] felt good," Sal D'Errico said. "[It] didn't look like a high-pressure jewelry store, [and was] more relaxing with a parking lot."
After exponentially becoming a cornerstone in the community, Sal and Richie decided to open a second location in Westchester County nearly a decade later.
"It seemed like a lot of our clients were further north," Sal D'Errico said. "So, we felt like if we moved up to Mount Kisco, we'd get that upper northern crowd to a closer location. It's [also] kind of close to Connecticut, so it just opened us up to another state and whole other area."
As the business continues to grow, so do the brothers' customers and connection with the community.
"They're usually wowed by it," Sal D'Errico said. " It means everything to us. We're very family oriented...and it means the world to us when [jewelry] goes from one generation to the next...I've pierced babies' ears, and now I'm making their engagement rings and wedding bands...I think that's the best testament to it."
D'Errico Jewelry has two locations: 509 Central Park Ave. in Scarsdale and 159 E Main Street in Mount Kisco.
To book an appointment for a custom jewelry piece at either location, click here.
