Modern Jewelry Trends

Wish that jewelry could attract as much buzz as the luxury electronics that now dominate the holidays? Jewelers are joining in, creating jewels for your electronics. (If you can’t beat ‘em….) Last month I told you about some diamond encrusted iPod headphones. Now a jewelry brand has hitched its diamonds to the flat-screen TV. New York-based A. Link has created a diamond-encrusted frame for the one-millionth Philips Ambilight FlatTV. The television features 2,200 diamonds totaling 225 carats of diamonds in a floral pattern. The Ambilight television surrounds the screen with ambient light that automatically adapts in color and intensity according to the changing content on the screen, resulting in a more immersive experience. (It’s also very nice for enhancing the sparkle if your Ambilight happens to be encrusted with thousands of diamonds.) The bling TV will be exhibited around the world to Philips customers, employees and consumers before being auctioned off in late 2007 with the proceeds donated to charity.

In the brand’s first appearance on QVC, a new Tacori collection with the company’s signature style in sterling silver and cubic zirconia sold out in 18 minutes last Saturday: one of the fastest sell-outs in QVC history. The 14 styles in the new Tacori for Epiphany collection, which is exclusive to QVC, were scheduled for a one-hour show. Nearly 30,000 items were sold in that 18 minutes. There were 4,000 callers on the line ready to purchase before the show started and 4,000 callers on the line for every minute of the Tacori show. Tacori is known for its intricately detailed bridal pieces. The new QVC Tacori for Epiphany collection features Diamonique, QVC’s brand of simulated gemstones, and Epiphany, its line of platinum-clad sterling silver, at retail prices from $50 to $200. Highlights of the Tacori for Epiphany collection include an eternity tennis bracelet, eternity bands, stud earrings and pieces featuring the “Bloom Cut,” an original cut with facets resembling the blooming petals of a flower. Although many retailers might be alarmed that a high-end bridal brand might become known for imitation jewelry, the show introduced the Tacori brand to an audience of 90 million households. “QVC viewers have a high household income and buy more frequently, and in more diverse places, than your average woman. TV appearances such as these have proven to increase foot traffic at traditional retail locations from customers who now have a real connection with Tacori,” says Michele Adorjan of Tacori.

A trend toward bejeweled and ornamented dresses made this a less than stellar year for fine jewelry at the Oscars. The main jewelry trend was for large diamond cuffs and stacked diamond bangles. Dresses were often strapless, which made the lack of necklaces even more striking. One prominent necklace, the Cartier brooch worn as a pendant by Rachel Weisz, clashed with her ornamented dress, drawing criticism from the “style experts” assessing red carpet looks (although not as much as the strange short golden jacket sported by Jennifer Hudson that she wisely took off before the ceremony). Neutral, bronze, and blush gowns dominated. The trend for rose cut diamonds and blackened metal seen at the Golden Globes continued. Gwyneth Paltrow had one of the most successful looks, with Fred Leighton rose-cut chandelier earrings visible with her sleek hair wrapped over one shoulder. Many pieces, like the black and white diamond Lorraine Schwartz earrings worn by Cate Blanchett and the diamond drops worn by Jessica Biel, featured blackened gold or platinum that added to the vintage appeal. Style icon Nicole Kidman, also with her hair over one shoulder, had the most stunning jewelry of the night: wide cuff bracelets with 357 carats of natural rough maccle diamonds in a mosaic pattern that were designed by L’wren Scott and created by William Goldberg, part of the sightholder Leo Schachter group. The bracelets were beautiful and also completely on trend.

If you sell jewelry online, you know that credit card fraud is a constant threat, especially with international orders. A new service from Paily offers insurance against credit card fraud, allowing retailers to accept credit cards rather than requiring customers to pay by wire transfer. Online jewelry retailers Ice.com and Diamond.com, owned by the same company, report an 80% increase in international sales after starting to use the new service. The e-tailer now completes 95 percent of its international orders. Unlike brick & mortar stores, online merchants are liable for all fraudulent credit card orders made on their websites: if you sell online, you still have protection for sales in your retail store, but are fully liable for all fraudulent orders made online. Paily offers to assume all fraud-related risk, guaranteeing no charge-backs, allowing online sales charged to any credit card, shipped to any address, including addresses other than the billing address, a common occurrence during the holiday season. Paily does not charge setup or monthly fees; the merchant pays only for the legitimate orders and not for the fraudulent ones. This make it easy for the merchant to easily test the service. Paily’s jewelry customers who have both brick & mortar and online stores include: Diamonds International, Pearl Paradise, and Solomon Brothers Fine Jewelry.

W.R. Cobb, the company that brought you Precise white gold, wants to build you a jewelry e-commerce website with 30,000 products. Your site will be up and running in as little as 6 weeks and the company will even handle fulfillment: shipping the items you sell on the site directly to your customers. W.R. Cobb Online is a new service that creates and stocks online marketing sites for jewelry retailers. They make the product, build the site, process the payment, ship the order: they can even handle customer service. You get a fully functional e-commerce site with your store’s brand selling W.R. Cobb’s jewelry and diamonds. The e-commerce packages include a customized website from a choice of design templates, your own domain address, and a fully stocked online store with 25,000 loose diamonds, 3,000 bridal products and 30,000 other products. The site includes a shopping cart, merchant account, product database, create your own solitaire ring tool, web hosting, and an inventory management tool. A basic e-commerce package starts at $2,900 for set-up and $299 a month with a two-year commitment. When you sell products, there are also merchant charges of 2.99%, a transaction fee of $10, and the cost of shipping for each order placed. Live chat and customer service is available for an added fee. You can select your own margins but W.R. Cobb recommends 10 percent on loose diamonds and 50 to 150 percent on jewelry. A more advanced package allows you to add your own products to your site for a photo fee of $75 to $100 per image, depending on the item. This package also includes a monthly newsletter or promotional email. The most advanced option—a custom-built site with monthly home page updates, monthly statistics, shipping in your own boxes, and other features—is $6,500 and $499 a month with a two year commitment. Retailers can upgrade packages at any time.

The Tuesday edition of Women’s Wear Daily had a fascinating report on the rising prices for luxe handbags. Prices have basically doubled in the past few years and designer handbags at the top of the range are now five and six figures. “It’s astonishing how high a price point we’ve been able to sell and not a few but a lot of handbags at these prices,” Terry Lundgren, president and CEO of Federated told WWD. The luxury customer buys several thousand-dollar bags each season. Rather than one “it” bag each season, customers are now looking for something that no one else has, like say the $148,000 limited edition Hermes Birkin bag with pave diamond clasp that is waitlisted at the New York store. Exotic skins are increasing the cost and perceived value of bags. “We have customers in Chicago and Boston and some of these areas who alone will purchase $200,000 worth of our product in a year,” said David Lamer of Lambertson Truex, a handbag brand that is opening retail stores which will offer custom bags starting at $3,000. So why am I talking about handbags on a jewelry site? I am sure you can see where I am going with this: men do not buy handbags. Women do. (And they sometimes pay in cash so their significant other won’t know how much they spent on that handbag, according to a recent article in the New York Times.) The self-purchase customer is able to buy very expensive accessories if she finds them desirable. She will buy them again next season. She will buy a whole wardrobe of them. And for this customer, materials cost and price matters less than design, workmanship, and exclusivity. The phenomenon of the $8,000 handbag is a relatively recent one. The designer handbag brands have done a great job promoting their products and making them desirable but the marketing campaigns are less important individually than the impact of the category combined as a whole. (Lambertson Truex isn’t Hermes, after all.) Jewelers who do a great job attracting this customer with desirable, fashionable jewelry designs will be astonished at her determination to have the latest must-have item.

In October, I reviewed Tiffany & Co’s then-new Create your Stack tool that allows you to see how three Tiffany stackable celebration rings look together. I thought the idea was great but wished it was more flexible with a bigger selection of rings. It was a bit disappointing since really stacking rings would be much more appealing and something you could do over and over again, unlike designing your own engagement ring, the only interactive tool that you will find on most jewelry websites. Well, Jolie’ Designs has done it: the company’s great new Interactive Stackables tool is much better than Tiffany’s. It allows you to pile up five rings, shuffle them, change the gemstone colors, and get a running retail total for the stack. It’s a lot of fun: just what I was hoping for, and as far as I know, the first of its kind. The rings are pretty too, with enough variety to keep things interesting.

With fashion week winding up in New York, the tones of the fall fashion season seem clear. Black and brown continue as the foundation of a dark palette, enlivened by jewel tones like red, teal, green and purple that work with either black or brown. This may indicate a move back to saturated clear gemstone colors from the pale, soft muted tones that currently dominate jewelry sales. Given the influence of sixties style and mod shapes this season, that isn’t a surprise. Pantone has created a list of the ten top colors used in fall collections which is headed by chili pepper red, which appeared in 16.7 percent of the season’s collections. The report cites fashion’s “spicy side” this season.  (For an indication of what that might mean for jewelry, see the Richard Palermo design for Color Craft below.) The color of red Pantone has selected is not exactly ruby red, it’s more of an orangey carnelian red. That may explain reports just coming in of brisk sales of orange gemstones in Tucson. At recent shows, warm tones of orange to brown to gold seemed to indicate a warming trend and the return to dominance of yellow gold. As we featured in the February issue, once-forgotten brown is now becoming a gem staple. The other important color story for the year, and sure to be very important this spring and summer, is blue and green, always a winner in gemstone jewelry sales thanks to the affordable and attractive gemstone options.