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A Few Clouds Lyn jeweler is Businessperson of the Year
When Denise Sclafani Daniels answered the phone call from Lynbrook Chamber of Commerce president Cory Hirsch, she was shocked to find out that she was named a Businessperson of the Year by the Nassau County Council of Chambers of Commerce.
Sclafani Daniels runs Unicorn Jewels, located in Lynbrook since 2006. “I feel grateful and I feel honored,” she said after receiving the award at the annual Businessperson of the Year and Legislative Breakfast Oct. 28 at the Crest Hollow Country Club.
Every Chamber of Commerce from Nassau County was represented at the event. The Lynbrook chamber presented Sclafani Daniels with its award for 2022.
“I got a phone call from the Lynbrook Chamber of Commerce president, Cory Hirsch, and he told me that the Nassau County Chamber of Commerce picked you as businessperson of the year,” she said. “He said, ‘you won’ and I never even heard about this award or anything with it.”
Sclafani Daniels told Hirsch how big an honor it was to win, but she was also confused, be-cause she didn’t do anything different. However, she be-lieves that her contributions to the community over the past 16 years are the reasons why she was recognized.
“Sometimes people who I don’t even know come in the store promoting a fundraiser for something and I’ll give them a donation,” Sclafani Daniels said. She gives donations to several organizations such as Wounded Warriors in Lynbrook. “Every year I give a donation to Wounded Warriors and this year, I gave them a big donation.”
Giving back to the community is very important to her, which is why she got into the jewelry business in the first place. “I’m helping people with things that will have an impact on the rest of their lives,” Sclafani Daniels said. She emphasized the importance of jewelry is as it gets passed down from generation to generation.
“Two years ago, a guy came in the store whose fiancée’s mother passed away and he had her watch,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I’m getting married and I really want my fiancée to wear this watch for the wedding, but everybody I go to, nobody can fix it.’”
Sclafani Daniels had the watch fixed right before the wedding. “To this day, he still comes in the store and says to me, ‘You don’t even know how happy you made my wife,’” she said.
Sclafani Daniels handles every piece of jewelry the same way. “If a customer brings me a $30,000 item, I will treat it like a $30,000 item,” she said. “All jewelry is special to me, no matter what the value is.”
When the world seemed to slow down during the pandemic, she gained a lot of business.
“I got busier during Covid because people weren’t able to go on vacation and do a lot of things so they’d call my store and ask if they could buy jewelry,” she said. As anniversary trips, birthdays, or other celebratory vacation trips were cancelled during the pandemic, people turned to Unicorn Jewels to buy jewelry in place of these trips.
Sclafani Daniels has been in the business for over 40 years, and offers insight into how to develop a successful company. “If you love what you’re selling, which I do,” she said, “that helps.”
Going forward, she said, she is trying to broaden her horizons with the use of social media. “We have a website, but we don’t sell anything on there,” Sclafani Daniels said. She is hoping to find someone to manage the website and the social media as she finds it difficult for her to do this on her own.
When Unicorn Jewels operated out of the Lawrence Mall, she relied on word of mouth for her marketing, but in the age of social media, the game has drastically changed. “Social media has really taken a jump,” she said, “and it has actually made business busier.”
