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For the Wii ones

When I first set out to write a story about the new Glennpeter Jewelers Diamond Centre in Albany, N.Y., I was really focused on the bar-in-store angle.

But as I interviewed Chief Executive Officer Jeff Weiss, it became apparent that there was another interesting story about innovation to be told: In crafting the store design, the owners kept customers' children in mind.

Located off the 7,000-square-foot store's main showroom—yet within the field of vision for watchful parents—is a "Wii room," named for the interactive Nintendo game system it is equipped with. It's a place where children can literally "go play" while their parents shop.

Perhaps even more interesting is the children's birthday party room, a room designed for just that: celebrations for little girls, as well as those ages 7-14.

Weiss says he added the playroom feature as a nod to his now 12-year-old daughter who asked, simply, what was in it for her when her dad was pouring all of his time into the new store.

For a cost of $25 per head, little girls can enjoy an afternoon of pizza and beaded-bracelet making with local designer Donna Bates.

The birthday girl, tapped as the "little princess" for the afternoon, also gets to don a $25,000 diamond tiara, a bauble she also can let her mother try on but, Weiss says, usually doesn't.

"We do know every one of those little girls will be buying jewelry 20 years later," Weiss said with a laugh, when asked about the business angle behind the party room.

Moreover, though, the room is just another way the Glennpeter Jewelers Diamond Centre makes its name in the community and gets people in the doors to at least see what the store has to offer.

"I think we're the only jewelry store in the whole country to do this," he says.

If not, then Weiss' store is definitely in the minority. And note to Chuck E. Cheese: Look out.

Sneak peek: H. Stern, Simmons Jewelry

In addition to all the goings-on at the Javits Center the last week of July, there were quite a few industry happenings around town, including press previews held by H. Stern and the Simmons Jewelry Co. Like Michelle Graff (see her 8/4 post), I’m drooling over the latter’s stainless steel women’s ring from the “W” Steel collection, but this version with gold plating.

I also couldn’t help but smile over the brand’s Hello Kitty offerings. It’s been more than a decade now, maybe two, but there was a time when I amassed quite a collection of Hello Kitty knickknacks.

The jewelry offerings are decidedly more grown-up and aimed right at female self-purchasers like me who can’t quite get over their pangs of nostalgia. Among the most kawaii (that’s Japanese for cute) were these rings in 18-karat gold and sterling silver with diamonds and gemstones such as amethyst, citrine, rose quartz and garnet. Pendant versions are also available.

On to other grown-up offerings…Given that I’m a big fan of yellow gold, I had a blast at H. Stern. The Brazilian brand set up shop at Robert Verdi’s Luxe Laboratory, a midtown showroom and event space decked out like a hip loft-style apartment.

Dubbed “Grupo Corpo” in honor of the dance group for which the collection was inspired, the line includes gorgeous organic designs, including oversized metal-only cocktail rings, sculptural cuffs and sinuous necklaces.

Check out some of these snaps…

A crazy week in crime

The news this week took me back to my days at the Marietta Daily Journal in suburban Atlanta, where I spent nearly a year on the police/courts beat.
I loved it but, after a while, I had had enough. There are only so many murder trials, so many heart-wrenching sentencing hearings you can sit through before it starts to get to you.
While I miss it sometimes, weeks like this one always pop up now and then, and I remember what it was like to be a 23-year-old reporter in a busy daily newsroom.
I didn’t realize it then, but those days represented the tail end of an era in which “breaking news” could actually be broken in the a.m. paper — our newspaper, and probably quite a few others, didn’t have a Web site that was constantly updated.
Reporters still wrote stories that happened that day for the next day’s edition, and readers eagerly awaited the arrival of the morning paper to read about the surprising shooting of the convenience store clerk in their quiet, upscale neighborhood.
But that was then and this is now, so without further ado, here’s a look at the police blotter that was National Jeweler’s Web site this week.
First, police in London nab a suspect in the big-time heist that took place at a Graff Diamonds store there.
That same day, we learned via news sources that Kenyan police had arrested a man in the brutal slaying of gemologist Campbell Bridges.
And we received very sad news out of Kearny, N.J, where a jeweler’s son was shot dead in their store during a morning robbery.
Then there was the TV preacher with the not-so-holy gem scheme that allegedly bilked people out of millions.
Rounding out the week, we had a report about a group of burglars that are hardly bungling. This crew seems to have J.C. Penney’s number.
And we received confirmation that the New Jersey jeweler found dead in shop in June succumbed to cyanide poisoning.
The week was a mix of small triumphs — arrests in the Bridges and Graff cases, the indictment of an alleged scam artist, coupled with sad news — the deaths in New Jersey — and an interesting series of burglaries that smacks of a script for the next “Ocean’s” movie.
What are they on now, 15?

Choose the Hope Diamond's new look

Growing up in the suburbs of D.C., I was lucky enough to be a quick Metro hop from some of the nation's greatest museums. Whenever I get a chance to go back, one of the stops on my shortlist is the National Museum of Natural History, home to the famed Hope Diamond.

When I found out today that the public was being invited to cast their votes for a new Harry Winston-designed setting to hold the diamond, I immediately jumped online. Check out the sketches below.

 

Which would you choose? To vote, visit SmithsonianChannel.com/Hope.

Photos: Courtesy of The Smithsonian

The Wedding Diaries

With Michelle Graff’s recent wedding blogging (see her 7/13 and 7/16 posts), I decided it was time for me to chip in. Last week, I joyfully tied the knot. And as I went through the planning process over the better half of the past 12 months, I often thought that the way I came about my wedding jewelry might seem a bit add for someone who writes about the industry, including this confession: My engagement ring hails from cyberspace.

My husband, a programmer who writes code for an Internet start-up, purchases anything and everything online. So while the proposal did come as a surprise, his means of securing the ring was no shock. As a young couple, price was of the utmost concern. And being that he is someone who lives and breathes online, I know the hubby felt confident in his decision.

I adore my ring, and while I love to support local retailers, I also can’t help but love that he chose a path that is so typically him.

I’ve sat in on seminars where sales experts have explained there is always going to be a set of consumers who will buy online, and for the jeweler, it isn’t worth chasing them. The hubby definitely falls into that category. What he missed by going online was a personal connection, but after years of living with a jewelry editor, he’s become very familiar with my own thoughts on heirlooms and the way I feel about memories being intertwined with jewelry.

When it came time to look for a wedding band, guess where the hubby turned? For my own, however, I went a different route. Friends asked me why, with access to a bounty of designers, I didn’t ask someone to make something for me (I did for the earrings and cocktail ring I wore on the big day), yet I wanted to have that experience of going to a jewelry store and working with a retailer. 

Typical of me and my powers of procrastination, just two weeks before the wedding, I picked up a New York Weddings magazine, thumbed through the jewelry listings and highlighted smaller independents that I thought would specialize in what I was looking for—something priced at an entry-level range and clearly handcrafted. I found exactly what I was looking for at the store of a West Village jeweler. Not only did I find the ring, but I found a store I would return to in a heartbeat—for future purchases, repairs, etc.

Thankfully for the retailer’s quick work and a fabulous friend who hand-carried the ring from New York to our West Coast wedding, the band was in my hands the day before the ceremony.

Unconventional? Sure, but aren’t the stories what jewelry is all about?

Cost of Doing Business dissected

This week, Jewelers of America (JA) released the results of its annual industry benchmarking survey, the “Cost of Doing Business.”
We received the results mid-day on Tuesday and posted a story immediately.
To be honest, I'm a little surprised at how little interest the survey story has generated on our Web site.
It was neither one of the “Most Popular” or “Most E-mailed” stories and, if it made an appearance on either of those lists since being posted on Tuesday, it was a brief one.
In times like this, I thought retailers would have been clicking in droves to have a look at the results and see where their jewelry stores stand.
I was wrong; looks like the Cost of Doing Business just can't compete with Heidi Klum.
In any case, the survey found a median sales decrease of 3.5 percent.
Breaking it down by store type, sales for chain stores fell 13.2 percent, followed by independent mid-range stores (5.5 percent), independent high-end stores (1.3 percent), and designer/artist/custom shops (0.8 percent).
JA pointed out that the 3.5 percent drop marked the first time sales “declined materially” in the survey’s 18-year history.
But a 3.5 percent drop doesn’t seem to jive with what we see happening around us in the jewelry industry today, does it?
A 35 percent drop seems more fitting.
And, based on the remarks posted in the online Comments box accompanying the story (which, oddly enough, turned into a mini-forum for a debate on healthcare...I guess any platform will do for a debate on that issue these days), some of our readers seem to agree.
So what could have caused such relatively sunny results?
I turned to JA for some answers.
As Lauren Thompson with JA so kindly explained, there are a couple of reasons the figures in the report might not be an exact reflection of industry averages.
To begin with, the report focuses on the median for each jewelry category.
The median is a mid-point for a data set, with one-half of the firms reporting figures above it and one-half below it - and is NOT an average.
The median is used, she tells me, because when taking a sample, as JA does for this report, there are wide swings in data and that can throw off an average.
Lauren also noted that while 687 stores took the survey this year, up from 384 last year, it is still just a sampling of the industry as a whole, intended to be used as a benchmarking tool, not just a data reference point for the industry.
It’s also worth mentioning that the numbers included in the report are pretty close to the data provided by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis regarding jewelry and watch sales, as documented here by industry analyst Ken Gasssman.
One last thought that occurred to me when reading through the e-mail from JA: those figures are for all of 2008, eight months of which were spent in pre-recessionary state.
I know jewelry sales weren’t exactly stellar for the first eight months of 2008, but I think everybody can agree that it wasn’t until September that the economy really took a nosedive.
Still want to read more about the Cost of Doing Business?
Look for an in-depth analysis on the survey in upcoming issue of National Jeweler.

A week in review

Last week started out for me not at our offices at 770 Broadway in New York City but instead at the JA New York Summer Show at the Jacob K. Javits Center.

The show received pretty much the same reviews that the major jewelry trade shows have been getting all year long: It was good, given what was expected and the state of the economy, which is allegedly improving, according to a number of news reports.

I do think things are starting to loosen up a bit, but I also agree with those who say this recovery is going to be a slow one, and that this economic crisis is going to bring about a permanent change in consumer behavior. In other words: People are going to stop spending money that they don't have, and I think that is a good thing.

What is means for jewelry as a whole remains to be seen, but the truth is, things couldn't continue the way they were forever, with almost everything financed by money that simply didn't exist.

I think those who will survive are the ones who are forward thinking, those who realize what is going on right now and already are figuring out ways to change their business to change with the times, instead of getting left behind.

Speaking of being forward thinking, I attended the Simmons Jewelry Co. new line launch party, held last Wednesday in New York City.

One of the collections there that caught my eye was the stainless-steel women's jewelry, which fulfilled every need the jewelry industry practically cries out for these days.

It was fashionable, unique and, most important, priced right for these times.

There is one particular ring in this collection that I just have to have, and it retails for $125.

I'll spring for that, even though I'm as cash-crunched as anyone these days.

And, as always, I can't say enough about how much I admire what Russell Simmons' charity, the Diamond Empowerment Fund, aims to do for Africa and Africans.

'Tis true that this charity just returned from touring football star Reggie Bush and [insert own title here as to what you think this particular person is/should be known for] Kim Kardashian around Africa. You can see a video of their experience here on the DEF Web site.

One last thing...I hadn't had a chance to blog about this yet, but I attended a meeting two weeks ago at the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce regarding Sri Lanka, a beautiful-looking country by all accounts (or more like by the account of the tourism video they showed before the presentation).

The presentation basically was a pitch for companies to invest in doing business in Sri Lanka, including in the country's gem and jewelry industry, which is growing, according to this account.

Sri Lanka, now there's a place associated with the jewelry industry that I haven't had the chance to visit…