Modern Jewelry Trends

Nearly half of consumers, a surprising 47%, plan to make at least one holiday purchase online this year, up from 36% three years ago. Many more consumers will also use the Internet to browse before heading to stores to buy. According to the survey, 89% of consumers regularly or occasionally research products online before buying in a store. These numbers are from a new survey conducted for the National Retail Federation by BIGresearch. Shoppers, who are expected to spend $791 each this year on holiday presents, say they will do an average of 28.9% of their shopping online. The highest percentage of consumers, 23.6% say they begin their online research at Google.com. It’s not too late for an affordable Google Adwords local text ad: target your city name and important jewelry words and phrases like engagement ring, circle pendant, Journey pendant, and the major brands you carry.

A new search engine on steroids called What’s Online is offering visitors a chance to win a diamond a day. The company has teamed up with Lazare Kaplan in a sweepstakes and sponsorship of the No. 49 car in the NASCAR Nextel Racing Series. “Our sponsorship of NASCAR, as with all of our promotional efforts, is ultimately intended to drive traffic to our retailer’s doors,” explains Marcee Feinberg, Lazare’s Vice President, Marketing. The daily diamond is a rough octahedron crystal. Consumers will be sent to the Lazare Diamond website , where they will be directed to a jeweler in their area. Lucky winners will be able to visit these retailers in order to set or cut their new diamond in the rough. NASCAR fans are an excellent target market, Feinberg says. With 75 million fans, it is the number two sport on television and the number one in terms of fan loyalty. And 41% of NASCAR fans, 40% of whom are female, fall within the $50,000+ income bracket, 12% are in the $70,000-$100,000 income bracket and 11% are in the $100,000+ income bracket. The first race for the WhatsOnline/Lazare Diamond car was at the Dover 400 on September 24. During the week of October 9th, www.WhatsOnline.com received more than 711,608 hits. In one week, approximately 6,280 consumers entered online to win a Lazare Kaplan rough diamond. So far, 20 lucky winners have received their rough octahedron. Hey, those are pretty good odds! Try your luck today!

All Things Considered on NPR did a story today on the industry campaign to minimize the impact of Blood Diamond, the Warner Brothers movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio scheduled to open December 15. The transcript and audio are available online. This isn’t news: last month, the World Diamond Council ran full-page ads in 10 newspapers about the Kimberley Process, the three-year-old, U.N.-backed certification system designed to keep blood diamonds off the market. NPR interviewed Cecilia Gardner of JVC and the World Diamond Council and Allan Mayer, a Los Angeles crisis-management specialist who has consulted with the World Diamond Council for the past year. “We want people who see the movie to understand it is the past,” Gardner said. “Lots has happened since that time.”

NPR asked the movie’s director, Edward Zwick, about the industry’s request that he add a disclaimer that the civil war in Sierra Leone was long over and that the issue of conflict diamonds has been addressed by the Kimberley Process. He said he never considered making a change. “My reaction is, I try not to take notes from the studio” Zwick told NPR. “And I really didn’t think it was proper to take them from an industry lobby.” Zwick said that he wanted shoppers to question where diamonds are from. “What I wanted to create in their minds is consciousness,” he says. “A purchase of a diamond just has to be an informed purchase. I think after seeing this movie, people will feel it incumbent upon themselves to ask for a warranty, so as to guarantee the diamond they’re buying is not from a conflict zone.”

We got a request today from Dave Levison of Levison’s Jewelers in Coconut Grove, Florida, for some good proposal ideas for a client looking to pop the question with his beautiful new Levison’s engagement ring. Since most jewelers are faced with the “question” question pretty often, we put together some links to proposal ideas online. First of all, www.adiamondisforever.com has a short but sweet set of lavish proposal ideas. (Wasn’t the movie-of-you idea a DTC commercial?) There is also a book of proposal dos-and-don’ts that might make a nice gift to a client. There are sites where people post their own proposal stories, sites that give planning advice, sites that suggest proposal poetry, and sites with ideas for proposing on Valentine’s Day and Christmas. Actually, a proposal ideas section is a good idea for every jeweler’s website. Ask your customers for their best stories. Here’s a nice example from Wilson Diamonds in Provo, Utah.

The holidays are near, so it’s time, once again, for Victoria’s Secret to reveal this year’s diamond-encrusted lingerie. After years of Mouawad-sponsored mega-caratage, this year a new jeweler has stepped up to the, ah, cup. This year’s “diamond fantasy bra” is sponsored by Hearts On Fire. The bra is set with more than 2,000 diamonds weighing 800 carats, including a 10 carat diamond brooch with a Victorian floral motif. The value of the Victoria’s Secret Hearts On Fire Diamond Fantasy Bra? $6.5 million. If you haven’t received your catalog and want to inspect the bra, modeled by Karolina Kurkova, it isn’t posted on the Victoria’s Secret website yet. But here’s a preview.

Although the emphasis in jewelry fashion has shifted from the ear to the neck and wrist, stylish celebrities are still not able to resist those flattering drop earrings. And of course, wearing long earrings and a necklace is a bit over the top, even these bling-encrusted days. At the global launch of H.Stern’s new asymetrical and organic Stern Star diamond last night at the H.Stern store on Fifth Avenue in New York, Ashley Judd, Molly Shannon, Dana Delaney, Nikki Hilton, and others wore diamond drops. The theme of the night was black and white, which meant lots of jewelry set with black and white diamonds and a beverage concocted for the evening: black diamond caipirinhas.

Create Your Own Engagement Ring tools have been a popular website feature for more than five years now, with most online retailers featuring their own versions. Designers like Timeless Design and the popular Diamond is Forever consumer site also have Design Your Own Ring tools. Now retailer Tiffany & Co. has come up with an interesting new twist on the concept. Tiffany’s new create your stack tool allows consumers to mix and match different diamond and gemstone bands from Tiffany’s Celebration Rings Collection and see how they look stacked together. It’s far from perfect (you can’t change the order of the stack and not all rings are available in each position) but it captures some of the fun of trying on jewelry. I’d love to see a tool like this with all the stack rings from a company like Hidalgo or OGI, wouldn’t you?

According to a new survey by the Jewelry Consumer Opinion Council, over a quarter of consumers are planning to purchase jewelry and watches for the holidays, up from 21 percent at this time in 2005. Almost three quarters of the 2,792 consumers surveyed said they would spend between $100 and $1,000 on jewelry this year. Almost a third say they expect to spend more on jewelry gifts than last year. But there is a lot of competition for the holiday budget. Consumers are also looking forward to entertaining, traveling and improving their homes this holiday season. Half of those surveyed plan on spending up to $300 on entertaining, with another quarter expecting to dole out $1,000 or more on Christmas cheer. Over a quarter plan to travel for the holidays, while another quarter is looking to make home improvements, with 66 percent planning to spend more than $500.

Online retailers will offer free shipping and incentives to order early this holiday season, instead of sweepstakes, repeat customer discounts, and other types of sales promotions. A survey of 80 retailers by Shop.org and BizRate Research also found that 63 percent of the online retailers will begin holiday promotions before November 4. Free shipping often ranks first among offers that consumers say they look for when buying online. A recent survey from the Jewelry Consumer Opinion Council had it ranked at almost 90 percent, neck and neck with lower prices. If you have an online store, you might consider an early offer of free shipping on jewelry purchased online (you could also offer free in-store pick up) and promote it before Thanksgiving to your email mailing list. No email mailing list? Start collecting today!

The Lesotho Promise, a 603 carat rough diamond discovered by Gem Diamonds at the Letseng Mine in Lesotho, sold in Antwerp for $12.36 million to Safdico (South African Diamond Corporation.) Safdico is the manufacturing arm of Graff Jewellers. The 603-carat rough is the fifteenth-largest ever found.