10x

Watch out, I’m using tools

Last week was Madison Avenue Watch Week here in New York, a seven-day stretch dedicated to showcasing and recognizing the work of watchmakers and the high-end timepiece brands that line Madison Avenue.

As part of the week’s festivities, I took part in a mechanical watch-making workshop at the Peninsula Hotel, organized by the Swiss watch industry’s Fondation de la Haute Horlogerie (FHH).

I must admit I had my doubts before heading into the class.

I don’t have an exceptionally steady hand, probably due to the three cups of black tea I consume throughout the day. Also, as has been mentioned before in this blog, my vision is not the best to begin with, and staring at a computer screen for 10 hours a day hasn’t helped; I now have prescription computer glasses and am pretty sure I’m on my way to needing bifocals.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t think watch-making would be my strong suit, and I wondered if I’d even make it through the entire class. I honestly was nervous about the whole experience.

The movement we disassembled and then re-assembled was, as the wonderful instructors from FHH told us, an ETA (Unitas) 6497-1, produced between 1967 and 1985.

One very intelligent tip I received when disassembling the watch was to keep the parts together that belonged together.

The 36.6 mm hand-wound mechanical movement (below, right) has 78 parts, 17 jewels and a 46-hour power reserve with off-center seconds at 9 o’clock. As mechanical watch movements go, this is a pretty simple one, perfect practice for people who are learning.

Despite my nerves, and the cup of Earl Grey tea I consumed just prior to the class, I did better than I thought I would.

One of the hardest parts of the class for me, as well as many others, was putting back into place a part called the yoke spring. Yet with some help from an FHH instructor I managed to get the spring back into place without losing it.

Not having the steadiest hand (see tea reference above), I also scratched up the movement quite a bit when try to remove and then re-set the screws. This would never be allowed for a true watchmaker. We were told that any movement that gets scratched is considered damaged.

While out for drinks on Friday night, I was telling a watch-loving friend of mine about my experience (this is a 33-year-old woman with a passion for watches; retailers, take note). She has her dad’s old Rolex and was telling me how expensive it is to get the watch fixed.

After spending three hours learning how to assemble one simple movement, it is easy to see why.

Diamonds, the new safe haven?

Major changes are afoot at the world’s largest diamond miners: De Beers, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto. After 80 years in the business, the Oppenheimer family likely will be out of the diamond trade by years’ end. Both BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto have said they want to exit as well.

Amid all this, there is growing chatter about the rise of diamond investment funds, a topic that always sparks debate among jewelers, manufacturers and the like.

In a recent column, IDEX Online’s Edahn Golan said that he expects to see diamond funds and other forms of investment in diamonds begin operations within the year. He reiterated that same point when quoted in a story called “Diamonds as a Commodity” (which led with the question, “Could diamonds be the new gold?”) published by The New York Times on Friday.

The idea of diamond investment funds is one that has been talked about since I started working at National Jeweler more than four years ago. But is now the time for it to happen? 

As noted above, there are major changes taking place in the industry. Though it has been said that it will be “business as usual” at De Beers, Anglo American is bound to have a different take on the business once the Oppenheimers are gone. While there has been much speculation about the future owners of the diamond mines operated by Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, the latest reports have named a leveraged buyout firm called Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. as a front-runner in the bidding war.

It’s also worth noting that last May, Harry Winston Diamond Corp., which reportedly also is interested in the diamond assets of BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, announced that it was teaming up with a company based in Zurich to create a diamond investment fund. (Interestingly, it’s been noted how Harry Winston CEO Robert Gannicott said during the company’s recent conference call that diamonds are “too complex” to be treated as a commodity. Except for when, I guess, Harry Winston wants to treat them that way?)

There’s also the current world economic situation to consider. On Monday evening, I had dinner with an independent jeweler who said he was investing in natural color diamonds because he knows they are going to go up in value, unlike his stagnant stock portfolio, which still is struggling to recover from the beating it took during the downturn.

This retailer has at least one client who feels the same way; the two actually share ownership of a nice yellow diamond, which they (obviously) hope to sell for a profit eventually. And he said he’s interested in investing in more natural color diamonds.

I understand that one jeweler investing in a natural color diamond is not nearly as complex as launching an entire diamond investment fund. But I use this anecdote to make a point: Given all the economic instability in the world, people are looking for somewhere stable to put their money.

Are diamonds going to be it?

Retailers return to Titanic

Count me among the many who will be soaking up all the Titanic lore available over the next couple of weeks as the 100th anniversary of the luxury liner’s fateful maiden voyage approaches.

Much about this tragedy-- one of the deadliest peacetime accidents in maritime history -- already has been documented in numerous books and movies, perhaps the most commercially well-known among them being the 1997 James Cameron blockbuster called simply Titanic.

The milestone anniversary of the ship’s sinking on April 15, 1912, however, promises to bring about a fresh round of interest in the famed shipwreck.

National Geographic published a special Titanic issue, one company is offering a chance to view the wreckage in a submersible (price tag: $60,000) and Cameron’s Titanic is being re-released, in 3D of course.

Given the amount of wealth on board the ship, and the amazing jewels that likely went down with it, it’s no surprise that players in the jewelry industry are getting into the 100th anniversary act as well.

In January, Jewelry Television unveiled a “Titanic Jewelry Collection.” Each piece represents a different, famous passenger of the luxury liner and is modeled in that turn-of-the-century style. The flower pendant pictured here, "Dorothy's Broadway Rose," was created for Dorothy Winifred Gibson, an actress and singer who survived the sinking.

The Knoxville, Tenn.-based network said that the collection sold out in less than an hour. Earlier this month, Jewelry Television added a contest component to the collection offering a grand prize pack worth $5,000.

Jewelry brand Charriol is teaming with Nordstrom and Paramount Pictures to support the release of Titanic 3D.

Just last week, I received similar notification from Jewelry Television competitor QVC, announcing that the company is teaming up with RMS Titanic Inc., the only company permitted to recover objects from the wreck site, on a line of products inspired by recovered artifacts or passengers’ belongings called “Legacy 1912-Titanic.”

The selection includes jewelry, such as this sterling silver diamond filigree cuff (left), modeled after a Titanic passenger’s evening bag that retails for $499. QVC’s Titanic line goes on sale on April 6.

I don’t know what it is exactly about this tragedy that I, and millions of others, find so fascinating.

Was it the opulence of the ship and the Gilded Age passengers that went down with it?

Is it the social injustice of the time that led to a higher percentage of third-class passengers perishing? Or, is it simply the mystery of not completely knowing what happened?

While an accurate picture of that April night can be pieced together using accounts from those on board (the last living survivor of the wreck died in 2009 at age 97), distress calls and trips to the wreckage, the luxury liner sank long before the age of instant recording and online documentation.

Nobody taped the ship going down on their iPhone and posted the video to YouTube, or provided status updates mid-sinking to Facebook and Twitter.

That leaves room for speculation, and the use of imagination, about what it was like to a passenger aboard Titanic.

Forevermark ‘pops up’ in NYC

This week in New York, De Beers held a “pop-up” sale for its Forevermark diamond brand in conjunction with GiltCity and Long Island couture retailer London Jewelers.

For those of you who don’t know, pop-up events are a trendy new type of sale held by a specific brand that take place in a random space (not the brand’s store) for a short period of time (in Forevermark’s case, one day) and then disappear as quickly as they popped up.

Members of GiltCity, a private sale site that focuses on selling tickets to events and experiences in 10 major metropolitan areas worldwide, purchased tickets to the Forevermark pop-up party for $35. Once there, GiltCity members took the Forevermark Diamond Masterclass, which I took in London, and then had the chance to browse and shop the brand. 

So, just who is De Beers reaching by going through GiltCity? The young, upwardly mobile, potential self-purchasers every retailer should be trying to get into their store.

According to Gilt demographics provided to National Jeweler, the average age of their customer is 20 to 39 and the gender breakdown is 70 percent female/30 percent male. A whopping 70 percent of those using the site have a household income of $100,000 a year or more.

It’s the perfect group to introduce to diamond jewelry and the perfect way to engage them: through a private sale site offering a limited-time event, both of which are extremely popular right now.

De Beers may no longer be the biggest diamond company in the world anymore but the firm that came up with “A Diamond Is Forever” still knows a thing or two about marketing.

Thoughts on Conclave 2011

I was out in San Francisco last week for American Gem Society Conclave, my second Conclave in the nearly four years I’ve worked at National Jeweler.

Conclave is a lot to take in for one person, so I’ve done the best I can to deliver the highlights of the four-day conference. Here are some of my take-aways. Thoughts, comments and differing perspectives from those who attended--or even those who didn’t get a chance to go this year--are always welcome.

-- A simple message. The message delivered by a number of speakers last week seemed to center around one theme: keep it simple. Daniel Pink kicked off Conclave on Wednesday by challenging attendees to come up with one sentence to describe their purpose.

Zappos.com’s Tony Hsieh talked about how they narrowed the focus of the company over the years until they had it whittled down to one single purpose that described both their attitude toward employees and toward customers: delivering happiness.

And in a session on getting and keeping customers, hairdresser-cum-sales trainer Patricia Fripp issued attendees a challenge similar to that issued by Pink: come up with a simple phrase that describes your philosophy.

A few retailers in the audience shared their stores’ already-made taglines, including “spreading joy” and “buy locally,” a tagline chosen by the store to set it apart from the chain competitors in the same town.

-- A worthy cause. Diamond Development Initiative Chairman Ian Smillie gave a presentation at breakfast on Thursday describing the mission of DDI and encouraging retailers to take part in the new Friends of DDI program. The mission of DDI is to improve the lives and economic situations of the estimated 1.5 million artisanal diamond diggers in Africa and South America.

With this new friendship program, DDI is asking retailers for monetary contributions and, in return, DDI will supply retailers with materials about the program, including materials they can display at their store to let customers know they are working to improve the lives of a disadvantaged sect of the supply chain.

In my opinion, DDI is a great organization for retailers to become involved with, especially as younger generations of diamond buyers have shown that they have a penchant for choosing products and retailers that make a difference over those that don’t.

For more information, e-mail friends@ddiglobal.org or visit DDIGlobal.org.

-- Surprise honor. One of Conclave’s more touching moments came on Thursday when AGS President Cathy Calhoun called longtime jeweler and certified gemologist appraiser (CGA) Cos Altobelli up on stage and announced that AGS was naming its library in honor of him, a first-time move for the organization. In his six decades in the jewelry industry, the North Hollywood, Calif.-based jeweler, gemologist and appraiser--who is a member of National Jeweler’s Retailer Hall of Fame--has spent countless hours mentoring others working to become CGAs. Having a library named in his honor will ensure no one will ever forget Altobelli’s contributions to the industry.

-- Social media takes a square. For this year’s Conclave AGS came up with a creative way to encourage networking: a bingo game. Each attendee was given a card with squares reading things such as “Conclave Attendee from PA” or “First-time attendee.” The goal was to meet people that satisfied each of these criteria and have them initial your card. Just like in any bingo game, the goal was to complete a line in any direction. Once an attendee could claim bingo, they turned in their card in for the chance to win an iPad 2 at Saturday’s Shipley award luncheon.

Sign of the times: Two of the squares had to deal with social media. Attendees could either post on the AGS Facebook page or Tweet #AGSConclave to earn a square, and they weren’t shy about doing so.

As of Sunday as I write this on the plane back to New York, there were countless posts on the AGS Facebook page referencing Conclave and #AGSConclave tweets.

Get tough on crime

A few weeks ago, I attended a great session hosted by the Diamond Dealers Club of New York on crime against diamond dealers and jewelers or, more specifically, on how to prevent it.

I thought it was a very enlightening session and, now that the craziness of publishing our May 1, May 16 and June issues in the span of a few weeks has subsided, I thought it would be useful to share some tips from the meeting.

Both John Kennedy and Robert Frank, president and vice president, respectively, of the Jewelers' Security Alliance (JSA), attended, along with Daniel McCaffrey, a special agent with the FBI, and Sgt. Scott Guginsky, a detective with the NYPD.

Here are a few of the tips they shared. 

• Don't bring goods home if you can avoid it. Guginsky and McCaffrey also recommended diamond dealers think about registering their license plates to a post office box instead of their home. Apparently--and I did not know this--in New York, a lot of thieves case the Diamond District, jot down the license plates of dealers and use that information to find their home addresses. 
  

• Google yourself to see how much public information is out there. Be careful with your Facebook status updates, Tweets, etc.
  I felt a little funny about this portion of the meeting because we here at National Jeweler always are encouraging jewelers to get on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. to get their businesses out there. But I never stopped to consider security issues. How much widely available Web information is too much when you're in the jewelry business?
  Both McCaffrey and Guginsky think jewelers need to be careful about what they are sharing online.

• Don't let your guard down at home. If you're in the jewelry industry, you should be alert anytime somebody such as a flower deliveryman or UPS driver comes to the door. Train your family in this way as well; make sure they understand that they shouldn't just open the door to anybody.

• Invest in a state-of-the-art alarm system with line security for your home, if possible. If it just can't be done, then stick a sign from an alarm company in your front yard. Other at-home security measures jewelers should consider are good outdoor lighting and a dog.

The emperor's old diamond

I made another trip to Christie's on Friday, this time to get a first-hand look at two historic gems: The Emperor Maximilian Diamond and the Catherine the Great Brooch.
I enjoyed my afternoon just as much as I did my last trip to Christie’s, when I got a look at the unbelievable 32.01-carat Annenberg Diamond, which later sold for $7.7 million, well surpassing estimates.
Like so many of the gems that end up on an auction block, the 39.55-carat Emperor diamond has an intriguing past.
The stone, according to a history provided by Christie’s, is one of two large diamonds the Archduke Maximilian acquired in Brazil in 1860, before he was named Emperor of Mexico at the urging of Napoleon III.
In 1866, Napoleon III, under pressure from the United States, withdrew his support of Maximilian, effectively abandoning the leader in Mexico.
He was later captured, court-martialed and sent before a firing squad and, as legend has it, he was wearing the Emperor diamond in a pouch around his neck when he executed.
The diamond made its way back across the Atlantic to his wife, Princess Charlotte of Belgium, who sold the stone.
For about 30 years, the diamond’s whereabouts remained unknown, not resurfacing until 1919, when a Chicago gem dealer purchased the stone and held on to it until 1946.
The cushion-shaped Emperor diamond was auctioned at Christie’s in July 1982, where Laurence Graff (surprise, surprise) bought it for $726,000.
In 1983, Graff sold the stone along with two other important diamonds to none other than shoe-queen Imelda Marcos, the widow of former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos.
Subsequent private transactions followed, until the stone ended up in the hands of its undisclosed current owner.
Friday at Christie’s was the first time the Emperor diamond had been on display to the public since 1982.
As the staff at Christie’s told reporters, the stone is believed to be a Golconda diamond (scroll down for a Christie’s explainer on Golconda diamonds)  — but that cannot be proven conclusively. Golcondas are absolutely exquisite stones, though, and would be my stone of choice if money were no object. 
While many of the stones that end up on the auction block at places like Christie’s and Sotheby’s are top-notch Ds or Es, the Emperor diamond is actually only an I-color stone.
The stone’s strong blue fluorescence actually makes it look a few color grades better and, besides, there’s no denying this is one stone with a rich history.
The Emperor Maximilian Diamond, along with the Catherine the Great Brooch, will be two of the jewels up on the auction block on Thursday, as Christie’s New York holds its first major jewelry sale of the year.
Both are estimated to fetch between $1 million and $1.5 million.

A few notes from the diamond conference

Due to a last-minute scheduling conflict, I was only able to sit in on two full sessions at last week's diamond conference, put together by New York-based Initiatives in Art and Culture.
But it was worth it.
The sessions were interesting and were a nice departure from the countless sessions on sales, inventory and social networking I've attended in the past, where I tend to hear the same things over and over again.
Both of the sessions, coincidentally, included extensive discussion on the Hope Diamond. Here are a few gems (ha, ha) I gleaned from Friday:

• Harry Winston was the first jeweler to loan pieces to celebrities for the Oscars. Who wore it and when? Actress Jennifer Jones (1919-2009) donned Harry Winston for the 1943 Academy Awards, the year she took home the best actress Oscar for her performance in "The Song of Bernadette."

• Many historic gems passed through Harry Winston's hands, including the Lesotho diamond in 1967. One of the diamonds cleaved from this monster piece of rough, the 40.42-carat Lesotho III, later came to belong to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. It was her engagement ring when she married Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

• For a while the famous 45.52-carat blue Hope Diamond wandered the country as part of a traveling exhibition of outstanding gemstones known as the "Court of Jewels," which toured the nation's major cities between 1949 and 1953. People paid admission to view the Court's jewels, with proceeds going to benefit children stricken with polio.

• Harry Winston gifted the Hope to the Washington, D.C.-based Smithsonian Institute in 1958. It's still there today, on display in the National Museum of Natural History.

• It's estimated that more than 150 million people have seen the Hope since it went on display at the museum in the late 1950s.

• Though it's known that the Hope originated in India, the "where" and "when" are two questions scientists have never been able to answer.

• Through the use of high-tech computer modeling, the Smithsonian put together a cutting history of the Hope. It is believed that the diamond we know as the Hope was originally a different shape and was part of the French crown jewels.

• Known as the "French Blue" and cut from a piece of rough called the "Tavernier Blue," the diamond disappeared during the French Revolution (1789-1799) when someone snatched the crown jewels. It resurfaced in England 20 years and two days later, slightly smaller and with an altered shape. (Twenty years is the statute of limitations for war crimes in France, meaning someone waited exactly as long as they had to before getting the stone re-cut and putting it up for sale).

•  Owners of the Hope have included Henry Philip Hope, a banker, collector of gems and the stone's namesake, and U.S. socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean. Harry Winston acquired McLean's jewels in 1947.

To the diamond conference I go

On Friday, I'll be heading to the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center for the first day of a two-day conference titled, "Diamonds: Substance, Significance and Symbol."
The conference is a production of Initiatives in Art and Culture, a New York-based organization dedicated to educating people about the arts, with help from the Diamond Information Center.
The Friday-Saturday affair will cover everything from the problems with the Kimberley Process to actress Elizabeth Taylor's love affair with jewelry, and the line-up of speakers is impressive.
Friday sessions include "From Alexander the Great to Elihu Yale: The Story of the Indian Diamond," with Benjamin Zucker, and "What's New with Big Blue? Recent Studies on the Hope and Other Blue Diamonds," with Jeffrey E. Post.
Zucker, an authority on precious stones, has authored numerous books and assembled the Zucker Family Collection, widely regarded as the best private American collection of antique rings.
His current project might shed some light on the subject of his speech: Zucker is putting together a history of Elihu Yale, an American-born British trader who used part of the fortune he made in diamond trading to help found the New Haven, Conn. university that bears his name. 
Post is a geologist and the curator-in-charge of the United States Gem and Mineral Collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
Both the Hope Diamond and the Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond are on display at the museum right now, and scientists there did extensive research to see if these very similar stones originated from the same piece of rough.
(As it turns out, they didn't).
Saturday's lineup is equally as interesting.
To start the day, Sheila Khama, chief executive of De Beers Botswana, will speak on diamonds and development in Botswana.
In the afternoon, Henri Barguirdijian, president and CEO of Graff since 2000, will share with the audience the history of the Wittelsbach-Graff Diamond and Douglas Kazanjian will present a history of the famous Kazanjian Red diamond (pictured here).  
The bad news about the conference: registration begins at 8:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday's session starts with coffee at 8:45 a.m.
The good news: the aforementioned coffee.
For more information or to register, click here, or call (646) 485-1952.
The cost is $350 to attend both days, though single-day registration options are available.

'Afternoon at the museum'

When I was a kid, I loved it when our class’ annual field trip was to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Back then, life didn’t get much better than an afternoon out of the classroom surrounded by dinosaur bones. Fast-forward some 20 years to that same sweet, adorable child's life as an (alleged) adult living in New York City, and it’s easy to understand why one of my favorite attractions is the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).

So when approached by gemologist Joshua Sheby of New York-based Scarselli Diamonds Inc. about spending an afternoon in the museum's Morgan Memorial Hall of Gems, I naturally jumped at the chance.

Sheby spent years as a diamond grader specializing in fancy colors with the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and has been with Scarselli for two years now. He curated the “Olympia Diamond Collection,” Scarselli’s grouping of five natural-color diamonds loaned to the AMNH for its current display of diamonds.

The diamonds in the Olympia collection range in size from 1.01 to 2.34 carats and they all have three things in common:

• They're untreated; their color is entirely natural.
• They’re all radiant-cut stones.
• All three are graded "fancy vivid" by the GIA, the colorless diamond equivalent of a "D."

My personal favorite in the collection is the vivid orange (second from right), and I am not just saying that because I have an affinity for fall, carving pumpkins and Halloween, or because it was the largest of the collection, weighing in at more than two carats.

When I first started working at National Jeweler, natural-color diamonds appealed to me from the start. In first learning about the stones, I was told that red and purple diamonds are the most rare when talking color. But Sheby said based on his knowledge of the industry and experience as a grader, he believes orange diamonds—natural, untreated oranges, like the famous and delightfully named "Pumpkin Diamond” worn by actress Halle Berry when she accepted the Oscar for Monster's Ball in 2002—might actually top reds in rarity.

So how much would a stone like this one go for?

Sheby and Scarselli aren’t saying. But, with only one in 10,000 diamonds unearthed qualifying as a natural-color diamond, and with orange being among the rarest of these, I’m going to guess this 2.34-carat stunner would command a pretty hefty price. 

Guess I’ll just stick to admiring orange diamonds from afar.