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After some time, which provided both a chance to recover and distance to digest, Rob Bates and Victoria Gomelsky talk about all their takeaways from the JCK and Luxury shows in Las Vegas. They discuss the reasons for the record-breaking success many exhibitors reported from the show in the face of turbulent times; challenges in the natural and lab-grown diamond space; and the phenomenon of premiumization in the watch industry and luxury market at large. They also talk about a well-attended Collective Horology event as well as the economic strain on the middle-class customer. Title sponsor: De Beers (adiamondisforever.com)
Hosts Rob Bates and Victoria Gomelsky interview an array of jewelry industry professionals live from the JCK and Luxury show floors. Get the immediate reactions of the heads of trade organizations, a variety of jewelry retailers, a JCK veteran, and a gem explorer on trends they've noticed, how the show went, and the state of the industry at large. Despite question swirling around many factors affecting the industry including the price of gold, natural and lab-grown diamonds, and the sale of De Beers, the overall mood was one of positivity and resilience. Title sponsor: De Beers (adiamondisforever.com)
In this inspiring episode of the Pearls of Wisdom Jewelry Podcast, hosts Guy and Elesa sit down with Giovanna and Roger Barrios, the dynamic siblings behind Casa Leon Jewelers, a fourth-generation family business with a story as powerful as the pieces they create. From its beginnings in Cuba in 1946 to its thriving presence in Lake Mary, Florida, Casa Leon represents resilience, heritage, and innovation. The journey wasn't easy. Forced to leave everything behind during the Cuban revolution, the family rebuilt their lives and business from scratch in Ohio, selling jewelry out of a station wagon before establishing a storefront that would grow over decades. Today, Casa Leon stands as a testament to perseverance, celebrating over 80 years in the industry. Giovanna and Roger share how they've preserved their family's core values: humility, customer connection, and community involvement, while embracing modern advancements like CAD design, in-house casting, and a fully immersive custom design experience. Their approach has earned them an outstanding reputation, including hundreds of five-star reviews and deep community trust through charitable initiatives, local events, and meaningful customer relationships. The episode also highlights their involvement in the broader jewelry industry, including trade shows like JCK, and their connection to platforms such as Southern Jewelry News. Their insights offer valuable lessons for jewelers looking to grow while staying authentic. Through challenges, reinvention, and continued success, Casa Leon proves that passion and purpose can create something truly lasting. Tune in to hear their remarkable story, gain industry insights, and discover what makes this family legacy shine. Don't miss this uplifting episode! Listen now and be inspired! Brought to you by: Southern Jewelry News: https://southernjewelrynews.com/ Jewelry Store Marketers: https://jewelrystoremarketers.com/ Learn more about the Pearls of Wisdom Jewelry Podcast https://southernjewelrynews.com/podcast Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: • Apple Podcast = https://podcastsconnect.apple.com/my.-.. • Amazon Music/Audible = https://www.audible.com/pd/Pearls-of.-.. • iHeartRadio = https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-pe... • Spotify = https://open.spotify.com/show/6IU1OHw... • Google Podcast = https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...
Appearing in a new video format, JCK's Victoria Gomelsky and Rob Bates interview Rebecca Foerster, the CEO and president of Hearts on Fire North America. Rebecca, who recently won JVC's Stanley Schecter Award, shares how her experiences growing up in New York City, working in cosmetics and fragrances, and her introduction to the manufacturing side of the jewelry industry shaped her view of and affection for the business. She also lends her perspective on what successful retailers are doing right, as well as the place in the market for lab-grown and natural diamonds. Title sponsor: De Beers (adiamondisforever.com) Watch here: https://youtu.be/8okt8FjLmwc
In the latest episode of The Jewelry District, JCK news director Rob Bates and JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky talk to a husband and wife team: Olivia Landau (co-founder and CEO) and Kyle Simon (co-founder and COO) of The Clear Cut—a New York City-based brand that creates custom engagement rings and other jewelry with the option to do so completely virtually. They talk about the origin story of their company, from Instagram DMs to a full-time tech-enabled operation; how they fill the niche between an in-store experience and an overwhelming online marketplace; their unapologetic focus on natural diamonds; trends in the engagement ring space; and their ideas about the importance of storytelling around diamonds. Title sponsor: Nivoda (nivoda.com) Sponsor: De Beers (adiamondisforever.com)
In the latest episode of The Jewelry District, JCK news director Rob Bates shares his takeaways from the World Jewellery Confederation (CIBJO) Congress in Paris, including the question of whether CIBJO should change the terminology around lab-grown diamonds in their Blue Books. JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky talks about Philips's record-breaking Decade One watch auction and its star lot item, a 1943 Patek Phillippe with an intriguing story. Finally, the hosts discuss another rare item with a mysterious history: the Florentine Diamond. Title sponsor: Nivoda (nivoda.com) Sponsor: De Beers (adiamondisforever.com)
"At RX, we celebrate failure, which is kind of a strange thing to say," said RX CEO Hugh Jones on the November 2025 edition of Trade Show Talk. Why? "Failure is actually a part of the executive process and making great choices," he said In this episode, Host Danica Tormohlen delves into this topic and more with Jones, who shares the company's recent growth and strategic bets in the trade show industry. Jones discusses a broad range of topics, including RX's expansion into Saudi Arabia, digital product development, and the importance of celebrating failures to drive innovation and leadership. For context: RX, a division of public company RELX and ranked No. 2 on the Stax Top 20 Exhibition Organizers List (by revenues), produced 282 face-to-face events in 25 countries in 2024, and these events served 41 industry sectors and attracted more than 6 million participants, according to its 2024 Annual Report. Some of RX's flagship events include New York ComicCon, JCK, ISC West, and FIBO Global Fitness. In its most recent earnings report in August, RX saw 8% growth year over year for the first half of 2025. The episode also features interviews with Legends Global GM Rodney Falk on the Cincinnati convention center's reopening in January 2026 and Exhibitions and Conferences Alliance Executive VP Tommy Goodwin on the U.S. government shutdown's impact on the industry. 00:00 Introduction to Trade Show Talk 00:34 Meet Hugh Jones, CEO of RX 01:22 Sponsorship Message from Legends Global 02:08 Hugh Jones' Background and Philosophy 04:17 Interview with Hugh Jones Begins 04:24 The Importance of Taking Risks 07:16 RX's Expansion and Acquisitions 08:36 Digital Transformation at RX 11:39 Innovative Approaches in Trade Shows 15:16 Navigating the Pandemic and Strategic Changes 20:25 Value-Based Selling and Customer Focus 29:08 Advocacy, Sustainability, and Talent in the Trade Show Industry 37:40 The Importance of Standardization in Events 40:30 Digital Innovation and Future Trends 44:42 Real-Time Matchmaking and Industry Trends 46:08 AI in Trade Shows: Strategy and Implementation 49:41 Personal Insights: Monday Morning Routine 52:24 Upcoming Events and Travel Plans 54:35 Hobbies and Family Life 55:55 Worst Business Advice Ever Received 58:25 Cincinnati Convention Center Update 01:14:27 Advocacy Update with Tommy Goodwin 01:22:03 Conclusion and Upcoming Episodes This episode is brought to you by Legends Global. Legends Global is the premier partner to the world's greatest live events, venues, and brands. Legends Global delivers a fully integrated suite of premium services—from feasibility and consulting to venue management, sales, merchandise, hospitality, partnerships, content and booking. The company's white-label approach keeps partners front and center while leveraging the power of their global network with more than 450 venues, 20,000 events, and 165 million guests annually. Learn more at LegendsGlobal.com. Guest bio: Hugh Jones Chief Executive Officer Every executive has to place bets in order for the value propositions to remain relevant to the customers, but not every bet has to work. Hugh believes that executives learn by both our successes and our failures. That philosophy has served Hugh well over the years since joining RELX in 2011, following the purchase of Accuity where he was Chief Executive Officer. In addition to leading Accuity to become one of the world's largest and most significant companies in the payment routing and Anti Money Laundering sectors, Hugh has also led Fircosoft, NRS, I.C.I.S, Estates Gazette (EG) and Cirium; and before joining RX he was Global Managing Director within the Risk and Business Analytics Division. Hugh's philosophy has seen him lead large scale acquisitions and subsequent integrations of many companies that now reside and prosper within the RELX portfolio. Hugh joined RX as CEO at the start of 2020, bringing with him plenty of experience in public company protocol and all facets of business management including P&L oversight, talent development, forecasting, sales execution, technology innovation and product discovery, launch and growth. Hugh's experience has been invaluable in navigating RX's response to challenges and his strategic understanding of technological innovation has accelerated the use of digital and data products and services across RX events, as an ongoing core component of RX face to face events. Passionate about building a culture of collaboration, exploring, risk taking, accountability and courage, Hugh champions the creation of a psychologically safe and inclusive workplace for all. versed in public company protocol and all facets of firm management including P&L oversight, talent development, forecasting, sales, technology and product innovation, discovery, launch and growth. A mélange of exceptional investment and overall management qualifications, combined with superior analytical leadership. Accustomed to and effective in high-profile executive roles, making high-stakes investment decisions with world-class clients and customers. Versed in leading investor forums at a publicly traded firm, commercializing data streams, contributing forward-thinking vision and overcoming complex business obstacles. More than two decades of experience building corporate value by creating rich data streams that provide new solutions to difficult corporate challenges. Successful at developing and coaching top executive teams, leading sales efforts, and negotiating complicated corporate and functional business deals with financial institutions, corporations and governmental agencies. • Member of the Young President's Organization (YPO) since 2009 • Served on numerous Boards for the benefit of Private Equity firms • Winner of the 2013 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Financial Services for the Midwest Region • Holds a BA in economics from Yale University cum laude and an MBA from the University of Michigan Guest bio: Tommy Goodwin is Executive Vice President for the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA), the advocacy association for the business events industry. In this role, he leads ECA's work on behalf of the interconnected ecosystem of exhibitors, event and meeting organizers, suppliers, venues, and destinations that comprise the global business events landscape. Prior to joining ECA, Tommy spent more than 20 years leading social impact, member value, public affairs, and international engagement efforts for several globally recognized associations and corporations, including Oracle, AARP, and the Project Management Institute (PMI). Additionally, he was a research fellow at Harvard Business School focused on the international political and legal environment in which businesses and social enterprises operate. Tommy has a B.B.A. from The George Washington University, an M.B.A. from Auburn University, and a Postgraduate Diploma in European Union Law from King's College London. He also holds several certifications including a Project Management Professional from PMI, a Certified Meeting Planner from the Events Industry Council, and a Certified Association Executive from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). Recognized by The Hill in its list of association "Top Lobbyists" every year since 2020, Tommy was also named a "Leading Association Lobbyist" by CEO Update/Association TRENDS in 2023. He has also been elected as a Fellow by ASAE (2022), named an "Association Innovation Leader" by DCA Live (2022), received the "Industry Support Award" from Trade Show News Network (2022), and recognized as an events industry "Changemaker" by MeetingsNet (2022). Tommy currently serves on the advisory boards of Factum Global and The Iceberg. He is also a past president of the National Institute of Lobbying & Ethics and a past chair of ASAE's Executive Management Professionals Advisory Council and Advocacy Council. Host bio: Danica Tormohlen Meet Danica Tormohlen, a dynamic force in the trade world who's been telling compelling stories for more than 30 years. As VP of Group Content at Informa, she's the mastermind behind Trade Show News Network, bringing the pulse of the industry to life. When she's not crafting engaging content, you'll find her behind the microphone hosting the Trade Show Talk podcast, where she chats with industry movers and shakers. A proud Mizzou Journalism School grad (go Tigers!), Danica has left her mark across the events industry landscape, from SISO to Trade Show Executive. Her trophy shelf sparkles with journalism awards, but what really gets her excited is breaking new ground for women in the industry. As a founding member and current president of the Women in Exhibitions Network North America, she's passionate about lifting others up while climbing the ladder herself. When she's not reporting on trade shows and events, you'll spot Danica pounding the pavement as an enthusiastic runner or rolling up her sleeves with the National Charity League, proving that giving back is always in style. Her secret sauce? A perfect blend of journalistic integrity, industry insight, and boundless energy. Catch Danica's latest thoughts on LinkedIn and X, where she's always sharing industry insights with a personal twist.
"I spend a lot of time talking about customer obsession,” Liz Irving, CEO of Clarion Events North America, said in this episode of Trade Show Talk with host Danica Tormohlen. They discuss Irvings's extensive career in the exhibition industry—from her beginnings helping her father to her current role leading the fourth largest independent trade show company. She shares insights on Clarion's approach to leadership, culture, digital transformation, and sustainability. She also highlights the importance of customer obsession, innovation, and meaningful experiences. Additionally, there's an update on the current state of the federal budget and tariffs from Tommy Goodwin of Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance. 00:00 Introduction to Trade Show Talk 00:28 Meet Liz Irving, CEO of Clarion Events North America 01:23 Liz Irving's Early Career and Inspirations 05:04 Liz Irving's Leadership Journey 08:17 Clarion's Culture and Development Programs 13:22 Strategic Acquisitions and Integrations 16:37 Digital Innovation and AI at Clarion 19:26 Industry Involvement and Leadership Insights 23:45 Cion Cares: Giving Back to Communities 24:39 Challenges in Sustainability 25:31 Emerging Trends in Trade Shows 27:25 Growth Strategies for North America 29:33 Innovative Event Experiences 30:30 Personal Insights and Fun Questions 35:00 Advocacy Update with Tommy Goodwin 42:40 Conclusion and Future Episodes This podcast is brought to you by Trade Show News Network and sponsored by Marriott Guest Bio: Liz Irving, CEO, Clarion Events North America Liz's endless curiosity, desire for learning, and passion for building relationships infuse her responsibilities as the Chief Executive Officer of Clarion Events North America. With over 25 years of experience in the events industry, she has transformed businesses through her strategic vision, customer-centric approach, and dedication to deliver measurable commercial outcomes. In her current role, Liz oversees the strategic direction for Clarion's North American business, focusing on customer and behavioral insights, commercial effectiveness, digital platform development, and innovation. She collaborates with portfolio directors to identify growth opportunities that enhance existing events and develop new digital offerings. Liz's forward-thinking mindset ensures that both face-to-face and digital experiences evolve to deliver ever-increasing value for customers and communities. At the heart of Liz's leadership is a commitment to fostering a culture of employee engagement, collaboration, and innovation. She has built an environment at Clarion that nurtures inclusivity, creativity, and continuous improvement, empowering teams to deliver exceptional outcomes for customers. Recognizing the importance of a thriving workplace culture, Liz prioritizes initiatives that inspire trust, encourage diverse perspectives, and drive shared success. Her efforts have made Clarion a destination for top talent and a hub for industry innovation. Liz's passion for events began early, helping her father set up his local food distributor events. This hands-on experience sparked a lifelong interest in the industry. She later worked in roles with the Convention & Visitors Bureau during college before joining the corporate events world. Prior to Clarion, Liz spent 14 years at Reed Exhibitions in various marketing leadership roles, including overseeing the leading jewelry media brand, JCK. Liz earned her bachelor's degree from Niagara University, a master's degree from the University of New Haven, and a digital marketing certificate from Cornell University. She remains deeply connected to the industry, serving as the Chair of SISO's Marketing Special Interest Group, a member of SISO's Board of Directors and UFI- The Global Association of the Exhibition Industry Board of Directors. Liz is an active participant in the Women In Exhibitions Network North American Chapter and several Event Technology Advisory Boards. Outside of work, Liz is dedicated to her family and community. She volunteers with her sons' sports teams, managing communications and events, and is proud to call Connecticut home, where she lives with her husband, two boys, two dogs, and a cat. Bio: Tommy Goodwin, Executive Vice President for the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance Tommy Goodwin is Executive Vice President for the Exhibitions & Conferences Alliance (ECA), the advocacy association for the business events industry. In this role, he leads ECA's work on behalf of the interconnected ecosystem of exhibitors, event and meeting organizers, suppliers, venues, and destinations that comprise the global business events landscape. Prior to joining ECA, Tommy spent more than 20 years leading social impact, member value, public affairs, and international engagement efforts for several globally recognized associations and corporations, including Oracle, AARP, and the Project Management Institute (PMI). Additionally, he was a research fellow at Harvard Business School focused on the international political and legal environment in which businesses and social enterprises operate. Tommy has a B.B.A. from The George Washington University, an M.B.A. from Auburn University, and a Postgraduate Diploma in European Union Law from King's College London. He also holds several certifications including a Project Management Professional from PMI, a Certified Meeting Planner from the Events Industry Council, and a Certified Association Executive from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). Recognized by The Hill in its list of association "Top Lobbyists" every year since 2020, Tommy was also named a "Leading Association Lobbyist" by CEO Update/Association TRENDS in 2023. He has also been elected as a Fellow by ASAE (2022), named an "Association Innovation Leader" by DCA Live (2022), received the "Industry Support Award" from Trade Show News Network (2022), and recognized as an events industry "Changemaker" by MeetingsNet (2022). Tommy currently serves on the advisory boards of Factum Global and The Iceberg. He is also a past president of the National Institute of Lobbying & Ethics and a past chair of ASAE's Executive Management Professionals Advisory Council and Advocacy Council. Bio: Podcast Host: Danica Tormohlen An award-winning journalist who has covered the trade show industry since 1994, Danica Tormohlen is VP of Group Content, Meetings, Sports, Travel for Informa Connect. In her role, she oversees content for Trade Show News Network, Corporate Event News, BizBash and Connect's portfolio of in-person events. These leading media brands publish websites, newsletters, social media channels, video, podcasts and online and in-person programming for the trade show, corporate event, association meeting, experiential marketing and exhibition industries. Tormohlen currently serves as president of the Women in Exhibitions Network North America chapter. She has been a speaker and moderator at major industry events, including the TSNN Awards, IMEX, IAEE, SISO, UFI, ESCA, DI and Large Show Roundtable — to name a few.
Graham, Cameron, and Nelson are hot of our Pick-2 Draft stream and ready to share all their thoughts and opinions on the new set. Spider-Man Debut Pick-2 Draft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCk_x-D9hWY This podcast is sponsored by Card Kingdom. Ordering from Card Kingdom? Tell them “LRR sent me, button please!” for a one inch button with a Magic goof on it. http://cardkingdom.com/LRR Sponsored by Dragon Shield, use LRRMTG5 to get 5% at checkout on https://www.dragonshield.com Support LRR: http://patreon.com/loadingreadyrun Merch: https://store.loadingreadyrun.com Discord: https://discord.gg/lrr Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/loadingreadyrun Check out our other channels! Video Games: http://youtube.com/LRRVG Tabletop: http://youtube.com/LRRTT Magic the Gathering: http://youtube.com/LRRMTG Comedy: http://youtube.com/LoadingReadyRun Streams: http://youtube.com/LoadingReadyLive #Magic #TTC #lrrmtg
Graham, Cameron, and Nelson are hot of our Pick-2 Draft stream and ready to share all their thoughts and opinions on the new set. Spider-Man Debut Pick-2 Draft: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCk_x-D9hWY This podcast is sponsored by Card Kingdom. Ordering from Card Kingdom? Tell them “LRR sent me, button please!” for a one inch button with a Magic goof on it. http://cardkingdom.com/LRR Sponsored by Dragon Shield, use LRRMTG5 to get 5% at checkout on https://www.dragonshield.com Support LRR: http://patreon.com/loadingreadyrun Merch: https://store.loadingreadyrun.com Discord: https://discord.gg/lrr Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/loadingreadyrun Check out our other channels! Video Games: http://youtube.com/LRRVG Tabletop: http://youtube.com/LRRTT Magic the Gathering: http://youtube.com/LRRMTG Comedy: http://youtube.com/LoadingReadyRun Streams: http://youtube.com/LoadingReadyLive #Magic #TTC #lrrmtg
Welcome to the Success With Jewelry podcast, hosted by Laryssa Wirstiuk and Liz Kantner, two experts passionate about helping independent jewelry artists thrive. Welcome to Success With Jewelry Episode #136! In this episode, we're diving into what's currently working in Instagram and email marketing for jewelry brands. It's our summer 2025 update—and while some fundamentals remain the same, we're noticing new shifts in content engagement, consumer behavior, and platform algorithms that you'll definitely want to know about.
Description: After nearly three years and 190 episodes, host Nick Constantino signs off Marketing Madmen with a bold, honest look at lessons learned, battles won, and the future of marketing. From agency letdowns to Vegas trade show wins, this finale is part retrospective, part real-talk masterclass on what modern marketing really demands.
Welcome to the Success With Jewelry podcast, hosted by Laryssa Wirstiuk and Liz Kantner, two experts passionate about helping independent jewelry artists thrive. Welcome to Success with Jewelry Episode #134! In this episode, we're breaking down Vegas jewelry week: Laryssa shares her on-the-ground experience walking both JCK and COUTURE, Liz dives into the shows' Instagram content highlights, and we discuss trends we spotted—whimsical designs, nostalgic vibes, unique chains, sculptural shapes, and playful movement. ✨ And for Insiders, we'll continue the unfiltered conversation—sharing more behind-the-scenes stories from the Vegas trade shows, how we prepped, what surprised us, and our thoughts on the growing influencer presence and what it means for the industry. Join our Patreon to unlock the extended episode: https://patreon.com/SuccesswithJewelry Liz Kantner works with independent jewelry artists to help them find their unique voices and succeed in today's marketplace. With over ten years of experience in jewelry marketing and sales, Liz offers consulting services and digital strategy. She's also the founder of the Stay Gold Collective, a private group providing live training, industry insights, and personalized feedback. Learn more at https://www.lizkantner.com. Laryssa Wirstiuk is the founder and creative director of Joy Joya, a digital marketing agency for the jewelry industry. She's the author of Jewelry Marketing Joy and the creator of JoyDeck, a platform designed to make marketing accessible for jewelry makers and designers. Laryssa brings her extensive marketing expertise to the podcast, helping jewelers grow their businesses. Discover more at https://joyjoya.com. Tune in to hear Liz and Laryssa share valuable insights, tips, and strategies for success in the jewelry industry!
In this special episode of Legacy of Luxury, we take you behind the scenes of JCK Las Vegas 2025 — the jewelry industry’s biggest event of the year. From couture showcases to the “gypsy underbelly,” we share raw reflections, favorite finds, and what it’s like to experience the show for the first time. Hear about the trends, tech, and timeless craftsmanship that define the future of luxury jewelry.
In this episode of the BAJ Podcast, we speak to Rob Bates, award-winning journalist and News Director at JCK, to explore the ever-evolving world of jewellery—from the rise of lab-grown diamonds and the fall of De Beers' Lightbox, to the challenges of global news reporting and the future of journalism in the age of AI. With over 30 years of experience covering the industry, Rob shares fascinating insights into the trends shaping jewellery today and tomorrow, while also revealing how his passion for storytelling extends into the world of diamond-themed mystery novels. Tune in for a compelling conversation at the intersection of fact, fiction, and the future of sparkle.
Editorial integrity and independence in the watch world. It's a hot topic, and one we've explored before. But that was before today's guest penned her open letter to the watch industry published in Robb Report titled: "Watch Execs Need to Learn to Respect Journalistic Boundaries." Victoria Gomelsky is editor-in-chief of JCK, a New York City-based jewelry trade publication founded in 1869. Her writing on watches, jewelry and travel has appeared in the New York Times, Robb Report, WSJ Magazine, and the Hollywood Reporter, among many others. For detailed show notes, including links to more information, visit collectivehorology.com/blog. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology, Openwork goes inside the watch industry. You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email podcast@collectivehorology.com.
In The Jewelry District's first-ever video podcast, JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates sit down with JCK managing editor Melissa Rose Bernardo to discuss buzzworthy trends in categories from colored stones to diamonds. With JCK Las Vegas opening on June 6 and Luxury on June 4, it's the ideal time to catch up on the latest looks, from creative new gold and pearl earrings to Mocha Mousse gems and Guatemalan jade. JCK's experts also analyze what surging gold prices mean for retailers and designers and share a silver lining of tumultuous times—jewelry as an emotional support purchase. Watch here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=LymEiIA_QIU
Episode #325 – Turn Your Jewelry Story into a Timeless Legacy Ever wondered why some brands feel destined for greatness while others struggle to stand out? In this episode, we're diving into the power of your origin story—how a narrative filled with transformation and myth can transform your jewelry brand—and why setting clear boundaries is essential for protecting your time and value. Whether you're passionate about your craft or just starting out, learn how to harness your personal journey to create deep connections with your audience. In this episode, we'll explore: ✨ How to craft an origin story that goes beyond dates and facts to become a mythic journey ✨ The art of using sensory language and specificity to make your story resonate ✨ Real-life examples from iconic brands and emerging talents that show the magic of a well-told origin Plus, in The Gold Mine, I share my personal journey from overcommitment to standing up for my worth—revealing the hard lessons learned at JCK and how I turned unpaid labor into a lesson in self-respect. If you've ever wanted to elevate your brand story and ensure your hard work is truly valued, this episode is for you! Transcript: https://joyjoya.com/blogs/podcast/your-jewelry-journey-the-secret-to-a-timeless-brand
Author and industry expert Rob Bates joins Paul for the 8th time in episode #69 of the Paul Zimnisky Diamond Analytics Podcast. The episode begins with Paul airing his frustration over how some retailers are selling lab-grown diamonds. The two then discuss the current state of the larger diamond industry and the evolution of natural and LGD coexisting. Next, Rob shares what he sees as an analog between the debut of online diamond retailers in the 2000's, such as Blue Nile, and the more recent mainstream introduction of LGD. The two go on to discuss treated natural diamonds, the global recession in luxury goods, and how Rob's upcoming 4th book, “Making a Killing in Diamonds,” parallels some of the pertinent issues the diamond and jewelry industry faces. Hosted by: Paul Zimnisky Guest: Rob Bates Guest plug: www.robbatesauthor.com More information on PZDA's State of the Diamond Market report: www.paulzimnisky.com/products Show contact: paul@paulzimnisky.com or visit www.paulzimnisky.com. Please note that the contents of this podcast includes anecdotes, observations and opinions. The information should not be considered investment or financial advice. Consult your investment professional before making any investment decisions. Please read full disclosure at: www.paulzimnisky.com.
Predigt von Annegret Lange-Müller, Pastorin im JCK, am Sonntag, 29.12.2024. Gottesdienst im Jesus Centrum Kassel am 24.12.2024 - Heiligabend im JCK. Inmitten von Herausforderungen und Unsicherheiten kann der Glaube wie ein Anker sein, der uns Halt gibt. Schwere Zeiten stellen uns oft vor große Prüfungen, doch sie bieten auch die Möglichkeit, unser Vertrauen zu stärken und unsere Beziehung zu Gott zu vertiefen. Sei dabei, wenn wir gemeinsam entdecken: Wie wir in Krisen unseren Glauben festigen können, Praktische Wege, um Vertrauen in Gottes Plan zu finden, Ermutigende Geschichten von Menschen, die durch ihren Glauben gestärkt wurden. Lass uns zusammenkommen, um Trost und Hoffnung zu finden und ermutigt zu werden. Egal, wo du im Leben stehst, diese Predigt wird dir neue Perspektiven und Kraft für deinen Weg geben. Wir freuen uns auf dich! Lass uns gemeinsam im Glauben wachsen und die Kraft des Vertrauens erleben.
Predigt von Pastor Gideon Illner am Dienstag, 24.12.2024. Gottesdienst im Jesus Centrum Kassel am 24.12.2024 - Heiligabend im JCK
Today's Pearls of Wisdom podcast has Guy Pineda engaging the beautiful and charming women of RDI Diamonds in a casual and fun conversation. SJN also talks with the amazing Michael Indelicato, founder and CEO of RDI Diamonds. Tune in as Christy Davidson, RDI Diamond expert and Aubre Ford, RDI Senior Account Manager/RJO Lead, talk about some cool new offerings from RDI Diamonds. Listen to Christy introduce her awesome new moon pendant, Forever to the Moon and Back for Rare Forever, RDI's natural diamond brand. This pendant is not a totally new design, but what's amazing is the story that goes when customers purchase the jewelry. Aubre, as well, has some exciting news! RDI is giving away a free vacation package! Listen closely as Aubre discusses how jewelers can be entitled to this first-time promo from RDI. In a separate interview, Guy has an insightful conversation with RDI founder and CEO Michael Indelicato. Michael passionately tells the beginning story of RDI. Discover how RDI (Rochester Diamonds Incorporated) Diamonds, established in 1992, grew from being a family-owned small jewelry business into one of the most established wholesale diamond distributors in the U.S. and an international leader in the diamond industry. Michael also shares how valuing customers and employees contributed to his company's success. He also discusses what to expect from RDI in the coming months and years. If you are a jewelry store looking for a diamond jewelry supplier, RDI is going to be all over the place. Check out where they're heading to after JCK. Brought to you by: Southern Jewelry News: https://southernjewelrynews.com/ Jewelry Store Marketers: https://jewelrystoremarketers.com/ Learn more about the Pearls of Wisdom Jewelry Podcast https://southernjewelrynews.com/podcast Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform: • Apple Podcast = https://podcastsconnect.apple.com/my.-.. • Amazon Music/Audible = https://www.audible.com/pd/Pearls-of.-.. • iHeartRadio = https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-pe... • Spotify = https://open.spotify.com/show/6IU1OHw... • Google Podcast = https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...
You'll hear JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates share their reactions to the 2024 JCK show, including their impressions of the states of the diamond and lab-grown diamond sectors, takeaways from the De Beers breakfast, their experiences interviewing Botswana President Mokgweetsi Masisi, and how important it is for producer countries to have a presence at the show. Victoria talks about what she saw and learned from her press trip touring diamond factories in Surat, India with Ben Bridge. Sponsored by Tracr: tracr.com
Episode #292 - "JCK Vegas 2024 Recap - and How to Do a Mid-Year Jewelry Marketing Reset" Welcome to Episode #292. In today's episode, I want to cover a few different topics. First, I want to announce a very special opportunity that I'm opening up to emerging jewelry brands everywhere. If you've been intrigued by Joy Joya's grants in the past, you MUST check out this one. I also want to give a recap of my experience at JCK Las Vegas this year. It was one of my favorite times at JCK yet, and I'm so impressed with the events team and all their amazing efforts. Lastly, I want to share some tips about how you can facilitate a mid-year course correction for your marketing if you feel like you've gone off track. June is a time when we feel like we need a break, especially if you're coming back from the trade show. But at the same time, it's also a great opportunity to start planning for the holidays and get ahead of the busy season that's coming before we know it. You'll want to hear my tips for regaining your business equilibrium. In the Gold Mine, I share some things about JCK that inspired me and that I want to pass along to you to hopefully give you some ideas to spark your mid-year reset and go into the second half of 2024 with innovation in mind. Transcript: https://joyjoya.com/jewelry-marketing-reset Apply for the grant: https://jewelrybrandincubator.com 00:00 Start 3:01 Grant Announcement 8:31 Primary Episode Content 20:51 The Gold Mine
Welcome to episode #87. Laryssa's giving a JCK recap and then we chat about what's been on our minds when it comes to marketing - because we haven't had a chat for a few weeks! What were Laryssa's highlights from JCK? What the heck is going on with Meta? Updates about Instagram In the bonus content of this episode, we chat about Vegas trends. To get access to exclusive content as well as direct access to me and Laryssa, sign up by visiting https://SUCCESSWITHJEWELRY.com.
Familiengottesdinest, Jesus Centrum Kassel, am Sonntag, 09.06.2024. Der Teenager Glaubenskurs des JCK lädt dich herzlich ein, bei diesem durch die Teenager gestalteten Familiengottesdienst mit dem Thema Christ sein gestern - heute - morgen dabei zu sein. Alle Generationen des JCK werden zu Wort kommen, wenn wir uns mit der spannenden Frage beschäftigen "War Christ sein" früher einfacher?" Und wie ging es den Jüngern ganz früher als Jesus auf der Welt war? Zusammen wollen wir auch in Richtung Zukunft und kommende Generationen schauen und herausfinden, was Christ sein bedeutet und wie wir als Christen zu jeder Zeit leben können, weil Gott uns nie alleine lässt. Sei dabei bei diesem besonderen Gottesdienst!
Familiengottesdinest, Jesus Centrum Kassel, am Sonntag, 09.06.2024. Der Teenager Glaubenskurs des JCK lädt dich herzlich ein, bei diesem durch die Teenager gestalteten Familiengottesdienst mit dem Thema Christ sein gestern - heute - morgen dabei zu sein. Alle Generationen des JCK werden zu Wort kommen, wenn wir uns mit der spannenden Frage beschäftigen "War Christ sein" früher einfacher?" Und wie ging es den Jüngern ganz früher als Jesus auf der Welt war? Zusammen wollen wir auch in Richtung Zukunft und kommende Generationen schauen und herausfinden, was Christ sein bedeutet und wie wir als Christen zu jeder Zeit leben können, weil Gott uns nie alleine lässt. Sei dabei bei diesem besonderen Gottesdienst!
JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates share interviews they captured live from the JCK 2024 show floor, including Jan Patrick Smith, CEO of John Hardy; David Kellie, CEO of the Natural Diamond Council; Gina Fahnestock, Senior Associate of Responsible Sourcing and Sustainability at Brilliant Earth; Wesley Tucker, CEO of Tracr; Marie Claire Daveu, Chief Sustainability Officer of Kering; and Susan Jaques, President and CEO of GIA. Sponsored by Tracr: tracr.com
JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates react to Watches of Switzerland's recent acquisition of Roberto Coin Inc. As the hosts discuss the slow growth of brands in the jewelry space, Victoria gives the fascinating backstory on Shinola's Gomelsky watch as an illustration of the challenges of launching a new brand. Victoria covers the exciting activations to look out for on the JCK show floor, all in the name of love—this year's JCK theme. Both hosts also run down the education sessions that you won't want to miss this year. Sponsored by Tracr: tracr.com
Mystery novelist and JCK News Director Rob Bates returns to the show for a seventh time. The show begins with Paul analyzing whether the current diamond market softness is more cyclical or secular in nature. Next, Paul and Rob talk about how the retail segment of the trade is currently viewing lab-grown diamonds and whether a “pivot” back to natural diamonds is in the cards. The two then discuss what they got right and wrong about the evolution of LGD jewelry over the last decade. Next, Paul and Rob dissect a ruling by the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Agency pertaining to LGD producer Skydiamond and they share thoughts on news of for-profit gem-lab IGI reportedly considering a public offering. Finally, the two opine on the watch market and whether they would personally buy a Rolex. Hosted by: Paul Zimnisky Guest: Rob Bates Guest plug: www.robbatesauthor.com More information on PZDA's State of the Diamond Market report: www.paulzimnisky.com/products Show contact: paul@paulzimnisky.com or visit www.paulzimnisky.com. Please note that the contents of this podcast includes anecdotes, observations and opinions. The information should not be considered investment or financial advice. Consult your investment professional before making any investment decisions. Please read full disclosure at: www.paulzimnisky.com.
What's trending for 2024? In this episode, Jessica Richards of JMR Trend & Creative, shares her insights into how trend forecasting goes beyond the latest “core” trend on TikTok and can influence now only the product that you design or buy for your boutique, but also your marketing. We reminisce on our early days working together in the fashion industry, and then get into the good stuff. In this episode, Jessica shares: - Her 2024 fashion industry trend predictions - The trend forecasting process - How “core” trends form and are part of a larger trend picture - Differences in generational consumer behaviors between Millennial, Gen Z and Gen Alpha - The future of Brick & Mortar About Jessica! Jessica Richards is a trend forecaster, style storyteller, and founder of JMR trend + creative, whose synergistic focus inspires what is now and next. With an extensive background in forecasting and design for major North American retailers, she brings a forward-thinking yet commercial and brand-right viability to product and editorial content projects across the fashion and wellness industries. She has been quoted and featured as a guest expert across international media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, VOGUE, ELLE, New York Magazine, and more. She has also spoken as a trade expert for industry events, serving as a sought-after educational panelist for organizations such as MAGIC, JCK, Atlanta Apparel, NY NOW, and WWIN; as well as formerly serving as Fashion Director for the Accessories Council and its trade publication. Connect with Jessica: JMR Trend + Creative InstagramCONNECT FURTHER WITH KRISTIN! Listen to the private podcast series UNLOCK FAIRE - Get instant access HERE Join The Buyerside Club facebook community for coaching & connection in your product business. Join HERE! Website: kristinfishercoaching.com Follow on Instagram: @kristinfishercoaching Contact: hello@kristinfishercoaching.com
A thousand facets sits with Cristina Villegas from Moyo Gems and we talk about the importance of artisanal miner or small-scale miner (ASM). How she help created an environment of education and empowerment of women miners in Kenya and Tanzania to thrive and the importance of educating oneself in the gemstones and gold we use for our jewelry. This is a truly important conversation. About Cristina Maria Villegas is the Director of Sustainable Jewelry & Strategic Initiatives at Pact, a global nonprofit organization at work in 40 countries worldwide. She is a leading expert on responsible mineral sourcing and on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). With deep experience across Africa, Asia and Latin America, she is best known for her specialty in colored gemstones, diamonds, and gold. Cristina is the co-founder of Moyo Gems, a direct sourcing initiative focused on the women gemstone miners and entrepreneurs of East Africa. She is a member of the Gemstone Knowledge Hub, is on the Board of Directors of Ethical Metalsmiths, is an ASM advisor to the Watch & Jewellery Initiative 2030, and is a technical advisor to the Conservation X Prize's Amazon Grand Challenge. She's been quoted in Vogue, The Financial Times, The Guardian, Reuters, Wired, JCK, among others. She lectures for Columbia University's Executive Course on Extractives and for Columbia University's Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), where she leads the coursework on ASM. In 2021, she won the top prize in jewelry reform: The IAC Award for Leadership in Responsible Practice in Jewelry. You can follow Cristina on Instagram @cristina.rocks and @moyogems, visit her website www.moyogems.com , www.natureswealth.org Please visit @athousandfacets on Instagram to see some of the work discussed in this episode. Music by @chris_keys__ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Predigt von Pastor Matthias Jordan, Jesus Centrum Kassel, am Sonntag, 14.01.2024. Wie können wir als ganz natürliche Menschen, Gottes übernatürliche Kraft erleben? Glaube macht es möglich. Doch was ist eigentlich Glaube? Können wir etwas dazu beitragen, dass ein übernatürlicher Glaube in unserem Leben aktiviert wird? Die Bibel spricht interessanterweise von einem "Senfkornglauben". Gemeinsam wollen wir uns als JCK nach dieser Dimension des übernatürlichen Glaubens ausstrecken, um Gottes Wunder in unserem Alltag immer mehr zu erleben.
Predigt von Pastor Matthias Jordan, Jesus Centrum Kassel, am Sonntag, 14.01.2024. Wie können wir als ganz natürliche Menschen, Gottes übernatürliche Kraft erleben? Glaube macht es möglich. Doch was ist eigentlich Glaube? Können wir etwas dazu beitragen, dass ein übernatürlicher Glaube in unserem Leben aktiviert wird? Die Bibel spricht interessanterweise von einem "Senfkornglauben". Gemeinsam wollen wir uns als JCK nach dieser Dimension des übernatürlichen Glaubens ausstrecken, um Gottes Wunder in unserem Alltag immer mehr zu erleben.
Ep. 44 – RX Group Vice President Sarin Bachmann: Taking Luxe to the Next Level RX Group VP Sarin Bachmann shares her experience as a member of senior leadership team at RX, a public company that produces more than 400 events covering 43 sectors in 22 countries. She shines a light on the RX jewelry portfolio that she oversees — one of the few at RX that includes several events like JCK, Luxury and JIS, as well as digital and print media products for the JCK brand — JCKonline.com and JCK Magazine. We talked about: Her recent appearance as a speaker on the stage at the recent UFI Global Congress in Las Vegas where she talked about risk management and her experience with events during hurricane season in Miami, home of JIS How her team was able to achieve an impressive 24% increase in attendance at the JIS Fall Show in October in Miami Beach: Marketing the destination and capitalizing on the bleisure trend Bringing back in person: How she led the team that produced the first show for RX US in March 2021 in the jewelry sector that soared during Covid What's hot in digital in her portfolio: Everything, but especially the launch of a holiday gift guide The theme for the 2024 JCK show at the Venetian in Las Vegas: Love … she revealed What she's looking forward to in 2024: Adding a sustainability summit at JCK, which is on pace to sell out again Giving back to the industry through the JCK Industry Fund, which has awarded more than $300,000 in grants this year Our Guest Sarin Block Bachmann, Group Vice President of RX, is a member of RX's Senior Leadership Team and oversees RX's jewelry portfolio including JCK, Luxury, and JIS events along with the digital and print elements of the JCK brand—JCKonline.com and JCK Magazine. One of RX's largest and most important events globally, JCK has thrived under Bachmann's leadership. Bachmann directly manages JCK while overseeing Event Leaders on both Luxury and JIS and has steered JCK to become an industry leading, award-winning event in the trade show industry, and the most important jewelry buying and educational event globally for the jewelry industry. Luxury, the curated, invitation-only event taking place alongside JCK has also been reimagined under Bachmann's portfolio as the event for the luxury jewelry community. JCK and Luxury bring over 30,000 industry professionals together, including 18,000+ vetted attendees from over 100 countries and 2,000 exhibitors, ranging from designers, manufacturers, and gemstone wholesalers to packaging companies and technology service providers. The show covers 1.2 million square feet of exhibition space at the iconic Venetian Expo and The Venetian Las Vegas. Under her leadership in event strategy, planning, execution, sales, attendance, acquisition, marketing, public relations, operations and special events, Bachmann has achieved all-time high ratings for both exhibitor and attendee satisfaction, loyalty and net promotion for both JCK and Luxury, increasing scores between 15 to 20% and over 30 points in NPS overall. Furthermore, under her strategic and creative direction, JCK has led the way in becoming a top experiential event that attendees not only consider necessary for their business but also eagerly anticipate attending. In the digital realm, Bachmann led the team in bringing JCK to the industry virtually in 2020, with the JCK Virtual show being a pioneer in launching digital offers in light of the pandemic limiting face-to-face events. In March of 2021, Bachmann led the team to bring back the first show for RX US, JIS, and continued to forge the team ahead in bringing back in-person JCK and Luxury events in August as some of the first large scale trade shows returning to face-to-face, all to great success. New to Bachmann's achievements are leading the JCK team in exceeding pre-pandemic 2019 show levels before most shows, in both sales revenue, attendance, and much higher NPS and customer satisfaction scores, with the 2022 edition marking a milestone year in the event's history and winning Trade Show Executives Gold 100 “Greatest Trade Show” of the year award. This was then followed up under Bachmann's leadership with the 2023 edition continuing to grow to a sold out show floor and increasing attendance once again. As a member of RX's senior leadership team, Bachmann plays a critical role in shaping event leaders across RX US, leading bi-monthly Event Leader meetings where key issues are discussed and best practices are shared across the division leaders. Bachmann also leads the way with activations and experiences, playing a crucial part of JCK and serving as a model for other B2B events, along with increasing the focus on DE&I in all the industries she serves forging partnerships with key members of diverse groups including the Black in Jewelry Coalition and leading by example at her shows and RX. Bachmann utilizes her experience in change management by serving as the Executive Sponsor and liaison for the show teams with the digital team during RX's roll out of a new registration system across RX US. Bachmann currently serves on the executive boards of the American Gem Society, Jewelers' Security Alliance, 24 Karat Club of New York, Women's Jewelry Association and UFI Global Congress Advisory, as well as on the GEM Awards committee and chair of the JCK Industry Fund committee. Ms. Bachmann holds a BS in Business Administration from the University of Albany and the prestigious honor of having been invited to participate in the GE Management Development Course. She was also one of a select few to be chosen for the Reed Elsevier Business University. Her career trajectory began in consulting as a Process Design Consultant with Andersen Consulting (Accenture). She expanded into communications as a Six Sigma certified Master Black Belt for General Electric at NBC and later became the Director of E-Business for NBC's Broadcast and Network Operations Division. Now serving close to two decades in show management, Bachmann is a well-rounded and well-known professional, highly regarded throughout the jewelry and trade show industries. When she is not achieving record breaking results in the industry, Bachmann is spending time with her husband, visiting her two sons in college, taking a workout class, or relaxing on a beautiful beach. Awards & Accolades for JCK and Luxury under Bachmann's Leadership (Present – 2019): Trade Show Executive – 2023 Gold 100 Grand Award “The Greatest Trade Show” of 2022 RX GLOBAL – Building Business Awards: 2022 Show of the Year RX USA – Team of the Year Award 2022 Trade Show Executive – 2022 Fastest 50 in all three categories for JCK – Attendance, Exhibitors, Square Feet, and all three shows JCK, Luxury & JIS receiving Fastest 50 Awards AEO Excellence Awards (UK) Short List Finalist for 2022 Best International Show – Americas Trade Show Executive – 2022 Gold 100 Grand Award “The Show Must Go On” for 2021 event Tradeshow News Network (TSNN) 2022 Comeback Award, Outstanding Attendance for 2021 event Trade Show Executive – Grand Award Gold 100 “Return to Normal” for 2020 event Tradeshow News Network (TSNN) Best of Technology Award for JCK Match program 2019 Podcast Host: Danica Tormohlen An award-winning journalist who has covered the trade show industry since 1994, Danica Tormohlen is VP of Content for Tarsus Group, which was recently acquired by Informa for $940 million. In her role, she oversees content for Trade Show News Network, Corporate Event News and Exhibit News Now. These leading media brands publish websites, newsletters, social media channels, video, podcasts and online and in-person programming for the trade show, corporate event and exhibition industries. Tormohlen currently serves as a board member for Women in Exhibitions Network North America chapter. She has been a speaker and moderator at major industry events, including the TSNN Awards, IMEX, IAEE, SISO, UFI, ESCA and Large Show Roundtable — to name a few. Thank you to our sponsor! Zenus What if you could prove your event is working with hard facts and learn how to make it even better? With Zenus's Ethical Vision AI, you can protect your budget and have detailed reporting. Learn how that's all possible at Zenus.AI
Robin Kramer is a brand marketing maven, natural business nurturer, master of relationships, and a sales expert who has an impressive history with leaders in the retail industry who have built their brands on innovative merchandising and strong service cultures. Among these brands is Williams-Sonoma, Inc., where she utilized her operations management background to develop and refine the process of opening new stores during a period of rapid expansion across that organization's three retail brands: Williams-Sonoma, Pottery Barn, and Hold Everything. Kramer overhauled the store's associate recognition program; she also led the customer service functions for all retail brands, including the development and implementation of service standards in stores and call centers. She went on to implement similar programs and new initiatives at another forward-thinking retail brand, the Old Navy division of Gap, Inc.For the past 20+ years, Robin has worked with primarily small, upscale wholesale jewelry brands and designers to bring their products to market, position these niche brands for maximum exposure to their target customers, and build relationships with national and international retailers. One such brand was Dogeared, where she helped them grow from a small company into a well-known jewelry brand with sales growth of over 800% in the five years she was there. She has a keen eye for recognizing products and designs that represent a unique and fresh approach in a crowded and competitive space.In 2010, Robin founded Red Boot Consulting, and in 2012, she co-founded Flourish & Thrive Academy, an online business educational platform for jewelry designers worldwide. She has had the pleasure of speaking and moderating panel discussions at various conferences for Flourish & Thrive Academy's F&T LIVE event, NY NOW Retail Renaissance trade show, American Handcrafted trade show, JCK trade show, ISGB (International Society of Glass Beads) conference, SNAG (Society of North American Goldsmiths) conference, and as a featured guest on the Beads, Baubles & Jewels PBS TV Show.She has a passion for helping creatives go after their dreams. And for red boots! She divides her time between Sausalito, CA, and Dallas, TX. Here, Michelle and Robin chat about Robin's amazing career and how it evolved over the years. They discuss how Robin started Red Boot Consulting, how she works with clients, and what her mastermind program is like. The conversation also includes merchandising tips, why businesses need to know their numbers, and the importance of phone calls and great customer service.MC Design Academy is designed to be a space where I get to share my expertise with you, where you'll get to learn all about visual merchandising, design, display, retail, and everything in between. Come along as I practice my craft and be sure to like, subscribe, and follow our socials to keep updated. See you in the merchandising land of MC Design Academy!What's Inside:How Robin built her extensive sales, marketing, and consulting career.How Robin works with clients through her company, Red Boot Consulting.Merchandising and customer service tips.Mentioned In This Episode:Red Boot ConsultingRobin on Instagram
JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates pay tribute to former JCK editor Hedda Schupak, who passed away this month. An industry icon as well as a mentor to Victoria and Rob, Hedda steered the magazine successfully through major changes in the early 2000s and played a key role in the early days of its annual Las Vegas trade show. Rob updates listeners on the latest news in Russian diamond sanctions, and Victoria shares highlights from her recent trip to Japan to visit Grand Seiko's studio in the mountain town Shizukuishi. Sponsored by De Beers: institute.debeers.com
Jam packed pizza party! Dave Holmes celebrates St. Louis' controversial pizza, Arthur reads pizza news and we have a very important debate over Detroit-style pizza with author, Karen Dybis.Dave Holmes is the host of the podcasts Homophilia, Waiting for Impact, among others. He is the author of the 2016 book, “Party of One: A Memoir in 21 Songs.” Dave was also an MTV VJ from 1998 to 2002. Currently he's Editor-at-Large for Esquire and his Post Malone cover story is out now.Karen Dybis is a long time business reporter, writing for The Detroit News, U.S. News & World Report, Time magazine, and currently JCK. She's the author of five local history books about Detroit, including Better Made in Michigan, and “Detroit Style Pizza: A Doughtown History”.This podcast is brought to you by, Ooni Pizza Ovens. Go to Ooni.com for more information. This podcast is brought to you by Ooni Pizza Ovens. Go to Ooni.com for more information.Follow us for more information!Instagram: @pizzapodparty @NYCBestPizza @AlfredSchulz4Twitter: @PizzaPodParty @ArthurBovino @AlfredSchulzTikTok: @thepizzapodpartyThreads: @pizzapodparty @NYCBestPizza @AlfredSchulz4
Paul welcomes Rob Bates back to the show to discuss the release of his third book in the Diamond District Mystery Series, "Slay it With a Diamond." The conversation begins with Paul asking Rob if he gets a “serotonin boost” upon the completion of a book. Next, the two delve into the question of whether there will be a specific cataclysmic moment that changes the trajectory of the lab-diamond industry as supply feverishly grows and prices fall. Next, Paul and Rob explain why they think natural diamonds will persevere in the midst of current challenges and Paul shares why he thinks Paris-based Fred Joaillier's approach to lab-diamonds will be successful. The two then discuss what percentage of lab-diamond consumers want people to think it's a natural and Rob's talks about expressing emotion with a Cracker Jack ring. Finally, Paul and Rob analyze De Beers' strategy towards lab-diamonds and the resale of natural diamonds. Hosted by: Paul Zimnisky Guest: Rob Bates Guest plug: Amazon link to buy Rob's third book More information on PZDA's State of the Diamond Market report: www.paulzimnisky.com/products Show contact: paul@paulzimnisky.com or visit www.paulzimnisky.com. Please note that the contents of this podcast includes anecdotes, observations and opinions. The information should not be considered investment or financial advice. Consult your investment professional before making any investment decisions. Please read full disclosure at: www.paulzimnisky.com.
BONUS EPISODE - "Come to My "Office Hours" at JCK Las Vegas! And Apply for a $12K Grant!" Links and Info From This Episode: $12K Jewelry Marketing Grant - https://joyjoya.com/grant "Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart" - https://joyjoya.com/jump JCK Social Media Talks: How to Make Sense of Your Social Media Analytics Friday, June 2 at 12:30pm How to do a Social Media Audit Saturday, June 3 at 3:30pm ChatGPT/AI to Help You Streamline Social Media Creation and Posting Sunday, June 4 at 12:30pm Hey there, Sparklers! Before the upcoming JCK event and Memorial Day holiday, I wanted to treat you with a quick bonus episode. Here are some important announcements and reminders: First, don't forget to apply for the Joy Joya Jewelry Marketing Grant. It's an exciting opportunity for independent US-based jewelry brands. The chosen recipient will receive six months of FREE digital marketing services worth $12,000 and the chance to share their journey on our podcast. To qualify, your business should have been operating for at least three years, have a Shopify website, active Instagram presence, engage in email marketing, and connect Google Analytics. The deadline is June 2, 2023. Visit https://joyjoya.com/grant for details. If you'll be attending JCK, join me for my three talks on the social media stage. Afterward, we can hang out and chat during my "office hours." Can't make it to Vegas? Subscribe to my YouTube channel, Joy Joya, for live content from the show. I also want to remind you about Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart, a free podcast-guided program running until July. By signing up at https://JoyJoya.com/JUMP, you'll gain access to 19 PDF worksheets, including templates and videos. Even after JCK, there will be eight more worksheets to help you with business development and learning. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at laryssa@joyjoya.com or leave a comment on YouTube—I respond to all of them! If you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. And if you're new to digital marketing, check out my book, JEWELRY MARKETING JOY, at https://joyjoya.com/book. Thanks for tuning in, and stay sparkling! 00:00 - Start 0:29 - Jewelry Marketing Grant 2:01 - JCK "Office Hours" and Social Media Talks 3:12 - Jewelry Marketing Jumpstart
JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates discuss the much-anticipated reopening of Tiffany & Co.'s iconic Fifth Avenue store, now called The Landmark. Victoria also reports on her recent trip to Geneva for Watches and Wonders, where traffic was brisk, the mood was upbeat, and Rolex wowed the crowds with unexpected splashes of color and whimsy. Rob updates listeners on what's new at Signet Jewelers after attending a recent Investors' Day at the New York Stock Exchange.Sponsored by De Beers: institute.debeers.comShow Notes00:49: Tiffany & Co. Reimagines its Famous Flagship05:30: Rob Heads to AGS Conclave to Gauge the State of the Industry07:10: Rolex Brightens a Busy Watches and Wonders Exhibition15:18: What's New at Signet Jewelers Episode CreditsHosts: Rob Bates and Victoria GomelskyProducer and engineer: Natalie ChometPlugs: @jckmagazine; institute.debeers.com Show Recap Tiffany Offers a Sneak Peek at its Reimagined FlagshipVictoria seldom flies across the country to attend a party, but she's making an exception for the much-anticipated reopening of Tiffany & Co.'s Fifth Avenue flagship store on May 27th. After a three-year closure and a complete makeover, what will The Landmark—as it's now called—look like? Rob remembers visiting the iconic store as a JCK mystery and being surprised to find it warmly welcoming. It was almost homey in those days, he says. Victoria predicts the new iteration will be decidedly sleeker and more luxe since the brand's target demographic is now considerably more affluent. “There's a parallel story about the importance of brick-and-mortar,” Victoria observes. When she interviewed Tiffany CEO Anthony Ledru recently, he called The Landmark “the heart and soul of Tiffany.” The company is putting a major focus on its physical stores, expanding and renovating flagships in Seoul, Sao Paolo, and other parts of the world, she adds. When the pandemic reached its zenith, it looked like the future might be entirely virtual and digital, but “that's not the case at all,” Victoria says. “The importance of brick and mortar is more apparent than ever.” Rob to Moderate Conclave PanelVictoria's not the only one with travel plans. In early May Rob will head to Louisville, Kentucky, for the American Gem Society's Conclave event, where he'll moderate an expert panel on how the industry is faring in 2023 and gauge the outlook for the future. Victoria is eager to hear his takeaways. She predicts JCK's audience will be too. “It's been a confusing year, with the lingering specter of recession,” she points out. “People are waiting for some guidance.” Rolex Brightens a Busy Watches and WondersThe conversation shifts to Victoria's recent trip to Switzerland for Watches and Wonders in Geneva. This year's bustling conference was a far cry from the quiet show of 2022, when quarantine kept Chinese buyers, retailers, and press away. “It felt upbeat and buzzy” in spite of the logistical frustrations inevitable in a crowded convention center, she says. The optimism surprised Victoria, who expected the drop in secondary watch prices after last spring's crypto collapse to put a damper on people's moods. Instead she found an enthusiastic crowd and a robust array of new offerings. The most talked-about were whimsical, colorful watches from Rolex, a new direction for the brand. One featured a Celebration Dial with balloons in a rainbow of colors. Another was an off-catalogue model with 31 emojis and seven inspirational words like “love” and “faith” instead of dates and days of the week. Victoria says this is the first time she has seem Rolex introduce a concept piece and, despite some hate from internet trolls, show attendees loved the fresh, vivid newcomers. She gives the company kudos for introducing innovative offerings that break through some sameness in the category. Rob asks about Rolex's recently introduced Certified Pre-Owned Programme. Victoria says people still aren't sure how it will work, but she thinks secondhand dealers are likely diversifying and refocusing on other brands because they may not be able to compete with Rolex's proprietary program. Signet Focuses on Affordable LuxuryTurning their attention back to the U.S., Rob reports on the Signet Jewelers' Investor Day he recently attended at the New York Stock Exchange. He was impressed by the executive team—and the fact that the majority of its members are female. “Five years ago it would have been all men and one woman,” he notes. “It's a very different company than before Gina Drosos took the helm” and one he believes is in very capable hands. Signet is focusing on expanding its accessible luxury offerings, though Victoria notes that the term is highly subjective. We all define “affordable” differently. In Signet's case, Rob expects it will mean higher price points. The company also plans to expand its bridal offerings and to attract female shoppers, a goal that may pose challenges for traditionally male-focused names like Jared, James Allen, Blue Nile, and Diamonds Direct, Rob says. These four companies were once competitors, so finding their place in the Signet family of brands may take some time, Rob predicts. Signet also reported that engagements are expected to return to normal levels now that the boom is subsiding. Rob points out that Signet has become the go-to source for market statistics, data that he and Victoria agree is extremely valuable for the industry.
What you'll learn in this episode: What jewelry can tell us about the aesthetics and values of a particular era. Why sustainability in the jewelry industry is essential, and why the definition of “sustainable” is much broader than we might think. Why maintaining purpose is the key to making our world and our creative work better. Why the term “ethical jewelry” is less about materials and more about our choices as consumers and makers. How Lisa decides which topics deserve attention at Initiatives in Art and Culture's conferences. About Lisa Koenigsberg Lisa Koenigsberg is President and Founder, Initiatives in Art and Culture (IAC) and an internationally recognized thought-leader in visual culture. Koenigsberg's work is characterized by commitment to authenticity, artisanry, materials, sustainability, and responsible practice. Over 20 years ago, she established IAC's multi-disciplinary conference series on visual culture and has since been responsible for launching its web-based webinars and other offerings. She has held leadership positions at NYU where she also served on the faculty, at several major museums, and at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Koenigsberg's writings have appeared in such books as The Art of Collecting (ed. D. Jensen), Auspicious Vision: Edward Wales Root and American Modernism, Architecture: A Place for Women (eds. E. P. Berkeley and M. McQuaid), The Gilded Edge: The Art of the Frame (ed. E. Wilner), in journals such as Gems and Jewellery (the publication of the Gemmological Association of Great Britain), American Art Journal, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, and Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, as well as in magazines and in Trendvision's Trendbook. A frequent speaker, she has also organized symposia and special sessions at universities, museums, and professional organizations throughout the US and abroad, including at the State Art Collections of Dresden, NYU, City University Graduate Center, the Smithsonian Institution, the Norton Museum of Art, and the United Nations, and has organized and chaired sessions at the American Association of Museums, the Goldsmiths Company (London), the Society of Architectural Historians, Yale University Art Gallery, the Aspen Institute, and the Jewelry Industry Summit and at JCK. She holds graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University and from Yale University from which she received her PhD. She is president of the Board of the Morris–Jumel Museum, a trustee of Glessner House in Chicago, and is a member of the Advisory Board of Ethical Metalsmiths and of the board of the NY Silver Society. Additional Resources: Initiatives in Art and Culture Instagram Initiatives in Art and Culture Facebook Initiatives in Art and Culture Linkedin Initiatives in Art and Culture Linktr.ee Lisa Koenigsberg Linkedin Photos are available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: What is sustainable jewelry? According to Lisa Koenigsberg, it's about much more than the materials used. As founder of Initiatives in Art and Culture (IAC), Lisa has organized dozens of conferences to encourage people to explore sustainability, stores of value, visual culture and more, all through the lens of jewelry. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what visual culture is and why it's significant; what it means for makers and jewelry professionals to maintain purpose; and what we can expect from IAC's upcoming conferences. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, my guest is Lisa Koenigsberg speaking to us from New York and environs back east. She is the founder of Initiatives in Art and Culture, which is focused on a number of issues such as women in western art. There's also a conference, which I just noticed, on arts and crafts in the art world. She is an internationally recognized authority on material culture. This July, she is chairing an important conference called “Maintaining Purpose” with a focus on how to make something we all love, jewelry. We'll learn more about her jewelry journey today and hear more about the conference. I didn't go into all the details of the conference and her background because it would take too long. Lisa, welcome to the program. Lisa: Thank you. It's so nice to be here. Sharon: Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you a jeweler? Were you educated as a jeweler? Lisa: No, I am not a jeweler. I am the child of two people who are very object-driven and, of course, a mother with extraordinary taste. But in terms of how you might say I studied jewelry, jewelry was part of what we looked at when thinking about—a term I find not felicitous, but I'll use it for the moment—decorative arts, so fitting into the range of the useful and the beautiful. Silver, for example. Jewelry certainly had a space there, and that was the earliest point for me that was non-life-driven. One of the great blessings that happened to me was that I did my graduate work at Yale. That was when the arts and crafts movement wasn't codified in the same way it is now. We sat around and talked about it in the back room of the American Arts office. There were objects there, and we had the opportunity to hold, see, explore. At the time, I also used to wash silver and jewelry for an extraordinary dealer who wrote a wonderful book, Rosalie Roberian. One of the things that did was give me a sense of weight, dimension, proportion, of engaging closely with materiality. Although the arts and crafts is one dimension, I think that illustrates well one of the things that has been so important for me, which is looking for the opportunity to hold, the opportunity to talk with makers. For example, every year, The Goldsmiths' Company in the U.K. does something called the Goldsmiths' Fair. At the Goldsmiths' Fair, there is one week with 67 or so makers. During that time, you can go and speak with any of the makers, explore the work in your hand, look closely at it. I think the journey of looking is probably one of the most important things. I've been interested in jewelry as a manifestation of the aesthetic of any era for a very long time as well. My background and training are cross-disciplinary. I'm an American studies person. For me, one of the things I always look for is what we are seeing as characteristic of an age, for example. I see jewelry as very much a part of the tangible expressions of an era. For example, if you're talking about a brooch, you can be working on a sculpture for the body, similarly with neckwear. It's one of the most intriguing forms of expression there is. Making jewelry, the impulse to craft out of whatever the culture sees as precious material, is one of the innate impulses we have, along with the urge to adorn. If you step back and think about it, jewelry is intertwined with so many events of state, events of faith, events of heart. The Pope, for example, wears the Fisherman's Ring, and at the passing of each Pope, that ring is shattered; a new ring is made. We're all currently fixated on the crown jewels as Charles' coronation comes up. All of that is actually jewelry. It's jewelry indicative of state, of lineage, obviously of aesthetics. The band that many of us wear on one left or right ring finger, as simple or as elaborate as it may be, that is jewelry. It's a signifier. It's also invested with tremendous emotion. Jewelry plays an enormously powerful role in culture. It's another kind of historical document. So, if we look at jewelry, we can learn things. For example, you can explore the kinds of ornament it was thought only men wore, but by actually going back and looking, as it was done in the exhibition “Golden Kingdoms,” you can see that women also wore certain kinds of major ceremonial ornament. You can learn from the inscriptions. You can learn about stylistic transmission from the aesthetics. One of the things we don't think about so much is what we leave behind. When we go and look at how we have explored previous cultures, past cultures, one of the things we see is that the documents are often what have been termed luxury arts. They are art that are made of objects that are deemed precious within a culture. They demonstrate a certain egis over resources and talent, but they also serve as documents of that culture. They tell us things about religion, about aesthetics, about faith, about ritual. We need to be thinking about that with regard to jewelry in our own age as well. What are we leaving behind? Sharon: You cover so many things in Initiatives in Art and Culture. You talk about gems and sustainability and art. It's so many things. How did you start this, and what is the conference about? Lisa: I founded Initiatives in Art and Culture in 2004. One of the reasons it was started is because I had developed a series of conferences that had, at their core, a concern for visual culture. What does visual culture tell you? Because there is much to be learned about materiality. What's it made of? How do we get those materials? And that opens the door to discussing sustainability. Then, what's done with those materials? What are the forms? What are the means of expression, whether it's three-dimensional, such as a ring, or two-dimensional, except that it really has a third dimension, however subtle it may be. So, within the category of good, better or best, what differentiates an object from another? Then taking it a step further, what does that object mean in terms of the way we use it, in terms of its place in society, in terms of what it says? Beyond that, how is it linked to the time, or does it presage the future in some way? I'm sure I've left out some foci related to political and social concerns, but it's that wholeness that is inherent in visual culture. That is the focus of what IAC does. We have deep commitment to artistry and materials as well as a commitment to responsible practice. Sharon: Several questions. Were you always interested in all of this, or is it something your professors taught you and you learned as you read? It's not the way I would look at something. I think it's really interesting. How did you start looking at this? Lisa: I was born into a family that was and remains very visually engaged and involved with art, very involved with looking. Well before I had what one might think of as a professor, I had my parents, who in effect included me in their world of looking from moment one. My experience of art, of objects, has been part of my life since the very beginning. For us, a shared experience was very often looking, whether it was going to an exhibition or a trip planned specifically to see certain things. This was very much part of my world, or the world I was lucky enough to be born into. That included the people that were friends of my parents, and that included curators and collectors and people who were very engaged in the world of looking. My mother herself is a very well-recognized either fiber artist or artist who does sculpture using wire to explore grid and void. I say that to avoid the nomenclature wars. I was very lucky to have some extraordinary teachers, but one of the best teachers I had was in high school. We reenacted the Ruskin Whistler trial. I was the attorney for Ruskin, so I had to know all about each one of the witnesses, each one of the people who appeared and testified in the trial, and that made art come alive in a way that was exceptional. Another thing was that during those years, there was something called the myth and image school. It's the idea that an era has emblems that are representative, that are invested with particular meaning. There may be a flip side to that emblem or a parallel that represents its opposite, but this idea, one which is very cross-disciplinary and often ranges through literature and art, was incredibly formative for me. This is the stuff my teachers exposed me to when I was 13, 14. I was reading these books because they had read them in school, in college, and they shared them with us. For me, going to university—I went to Johns Hopkins and did a BA/MA in history—it was, on the one hand, a new chapter and transformative, but on the other hand, it was in some ways a continuation of what I had been doing all the way along. Sharon: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like—I've watched your conferences for a long time, and it seems that you focus on art and gems and other things. This idea of maintaining purpose and an emphasis on sustainability seems to be in the last few years. Am I incorrect? Do you just put on a conference when you think it's a really important subject and it's coming to the fore? Lisa: Sustainability is a dicey word when it comes to what exactly that means. At root, it is to survive, but in our thinking, sustainability is linked to responsible practice, which can involve how you source materials, how you make an object, what the circumstances and conditions of that making are. We actually have been interested in that since the first project. It was called “Green,” and it was in 2008. The reason that happened was there was an increasing concern with what was then called sustainability, which was often associated with the color green. We had something I definitely want to revive, which is a conference of 20 years of looking at fashion jewels, the zeitgeist of culture, photography, literature, etc. This term sustainability was being used, green was being used, and one of the things I didn't want to do was a superficial one-off. So, we decided that for the 10th year—I think it was the 10th year—of that conference, we would do something called “Green: Sustainability, Significance, and Style.” In that conference we looked at color, of course; we even looked at green diamonds, but we also looked at coral and organic material that's made into jewelry. The issues pertaining to coral were at peak interest at that point, and we did quite a lot in that conference with gold. That was the first time I worked with Toby Pomeroy, with whom I've been fortunate enough to be both friends and colleagues since then. At that point, Toby had done something that was then radical, which was to approach the refiner Hoover & Strong to see if it could be demonstrated that the materials, the scrap, that he came in with was the only material that was in the batch that was refined and that it remained segregated from everything else. That was what you might call an exploration in chain of custody, in the sense that he had a sense of origin of these materials and he wanted to ensure that he could attest to their integrity. Hoover & Strong met the challenge. At that point, Toby was making quite a lot of jewelry, and there was a term that was being used called Eco Loops. Toby has since gone on to do remarkable work with regard to mercury elimination, and he will be involved in the conference, “Maintaining Purpose,” that we are doing. With “Maintaining Purpose”—and actually with the “Green” conference, we had Mike Kowalski, who was then the chair of Tiffany, involved in the conference. There was a great deal of focus on things like land reclamation and after-mining and that sort of thing. Having said that, one thing I'd like to stress is that one of our speakers, who at that point was the head of Bono's RED, got up and said, “I know you're all wondering, ‘What's a red person doing at a green conference?'” I felt as if I had been hit over the head with pipe, because I had never thought about environmental sustainability or integrity as being isolated from social condition and well-being. Now, when you look at the 17 SDG, you'll see so many different issues broken out, but one of the things I thought was, “Gosh, we've got to do red now,” because this is a split I wasn't thinking about or perceiving. Green and red basically led to the creation of a conference. Our initial thinking was to do a conference that would look at precious substances. We did a coral conference; we did a diamond conference, which we were very privileged to do. We had wonderful support from Sally Morrison for that project. Then I woke up and realized we had never done gold, so effectively what happened is that the conference on precious substances became the Gold Conference. The Gold Conference is now entering its 13th year. We broadened gold to include gold and diamonds because we wanted to draw people's attention to stores of value, which these materials are, and also comparative approaches to things like mining, whether it's formalized or otherwise. And also because, of course, metal and stone go together. That's not to say we do not explore and include focus on other stones. We're very proud that Cruzeiro Mines, which is a tourmaline and rubellite mine from Brazil that has exemplary practices and absolutely beautiful stones, is participating in this year's conference. But the way the Gold and Diamond Conference evolved was it came to use jewelry as a lens for a 360-degree approach to the life and the issues associated with the material in question. On the one hand, you have great artistry, like Giovanni Corvaja. We were privileged to have Daniel Brush speak, whose loss I feel keenly. Every year we welcome wonderful jewelers. At the same time, we think about the issues related to extracting material or recycling material and what those words mean. What is recycling? We have repurposed since the dawn of time, so what gives something that halo of recycling? Do we have to think about what we're using? And, of course, jewelry is a created object. What are the environmental ramifications of extracting, creating the jewelry business writ large? Often in our heads, we think about jewelry and we see a craftsperson, a maker. That aspect of things is very dear to our hearts, and we're keenly interested in artisanry. At the same time, you have other aspects to this jewelry industry, large corporations that produce for particular market segments. You have the luxe maison. In some ways, they're all compatriots in a world, in other ways competitors in a world, and yet bound together by a common concern for ensuring that this world we have continues. Without this world, without this air, without this earth, we are nothing. We can't make anything. We have effaced ourselves. I think there is a point of critical mass that's been reached where there is a deep and general concern. One of the things I fear and that I hope I can help with is building community to encourage people to keep going forward despite the fears that we may have about doing something a different way. Last year our conference was “Boldly Building the Future.” How do you boldly build the future? We have many declarations that have been stated about gold, for example. There was a declaration drafted and shepherded through for the gold industry by LBMA and the World Gold Council. They have principles. Principles are not blueprints. How do you get from that vision, the abstract vision, to its implementation? How do you transform? We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
What you'll learn in this episode: What jewelry can tell us about the aesthetics and values of a particular era. Why sustainability in the jewelry industry is essential, and why the definition of “sustainable” is much broader than we might think. Why maintaining purpose is the key to making our world and our creative work better. Why the term “ethical jewelry” is less about materials and more about our choices as consumers and makers. How Lisa decides which topics deserve attention at Initiatives in Art and Culture's conferences. About Lisa Koenigsberg Lisa Koenigsberg is President and Founder, Initiatives in Art and Culture (IAC) and an internationally recognized thought-leader in visual culture. Koenigsberg's work is characterized by commitment to authenticity, artisanry, materials, sustainability, and responsible practice. Over 20 years ago, she established IAC's multi-disciplinary conference series on visual culture and has since been responsible for launching its web-based webinars and other offerings. She has held leadership positions at NYU where she also served on the faculty, at several major museums, and at the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. Koenigsberg's writings have appeared in such books as The Art of Collecting (ed. D. Jensen), Auspicious Vision: Edward Wales Root and American Modernism, Architecture: A Place for Women (eds. E. P. Berkeley and M. McQuaid), The Gilded Edge: The Art of the Frame (ed. E. Wilner), in journals such as Gems and Jewellery (the publication of the Gemmological Association of Great Britain), American Art Journal, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, and Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, as well as in magazines and in Trendvision's Trendbook. A frequent speaker, she has also organized symposia and special sessions at universities, museums, and professional organizations throughout the US and abroad, including at the State Art Collections of Dresden, NYU, City University Graduate Center, the Smithsonian Institution, the Norton Museum of Art, and the United Nations, and has organized and chaired sessions at the American Association of Museums, the Goldsmiths Company (London), the Society of Architectural Historians, Yale University Art Gallery, the Aspen Institute, and the Jewelry Industry Summit and at JCK. She holds graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University and from Yale University from which she received her PhD. She is president of the Board of the Morris–Jumel Museum, a trustee of Glessner House in Chicago, and is a member of the Advisory Board of Ethical Metalsmiths and of the board of the NY Silver Society. Additional Resources: Initiatives in Art and Culture Instagram Initiatives in Art and Culture Facebook Initiatives in Art and Culture Linkedin Initiatives in Art and Culture Linktr.ee Lisa Koenigsberg Linkedin Photos are available on TheJewelryJourney.com Transcript: What is sustainable jewelry? According to Lisa Koenigsberg, it's about much more than the materials used. As founder of Initiatives in Art and Culture (IAC), Lisa has organized dozens of conferences to encourage people to explore sustainability, stores of value, visual culture and more, all through the lens of jewelry. She joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to talk about what visual culture is and why it's significant; what it means for makers and jewelry professionals to maintain purpose; and what we can expect from IAC's upcoming conferences. Read the episode transcript here. Sharon: Hello everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. This is the first part of a two-part episode. Please make sure you subscribe so you can hear part two as soon as it's released later this week. Today, my guest is Lisa Koenigsberg speaking to us from New York and environs back east. She is the founder of Initiatives in Art and Culture, which is focused on a number of issues such as women in western art. There's also a conference, which I just noticed, on arts and crafts in the art world. She is an internationally recognized authority on material culture. This July, she is chairing an important conference called “Maintaining Purpose” with a focus on how to make something we all love, jewelry. We'll learn more about her jewelry journey today and hear more about the conference. I didn't go into all the details of the conference and her background because it would take too long. Lisa, welcome to the program. Lisa: Thank you. It's so nice to be here. Sharon: Tell us about your jewelry journey. Were you a jeweler? Were you educated as a jeweler? Lisa: No, I am not a jeweler. I am the child of two people who are very object-driven and, of course, a mother with extraordinary taste. But in terms of how you might say I studied jewelry, jewelry was part of what we looked at when thinking about—a term I find not felicitous, but I'll use it for the moment—decorative arts, so fitting into the range of the useful and the beautiful. Silver, for example. Jewelry certainly had a space there, and that was the earliest point for me that was non-life-driven. One of the great blessings that happened to me was that I did my graduate work at Yale. That was when the arts and crafts movement wasn't codified in the same way it is now. We sat around and talked about it in the back room of the American Arts office. There were objects there, and we had the opportunity to hold, see, explore. At the time, I also used to wash silver and jewelry for an extraordinary dealer who wrote a wonderful book, Rosalie Roberian. One of the things that did was give me a sense of weight, dimension, proportion, of engaging closely with materiality. Although the arts and crafts is one dimension, I think that illustrates well one of the things that has been so important for me, which is looking for the opportunity to hold, the opportunity to talk with makers. For example, every year, The Goldsmiths' Company in the U.K. does something called the Goldsmiths' Fair. At the Goldsmiths' Fair, there is one week with 67 or so makers. During that time, you can go and speak with any of the makers, explore the work in your hand, look closely at it. I think the journey of looking is probably one of the most important things. I've been interested in jewelry as a manifestation of the aesthetic of any era for a very long time as well. My background and training are cross-disciplinary. I'm an American studies person. For me, one of the things I always look for is what we are seeing as characteristic of an age, for example. I see jewelry as very much a part of the tangible expressions of an era. For example, if you're talking about a brooch, you can be working on a sculpture for the body, similarly with neckwear. It's one of the most intriguing forms of expression there is. Making jewelry, the impulse to craft out of whatever the culture sees as precious material, is one of the innate impulses we have, along with the urge to adorn. If you step back and think about it, jewelry is intertwined with so many events of state, events of faith, events of heart. The Pope, for example, wears the Fisherman's Ring, and at the passing of each Pope, that ring is shattered; a new ring is made. We're all currently fixated on the crown jewels as Charles' coronation comes up. All of that is actually jewelry. It's jewelry indicative of state, of lineage, obviously of aesthetics. The band that many of us wear on one left or right ring finger, as simple or as elaborate as it may be, that is jewelry. It's a signifier. It's also invested with tremendous emotion. Jewelry plays an enormously powerful role in culture. It's another kind of historical document. So, if we look at jewelry, we can learn things. For example, you can explore the kinds of ornament it was thought only men wore, but by actually going back and looking, as it was done in the exhibition “Golden Kingdoms,” you can see that women also wore certain kinds of major ceremonial ornament. You can learn from the inscriptions. You can learn about stylistic transmission from the aesthetics. One of the things we don't think about so much is what we leave behind. When we go and look at how we have explored previous cultures, past cultures, one of the things we see is that the documents are often what have been termed luxury arts. They are art that are made of objects that are deemed precious within a culture. They demonstrate a certain egis over resources and talent, but they also serve as documents of that culture. They tell us things about religion, about aesthetics, about faith, about ritual. We need to be thinking about that with regard to jewelry in our own age as well. What are we leaving behind? Sharon: You cover so many things in Initiatives in Art and Culture. You talk about gems and sustainability and art. It's so many things. How did you start this, and what is the conference about? Lisa: I founded Initiatives in Art and Culture in 2004. One of the reasons it was started is because I had developed a series of conferences that had, at their core, a concern for visual culture. What does visual culture tell you? Because there is much to be learned about materiality. What's it made of? How do we get those materials? And that opens the door to discussing sustainability. Then, what's done with those materials? What are the forms? What are the means of expression, whether it's three-dimensional, such as a ring, or two-dimensional, except that it really has a third dimension, however subtle it may be. So, within the category of good, better or best, what differentiates an object from another? Then taking it a step further, what does that object mean in terms of the way we use it, in terms of its place in society, in terms of what it says? Beyond that, how is it linked to the time, or does it presage the future in some way? I'm sure I've left out some foci related to political and social concerns, but it's that wholeness that is inherent in visual culture. That is the focus of what IAC does. We have deep commitment to artistry and materials as well as a commitment to responsible practice. Sharon: Several questions. Were you always interested in all of this, or is it something your professors taught you and you learned as you read? It's not the way I would look at something. I think it's really interesting. How did you start looking at this? Lisa: I was born into a family that was and remains very visually engaged and involved with art, very involved with looking. Well before I had what one might think of as a professor, I had my parents, who in effect included me in their world of looking from moment one. My experience of art, of objects, has been part of my life since the very beginning. For us, a shared experience was very often looking, whether it was going to an exhibition or a trip planned specifically to see certain things. This was very much part of my world, or the world I was lucky enough to be born into. That included the people that were friends of my parents, and that included curators and collectors and people who were very engaged in the world of looking. My mother herself is a very well-recognized either fiber artist or artist who does sculpture using wire to explore grid and void. I say that to avoid the nomenclature wars. I was very lucky to have some extraordinary teachers, but one of the best teachers I had was in high school. We reenacted the Ruskin Whistler trial. I was the attorney for Ruskin, so I had to know all about each one of the witnesses, each one of the people who appeared and testified in the trial, and that made art come alive in a way that was exceptional. Another thing was that during those years, there was something called the myth and image school. It's the idea that an era has emblems that are representative, that are invested with particular meaning. There may be a flip side to that emblem or a parallel that represents its opposite, but this idea, one which is very cross-disciplinary and often ranges through literature and art, was incredibly formative for me. This is the stuff my teachers exposed me to when I was 13, 14. I was reading these books because they had read them in school, in college, and they shared them with us. For me, going to university—I went to Johns Hopkins and did a BA/MA in history—it was, on the one hand, a new chapter and transformative, but on the other hand, it was in some ways a continuation of what I had been doing all the way along. Sharon: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like—I've watched your conferences for a long time, and it seems that you focus on art and gems and other things. This idea of maintaining purpose and an emphasis on sustainability seems to be in the last few years. Am I incorrect? Do you just put on a conference when you think it's a really important subject and it's coming to the fore? Lisa: Sustainability is a dicey word when it comes to what exactly that means. At root, it is to survive, but in our thinking, sustainability is linked to responsible practice, which can involve how you source materials, how you make an object, what the circumstances and conditions of that making are. We actually have been interested in that since the first project. It was called “Green,” and it was in 2008. The reason that happened was there was an increasing concern with what was then called sustainability, which was often associated with the color green. We had something I definitely want to revive, which is a conference of 20 years of looking at fashion jewels, the zeitgeist of culture, photography, literature, etc. This term sustainability was being used, green was being used, and one of the things I didn't want to do was a superficial one-off. So, we decided that for the 10th year—I think it was the 10th year—of that conference, we would do something called “Green: Sustainability, Significance, and Style.” In that conference we looked at color, of course; we even looked at green diamonds, but we also looked at coral and organic material that's made into jewelry. The issues pertaining to coral were at peak interest at that point, and we did quite a lot in that conference with gold. That was the first time I worked with Toby Pomeroy, with whom I've been fortunate enough to be both friends and colleagues since then. At that point, Toby had done something that was then radical, which was to approach the refiner Hoover & Strong to see if it could be demonstrated that the materials, the scrap, that he came in with was the only material that was in the batch that was refined and that it remained segregated from everything else. That was what you might call an exploration in chain of custody, in the sense that he had a sense of origin of these materials and he wanted to ensure that he could attest to their integrity. Hoover & Strong met the challenge. At that point, Toby was making quite a lot of jewelry, and there was a term that was being used called Eco Loops. Toby has since gone on to do remarkable work with regard to mercury elimination, and he will be involved in the conference, “Maintaining Purpose,” that we are doing. With “Maintaining Purpose”—and actually with the “Green” conference, we had Mike Kowalski, who was then the chair of Tiffany, involved in the conference. There was a great deal of focus on things like land reclamation and after-mining and that sort of thing. Having said that, one thing I'd like to stress is that one of our speakers, who at that point was the head of Bono's RED, got up and said, “I know you're all wondering, ‘What's a red person doing at a green conference?'” I felt as if I had been hit over the head with pipe, because I had never thought about environmental sustainability or integrity as being isolated from social condition and well-being. Now, when you look at the 17 SDG, you'll see so many different issues broken out, but one of the things I thought was, “Gosh, we've got to do red now,” because this is a split I wasn't thinking about or perceiving. Green and red basically led to the creation of a conference. Our initial thinking was to do a conference that would look at precious substances. We did a coral conference; we did a diamond conference, which we were very privileged to do. We had wonderful support from Sally Morrison for that project. Then I woke up and realized we had never done gold, so effectively what happened is that the conference on precious substances became the Gold Conference. The Gold Conference is now entering its 13th year. We broadened gold to include gold and diamonds because we wanted to draw people's attention to stores of value, which these materials are, and also comparative approaches to things like mining, whether it's formalized or otherwise. And also because, of course, metal and stone go together. That's not to say we do not explore and include focus on other stones. We're very proud that Cruzeiro Mines, which is a tourmaline and rubellite mine from Brazil that has exemplary practices and absolutely beautiful stones, is participating in this year's conference. But the way the Gold and Diamond Conference evolved was it came to use jewelry as a lens for a 360-degree approach to the life and the issues associated with the material in question. On the one hand, you have great artistry, like Giovanni Corvaja. We were privileged to have Daniel Brush speak, whose loss I feel keenly. Every year we welcome wonderful jewelers. At the same time, we think about the issues related to extracting material or recycling material and what those words mean. What is recycling? We have repurposed since the dawn of time, so what gives something that halo of recycling? Do we have to think about what we're using? And, of course, jewelry is a created object. What are the environmental ramifications of extracting, creating the jewelry business writ large? Often in our heads, we think about jewelry and we see a craftsperson, a maker. That aspect of things is very dear to our hearts, and we're keenly interested in artisanry. At the same time, you have other aspects to this jewelry industry, large corporations that produce for particular market segments. You have the luxe maison. In some ways, they're all compatriots in a world, in other ways competitors in a world, and yet bound together by a common concern for ensuring that this world we have continues. Without this world, without this air, without this earth, we are nothing. We can't make anything. We have effaced ourselves. I think there is a point of critical mass that's been reached where there is a deep and general concern. One of the things I fear and that I hope I can help with is building community to encourage people to keep going forward despite the fears that we may have about doing something a different way. Last year our conference was “Boldly Building the Future.” How do you boldly build the future? We have many declarations that have been stated about gold, for example. There was a declaration drafted and shepherded through for the gold industry by LBMA and the World Gold Council. They have principles. Principles are not blueprints. How do you get from that vision, the abstract vision, to its implementation? How do you transform? We will have photos posted on the website. Please head to TheJewelryJourney.com to check them out.
What was hot at the Tucson gem shows, diamond supplier news, and Chat GPT. Any views expressed in this podcast do not reflect the opinion of JCK, its management, or its advertisers.
JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates talk with Malyia McNaughton, founder of Made by Malyia. The self-taught jewelry designer and Black in Jewelry Coalition board member is proof that trusting your gut can be the key to creative success. When Malyia couldn't find the jewelry she wanted, she designed her own—and wore it. Demand for her designs inspired her to launch her brand and has made her a rising star whose looks have been worn by Lizzo and other celebrities.Sponsored by De Beers: diamondeducation.debeers.comShow Notes1:53 From body chain to brand launch5:09 Expanding organically8:04 Turning obstacles into opportunities10:53 Finding creative inspiration13:57 High-profile partnerships17:58 In the spotlight on SNL20:51 The Black in Jewelry Coalition: making a difference23:52 Tips for aspiring designersEpisode CreditsHosts: Rob Bates and Victoria GomelskyProducer and engineer: Natalie ChometPlugs: jckonline.com; @jckmagazine; madebymalyia.com; diamondeducation.debeers.com [Use promo code JCKPRO_15 at checkout for 15% off workshops.]Show RecapFrom body chain to brand launchVictoria introduces Brooklyn-based designer Malyia McNaughton, founder of Made by Malyia, and asks how she started creating jewelry. The daughter of Jamaican immigrants was born in the Bronx, raised in Florida, and attended Florida State University, where she studied fashion merchandising and product development. After graduating, she moved back to New York to pursue a career in fashion, starting in sales and product development for Nicole Miller and eventually designing for another fashion brand.In 2014, Malyia had tickets to a music festival in Philadelphia. She wanted to make a statement by wearing a body chain but couldn't find the right piece. Undeterred, she sourced materials and designed her own. Little did she dream she was making her first item of jewelry. “I got stopped by so many people asking me where I'd gotten it,” Malyia recalls. “After the fifth or sixth person, my friends said, ‘You might be onto something.' We went to lunch, and they helped me come up with the name Made by Malyia.' It was one of those Oprah aha moments.”Expanding organicallyAfter months of trial and error, Malyia developed a body chain she felt was ready to put on Etsy. To her delight, orders poured in. Still, she viewed Made by Malyia as a creative outlet, not a business. Gradually she added products based on buyers' feedback. When a client asked if she could make a temporary nose ring, Malyia branched into nonpermanent nose and body jewelry. Next someone asked for a ring. “It started to expand very organically,” she says. Eventually, growing demand persuaded her to build a collection and a website.“Etsy was a great launching pad,” she says. “I credit my customers [there] for amplifying my voice and bringing me to market.” Though she has moved away from the platform, she hopes to do another Etsy-specific collection.Turning obstacles into opportunitiesRob asks what challenges Malyia faced as a newcomer to the industry. She points out that the jewelry business is famously generational. While those family bonds are admirable and she hopes to build her own legacy, they have a downside: They create a major entry barrier for self-taught designers of color and anyone else who lacks personal connections.Malyia turned the disadvantage into an advantage. As a newcomer, she felt less pressure to put out product than established insiders might. This freed her up to focus intensely on design. She is very intentional in the projects she takes on, releasing small, effective capsule collections that will sell through.Finding creative inspirationMalyia has said her work celebrates the intersection of art, nature, and culture. Victoria wonders how this translates into her creative process. The designer starts by placing raw materials in her workspace and spending a week surrounded by them. She also immerses herself in nature, drawing particular inspiration from the movement of water. Sometimes weeks go by before an idea strikes her—then ideas come fast and furious, and she finds herself making 100 sketches in a row. Her rough sketches go up on the wall, where she can study and tweak them. Next she engineers her designs to ensure they're structurally sound before sending them to her CAD designer to see what they look like in 3D. “It's a pretty unique process, but I've learned to embrace it,” she says.On her inspiration board, Malyia keeps an old magazine article about Monique Péan that she clipped when Made by Malyia was taking root. “She really is a trailblazer,” says Malyia. Other role models include Sheryl Jones, “a phenomenal designer” and personal mentor, as well as Elsa Peretti. She feels a kinship with the late Peretti because, like Malyia, the designer saw herself as an artist.High-profile partnershipsVictoria points out that Malyia has done quite a few well-publicized collaborations despite being relatively new to the industry and asks how these came about.In 2021 the Natural Diamond Council launched an emerging designer initiative. Eager to explore the fine jewelry space, Malyia applied. She not only got accepted, she impressed the council enough with her sketches that they commissioned her to design an 11-piece collection as part of a global ad campaign featuring actor Ana de Armas. “I was ecstatic because, if I do say so myself, it was a hit,” says Malyia.That success led to other opportunities, including partnering with nationwide chain Banter by Piercing Pagoda and its creative director, Grammy-nominated rapper, songwriter, and artist Tierra Whack. “I'm a huge fan,” says Malyia. Being entrusted to execute Whack's creative vision was an honor. So was revisiting her roots with a trip to a Banter store in the Bronx. “I brought my nieces, my nephews, my sister,” Malyia recalls. “It was such an amazing experience to walk into the mall and to see…pieces that I was responsible for designing. If I've had an Oscar moment, that was it.”In the SNL spotlightMalyia enjoyed another star moment recently when Lizzo wore her earrings on Saturday Night Live. Rob asks for the backstory. A stylist contacted Malyia and asked to borrow a pair of her Wave Hoop earrings with channel-set baguettes but refused to name the event or the celebrity she was dressing until the day the episode taped. “I was in disbelief when it came on the screen,” says Malyia. “To have one of the biggest stars of our time wear my earrings on SNL, I don't know if I can top that.”Celebrity placement is influential, especially for a smaller brand like Malyia's, she says, because it piques the interest of the public and the media. Reposting the coverage brings people to her site, which translates into sales and visibility.BIJC: making a differenceIn the wake of George Floyd's murder during the 2020 pandemic, Malyia was working from home when fellow Black jewelry professional Elyssa Jenkins-Pérez reached out with a timely question: Would Malyia join a conversation about how the industry could help move the Black community forward? “I immediately said yes,” she remembers. Soon, she, Jenkins-Pérez, and others who shared their concerns were brainstorming strategies. They formalized their efforts by founding the Black in Jewelry Coalition (BIJC) and assembling a nine-member board that represents all aspects of the business. “We've been on calls once a week for about two hours for the last two years,” says Malyia. “It's been phenomenal work.” BIJC has collaborated with industry organizations on initiatives to help advance Black professionals in gems and jewelry, partnering with New York City Jewelry Week on an event last year. Plans are also in the works to have a BIJC presence at the JCK show in June.Tips for aspiring designersFor younger creatives hoping to follow in her footsteps, Malyia offers these words of wisdom: Trust your instincts. She credits her intuition with guiding her from the initial decision to make and market a body chain to her current thriving career. “I just trusted that what I was creating was worth sharing. Don't wait to have it all figured out. Go for it. You never know where you can end up.”
Join JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates for a roundup of buzzworthy industry updates. Victoria reports on the recent Vicenzaoro fair, where the halls were crowded, the mood upbeat, and the looks big and bold. She updates listeners on a rare timepiece collection from the archives of Jaegar-LeCoultre. It's the first significant effort by a Swiss watchmaker to sell vintage pieces and may herald a burgeoning trend. Rob analyzes what Israeli equipment maker Sarine's purchase of the family-owned lab GCAL means for the future of diamond grading—and AI's growing role in it. Finally, the two discuss the Federal Trade Commission's proposed ban on noncompete clauses.Sponsored by De Beers: institute.debeers.comShow Notes2:22 A lively January Vicenzaoro fair 7:21 Jaegar-LeCoultre unveils first vintage watch collection12:22 What Sarine's purchase of GCAL means for the future of diamond grading18:09 The FTC's move to ban non-compete clausesEpisode CreditsHosts: Rob Bates and Victoria GomelskyProducer and engineer: Natalie ChometPlugs: @jckmagazine; institute.debeers.comShow RecapViva VicenzaoroJust back from Italy's January Vicenzaoro goldsmith and jewelry fair, Victoria says she was delighted to find the show packed and the mood optimistic. She had expected inflation, the war in Ukraine, and fear of recession to trigger cautiousness and a comedown from the boom the industry has enjoyed since the pandemic started. However, this was the best-attended Vicenzaoro ever in terms of both exhibitors and attendees. Victoria spent most of her time in the crowded hall where Roberto Coin, Damiani, FOPE, and other luxury brands that export to the U.S. were exhibiting. Also bustling was the adjacent T.Gold show, featuring jewelry machinery and technology for everything from engraving to laser welding.Victoria is still amassing information on the show's top sellers, but one trend is certain: Big, bold pieces are replacing the small, delicate ones favored during quarantine. Understated jewelry suited people well when they were working from home, she says, but now subtle looks (such as stacking multiple delicate bracelets on the wrist) are making way for powerful statement pieces—especially cuffs and collar necklaces.Jaegar-LeCoultre Unveils Vintage CollectionVictoria's recent European trip included a visit to Geneva to learn about Jaegar-LeCoultre's first-ever vintage watch collection. She explains that the Swiss company is known as the watchmaker's watchmaker. The brand has made all of its timepieces in its own workshops in the Vallée de Joux since its foundation in 1833, and Jaegar-LeCoultre calibers and movements have powered many other brands' watches over the years. Now, Jaegar-LeCoultre has mined its own rich history to create The Collectibles, 17 models from its archives produced between 1925 and 1974. Each reflects a watchmaking innovation from the 20th century. Twelve of these models were sourced from auction houses and vintage dealers and are available for purchase. Included are the Reverso, the company's best-known model, and several interesting watches from the 1950s and 1960s, according to Victoria. The Collectibles is an evolving collection, so the models will remain the same, but different editions may be introduced along with new capsules, she says.This is the first time Victoria has seen a Swiss watchmaker invest such effort into selling vintage pieces rather than new models. She likens it to Rolex's Certified Pre-Owned program and points out the advantage of having such treasures returned to the workshops where they were created to be finetuned with the very tools and components that were used to build them. How will other brands respond? Victoria is eager to find out. She predicts that we're on the brink of a new era of modern-day Swiss watchmakers taking much more care with vintage pieces that have potential to be resold.Sarine Acquires GCALIn other news, Rob reports that Israeli equipment manufacturer Sarine bought the family-owned diamond-grading lab Gem & Certification Assurance Lab (GCAL). Though GCAL is relatively small, it is widely respected for giving tough grades based on GIA standards and offering a certificate guaranteeing those grades.Rob finds the acquisition intriguing, given that Sarine uses machines which rely on artificial intelligence (AI) to grade diamonds. This allows them to grade gemstones in the factory rather than sending them to a lab, as Rob reported last year in JCK. The fact that Sarine is using a well-established lab to roll out its AI approach and promising to honor GCAL's grading guarantee shows how much confidence they have in the technology, he says. Clearly, Sarine believes its technology can match GCAL's standards. Rob and Victoria say the acquisition will help the industry get used to the concept of AI grading, a method many labs are exploring. How will AI play out in the industry? That's anyone's guess, but Victoria predicts it will become increasingly important throughout the supply chain.Rob also notes that International Gemological Institute (IGI), a well-known and profitable appraisal lab focused on lab-grown diamonds, has been put up for sale by owners Fosun Group. He and Victoria will be interested to see who purchases it.The FTC Moves to End Non-Compete ClausesVictoria mentions a recently proposed rule by The Federal Trade Commission to ban employers from issuing non-compete clauses. Rob explains that many workers miss clauses hidden in the fine print of employment contracts and find themselves hamstrung when they lose or quit a job and want to find new employment in their chosen field. For CEOs at high-profile companies, non-competes might make sense, he says, but for the average person, they're problematic—and widespread: Data suggests that one in five American workers is subject to a non-compete clause.Despite objections from business groups and possible court challenges, the FTC rule could be enacted before year end, phasing out existing non-compete clauses and prohibiting new ones. If so, Rob envisions sweeping changes in the economy.
You'll hear JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates talk about Conversations in Park City, a new De Beers CEO, and a new spin on a classic Patek Philippe watch. Victoria recaps her time in Park City, where she contemplated the present and future of retail with experts curated by PSFK. Rob reports on the change in leadership at De Beers, where Bruce Cleaver has stepped down and become co-chairman, and Al Cook will step into his shoes as CEO. Victoria covers the latest iteration of a popular Nautilus and what it means for the direction of the Patek Philippe brand.Show Notes01:00 Victoria interviewed the president of Bulgari who was in the Maldives.04:30 A recap of Conversations in Park City09:00 A change in leadership at De Beers19:55 New Patek Philippe watchEpisode CreditsHosts: Rob Bates and Victoria GomelskyProducer and engineer: Natalie ChometPlugs: @jckmagazine, jckonline.com Show RecapHospitality Meets JewelryVictoria got up early to speak to the president of Bvlgari, Daniel Paltridge, who was in the Maldives at the time. They talk about the Bvlgari hotel and how expensive it is—€2,500 per night! Rob wonders what guests might get in addition to the room for that price. (Likely not jewelry.) There are other examples of brands that cross over from fashion to hospitality—Armani, Shinola, etc. The hope is that you can capture an audience in one and then target them in the other side of the business.Conversations with Friends—in Park CityVictoria recently traveled to Park City, UT, to Conversations in Park City, the leadership summit hosted by Jewelers Mutual. The brainchild of Mark Smelzer, head of content for Jewelers Mutual (and JCK's former publisher). He had a vision to pull together the crème de la crème of the industry and bringing them all to a leadership retreat. Everyone met at the St. Regis in Deer Valley, with their loved ones in tow. Victoria brought her family and enjoyed the wonderful weather.But the main focus was the content. Mark pulled in one of the leading thinkers on retail strategy and futurism, PSFK. Jeff Weiner of PSFK brought in some experts that they've used for their presentations—on the omnichannel experience, “phigital” retail, and other things retailers need to be prepared for. It was both present- and future-focused, informing retailers about shifts in the consumer atmosphere. Though Victoria tends to tune out when people talk about NFTs, she found this coverage easier to digest. It was a beautiful setting for some great conversations. Overall, the event was brief and meaningful. She hopes there will be another one next year.A Change in Leadership for De BeersRob reports that Bruce Cleaver is stepping down as CEO of De Beers and handing over the reins to Al Cook—an industry outsider who worked for an energy company. His predecessor, Philippe Mellier, was also an outsider. He got great results for the bottom line of the company, but injured some relationships with clients who felt he drove prices too high. Bruce repaired that relationship, and is well-respected. Though it's not clear why he is leaving this position, he will still be involved as co-chairman. It's a job where you're never bored because there are so many aspects to it.Victoria wonders about the selection process. She points out that the new CEO is another European white man. Was anyone from their stakeholder countries considered? Some people have pointed out that De Beers is an African company that caters to women, yet all of its CEOs have been white men. People have comment that Al Cook doesn't have the background on marketing, branding, etc. An outsider will have to be tutored in the varied aspects of the business. It's also of note that Bruce is leaving without a contract with Botswana. A rough agreement has been drafted, but not signed yet. De Beers' portfolio has been diversified by lab-grown, which might give them some leverage.The Lab-Grown Diamond TrajectoryIt's been four years since Lightbox came out. Lab-grown is such a complicated market. Many still don't accept it as a viable category. Swarovski is rolling out lab-grown as well. Breitling has just announced they're starting to use lab-grown diamonds and fully traceable gold. This is more transparent than Victoria has seen a Swiss brand be. It's clear that lab-grown is going to be part of the conversation going forward.New Patek Philippe Watch Speaking of watches! Victoria wrote an NYT piece about a Patek Philippe watch using white gold that might “break the horological internet.” The long-awaited successor to the 5711—a hyped but discontinued watch model— is here. Called the 5811, its main difference is that it's in white gold instead of steel. A Nautilus that has been around since 1976, Victoria is confident it will be popular. It's close to people's hearts, and has always been in steel until now. They're breaking away from the steel sport models that fetch more than the gold models.They went to the prestige category. What they are concerned about is the preservation of the brand. It'll be hard to acquire by an average consumer. Their aim is to elevate the brand.
In This EpisodeYou'll hear JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates talk with Mark Smelzer, chief content executive of Jewelers Mutual and JCK's former publisher.Show Notes01:33 The hosts welcome their guest, Mark Smelzer03:30 Mark talks about his background in the jewelry business07:00 Mark recalls his first impressions of the industry10:10 The role of print today13:15 The shift to content marketing19:30 Mark's prediction on jewelry sales21:20 What can we do better?23:50 How the industry has changedEpisode CreditsHosts: Rob Bates and Victoria GomelskyProducer and engineer: Natalie ChometPlugs: jewelersmutual.com, @jckmagazine, jckonline.comShow RecapMark's BeginningsMark started in magazine ad sales in Los Angeles. He became the publisher of a city magazine called Buzz. When it went under, he moved to Variety—the entertainment trade publication, which is what eventually drew Mark to New York City. After a corporate shake-up at Variety, he was informed that he was the publisher of JCK magazine. Hedda Schupak, JCK's editor-in-chief at the time, said, “Welcome to the jewelry business. It's not unlike the Hotel California. You can check out any time, but you can never leave.” Eighteen years later, her words ring true.His First ImpressionsMark knew very little about jewelry in the beginning, not having much personal connection to it. He reflects on how much the industry has changed in 18 years. It used to be more male-dominated and traditional, but it's always been warm and welcoming. It was the first time he had to sell advertising directly to business owners.The Evolving Role Of PrintMark compares his time in publishing to selling horse-and-buggies right before the advent of the Model T. There are areas where print still resonates: city magazines, niche books, and catalogs. “Print is not dead, but, boy, did it morph and change," he says.The Shift To Content MarketingThere was a gradual shift from writing stories and articles to writing “content.” When the internet became usable by laypeople, the ability to publish content became more widely accessible to the masses. Victoria ties this shift to what Mark is doing at Jewelers Mutual with the Zing Report. His task was to raise awareness of the Zing marketplace—a hub for the variety of services that Jewelers Mutual offers. Content includes upbeat articles, interviews, and more.Jewelry Sales PredictionsMark hopes the pandemic sales spike will continue. He says that the pandemic reminded a lot of people of the emotional side of jewelry. Will the industry be in a better place than it was pre-pandemic? That remains to be seen.What Can The Industry Do Better?What do we need to overcome in the current economy? The jewelry industry could be more digitally savvy. Retailers should work toward making the in-store and digital experience more seamless. Mark remembers a “Got Milk”–style campaign he worked on with Jewelers of America. It raised awareness of jewelry using the slogan, “Another piece of your story." Then the pandemic came along, it was shelved, and jewelry had such a great two years that it was no longer needed.How The Industry Has ChangedIt has become a younger, broader industry with more diversity and inclusion. The jewelry business is richer when a greater variety of people is included. He ties how energizing that experience of connection can be to Jewelers Mutual's upcoming retreat, Conversations in Park City, which will feature networking opportunities, meaningful conversations, big ideas, and fun activities.
In This EpisodeYou'll hear JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates talk with Mark Smelzer, chief content executive of Jewelers Mutual and JCK's former publisher.Show Notes01:33 The hosts welcome their guest, Mark Smelzer03:30 Mark talks about his background in the jewelry business07:00 Mark recalls his first impressions of the industry10:10 The role of print today13:15 The shift to content marketing19:30 Mark's prediction on jewelry sales21:20 What can we do better?23:50 How the industry has changedEpisode CreditsHosts: Rob Bates and Victoria GomelskyProducer and engineer: Natalie ChometPlugs: jewelersmutual.com, @jckmagazine, jckonline.comShow RecapMark's BeginningsMark started in magazine ad sales in Los Angeles. He became the publisher of a city magazine called Buzz. When it went under, he moved to Variety—the entertainment trade publication, which is what eventually drew Mark to New York City. After a corporate shake-up at Variety, he was informed that he was the publisher of JCK magazine. Hedda Schupak, JCK's editor-in-chief at the time, said, “Welcome to the jewelry business. It's not unlike the Hotel California. You can check out any time, but you can never leave.” Eighteen years later, her words ring true.His First ImpressionsMark knew very little about jewelry in the beginning, not having much personal connection to it. He reflects on how much the industry has changed in 18 years. It used to be more male-dominated and traditional, but it's always been warm and welcoming. It was the first time he had to sell advertising directly to business owners.The Evolving Role Of PrintMark compares his time in publishing to selling horse-and-buggies right before the advent of the Model T. There are areas where print still resonates: city magazines, niche books, and catalogs. “Print is not dead, but, boy, did it morph and change," he says.The Shift To Content MarketingThere was a gradual shift from writing stories and articles to writing “content.” When the internet became usable by laypeople, the ability to publish content became more widely accessible to the masses. Victoria ties this shift to what Mark is doing at Jewelers Mutual with the Zing Report. His task was to raise awareness of the Zing marketplace—a hub for the variety of services that Jewelers Mutual offers. Content includes upbeat articles, interviews, and more.Jewelry Sales PredictionsMark hopes the pandemic sales spike will continue. He says that the pandemic reminded a lot of people of the emotional side of jewelry. Will the industry be in a better place than it was pre-pandemic? That remains to be seen.What Can The Industry Do Better?What do we need to overcome in the current economy? The jewelry industry could be more digitally savvy. Retailers should work toward making the in-store and digital experience more seamless. Mark remembers a “Got Milk”–style campaign he worked on with Jewelers of America. It raised awareness of jewelry using the slogan, “Another piece of your story." Then the pandemic came along, it was shelved, and jewelry had such a great two years that it was no longer needed.How The Industry Has ChangedIt has become a younger, broader industry with more diversity and inclusion. The jewelry business is richer when a greater variety of people is included. He ties how energizing that experience of connection can be to Jewelers Mutual's upcoming retreat, Conversations in Park City, which will feature networking opportunities, meaningful conversations, big ideas, and fun activities.
In This EpisodeYou'll hear JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates talk with Mark Smelzer, chief content executive of Jewelers Mutual and JCK's former publisher.Show Notes01:33 The hosts welcome their guest, Mark Smelzer03:30 Mark talks about his background in the jewelry business07:00 Mark recalls his first impressions of the industry10:10 The role of print today13:15 The shift to content marketing19:30 Mark's prediction on jewelry sales21:20 What can we do better?23:50 How the industry has changedEpisode CreditsHosts: Rob Bates and Victoria GomelskyProducer and engineer: Natalie ChometPlugs: jewelersmutual.com, @jckmagazine, jckonline.comShow RecapMark's BeginningsMark started in magazine ad sales in Los Angeles. He became the publisher of a city magazine called Buzz. When it went under, he moved to Variety—the entertainment trade publication, which is what eventually drew Mark to New York City. After a corporate shake-up at Variety, he was informed that he was the publisher of JCK magazine. Hedda Schupak, JCK's editor-in-chief at the time, said, “Welcome to the jewelry business. It's not unlike the Hotel California. You can check out any time, but you can never leave.” Eighteen years later, her words ring true.His First ImpressionsMark knew very little about jewelry in the beginning, not having much personal connection to it. He reflects on how much the industry has changed in 18 years. It used to be more male-dominated and traditional, but it's always been warm and welcoming. It was the first time he had to sell advertising directly to business owners.The Evolving Role Of PrintMark compares his time in publishing to selling horse-and-buggies right before the advent of the Model T. There are areas where print still resonates: city magazines, niche books, and catalogs. “Print is not dead, but, boy, did it morph and change," he says.The Shift To Content MarketingThere was a gradual shift from writing stories and articles to writing “content.” When the internet became usable by laypeople, the ability to publish content became more widely accessible to the masses. Victoria ties this shift to what Mark is doing at Jewelers Mutual with the Zing Report. His task was to raise awareness of the Zing marketplace—a hub for the variety of services that Jewelers Mutual offers. Content includes upbeat articles, interviews, and more.Jewelry Sales PredictionsMark hopes the pandemic sales spike will continue. He says that the pandemic reminded a lot of people of the emotional side of jewelry. Will the industry be in a better place than it was pre-pandemic? That remains to be seen.What Can The Industry Do Better?What do we need to overcome in the current economy? The jewelry industry could be more digitally savvy. Retailers should work toward making the in-store and digital experience more seamless. Mark remembers a “Got Milk”–style campaign he worked on with Jewelers of America. It raised awareness of jewelry using the slogan, “Another piece of your story." Then the pandemic came along, it was shelved, and jewelry had such a great two years that it was no longer needed.How The Industry Has ChangedIt has become a younger, broader industry with more diversity and inclusion. The jewelry business is richer when a greater variety of people is included. He ties how energizing that experience of connection can be to Jewelers Mutual's upcoming retreat, Conversations in Park City, which will feature networking opportunities, meaningful conversations, big ideas, and fun activities.
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