Lori Moyer has seen a lot change in State College since 1984.
That was the year Moyer, now the owner of Moyer Jewelers, began working part-time at what was then her father’s jewelry store. Since then, Moyer has seen other businesses open and close, town renovations get made, and her own family grow.
And yet there is Moyer Jewelers, still a State College staple that just celebrated its 65th anniversary on the State College business scene.
“Most of the change has been in the past ten years,” Moyer says. “Small retail stores are becoming less and less. There are fewer of them and a lot have been replaced.”
Moyer Jewelers has stood at the same location, the corner of Allen Street and College Avenue, since 1975, when Lori was 9 years old. The story of the business goes deeper than that though.
“The business has grown in a lot of different ways,” Moyer says. “We specialize in Penn State jewelry but now a lot of what you see in jewelry is mass produced and now we work with about 100 distributors.”
Moyer Jewelers was started by Lori’s grandfather B.P, a watchmaker from Lancaster who opened the store 1949 with his wife Jane in a building on the corner of Beaver Avenue and Allen Street.
Over the next 16 years, B.P continued developing and expanding his craft as the business saw two locations changes. The first move was to a larger building on Pugh Street and later to the building that houses the Tavern Restaurant in 1951.
In 1965, B.P passed away and his son Gary and took over with his wife Judy, a year before they gave birth to Lori.
A determined businessman, Gary not only moved Moyer Jewelers to its current location 10 years later, he also started both Lions Pride and Collegiate Pride, two clothing stores that still exist in State College today.
But for Lori, her interests always lay with the family’s original business, the jewelry store.
By her senior year of high school in 1984, Lori was working under her father, performing the tasks typical of most young employees.
“I weighed diamonds, I washed the windows, I watered the plants,” Moyer says. “All things I still do on occasion though certainly not as much. You do what needs to be done.”
When Lori began her undergraduate career at Penn State, she continued working at the store.
Apart from the summer between her junior and senior years of college in which she worked in Australia and the six months after she graduated when she earned her gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America in California, Lori has always stayed with the family business.
Over that time, she learned everything that goes into running a business from her father before she took over in 2012.
“I loved working with my father,” Moyer says. “He made the business grow. He taught me you can’t be shy all the time if you want to get to where you want to go.”
Lori now runs Moyer Jewelers with her husband Chris. While she wants to keep the store in the family, there is a slight problem. She and Chris never had any children.
However, they do have plenty of nieces and nephews interested in the business. Lori’s brothers Steve and Andy, who run Lions Pride and Collegiate Pride, both have children who frequently visit the jewelry shop.
While both Lori and Chris would love for one of them to take over someday, they don’t want to force anyone to do anything.
It is Lori’s hope that one of them takes over, not because they think they have to, but because they have the same passion for it that she has always had.
“I take extreme pride in the family connection,” Moyer said. “It’s why I do it. I hope it stays in the family for a long time. At the same time, I wasn’t pushed to join and I don’t want to push anyone else to do it. I did it because it’s fun.”
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