Modern Jewelry Trends

Marketers from Procter & Gamble to PepsiCo are using a new way to reach young opinion leaders: product placements at cheerleader camps. Personal care products like shampoos and cosmetics are handed out at the camps, which are setting up product lounges sponsored by consumer goods companies. Marketers expect the products used by these popular teens to drive word-of-mouth advertising. Cheerleading events run by Varsity Spirit of Memphis, Tennessee this year were attended by 350,000 cheerleaders in high school and college. Other companies like Jamz Cheerleading & Dance in Modesto, California and Great Lakes Cheer Company have also reported more interest from sponsors. Since reaching young people before marriage is a challenge for jewelers and engagement ring brands, cheerleading camp, particularly for college cheerleaders, might be a good alternative way to reach brides-to-be. It would also be a good way for jewelry brands who target young women to influence the influencers in communities across the country.

In yet another example of a niche jewelry website, a new online jewelry retailer, Jewelry4Aces, is focusing exclusively on poker and playing card themed jewelry. The owners claim this is the first business of its kind and I don’t dispute it. But there are lots of poker jewelry lines, including an official World Series of Poker collection from the Triton division of Frederick Goldman in association with Harrah’s Licensing Company launched last year. As part of the partnership, Triton created the World Series of Poker champion’s bracelet. Swiss watch brand Corum also signed for a six year stint as official timepiece for the WSOP, which includes creating watches for the nine players who make the final $10,000 round. Roberto Martinez has a licensed World Poker Tour Collection of jewelry based on poker-related symbols such as hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades and popular poker sayings. Jewelry4Aces.com manufactures all its own jewelry in 18k and platinum and diamonds and it doesn’t have any official license, hoping instead to attract people who enjoy playing, rather than watching, the game.

Online jewelry retailer Ice.com is taking inspiration from the success of home shopping networks and adding a video network called IceTV to entice online shoppers with sound and motion. The premiere video, Spring 2007: The Newest Hottest Latest Trends, is more MTV than QVC, with a camera zooming around a model wearing trends like geometric shapes, hoops, long necklaces, big bold rings, and other styles. Links to product are right next to the video. Future segments will include educational videos like how to buy a diamond and clips on what the stars are wearing. And Ice.com isn’t the only retailer adding online video content to its site. Home Depot now has instructional videos and Baby Universe.com goes even further with a live online tv channel called BabyTV, including ads from manufacturers. Will watching videos on products and other topics inspire purchases or will it distract consumers away from the buying process? Either way, the linking of retail and video is clearly an idea whose time has come.

The linking of magazines and video is also an idea whose time has come. In fact, Modern Jeweler now has an exciting new Jewelry Video Network designed for retail jewelers with videos on diamonds, gemstones, pearls, jewelry trends, manufacturing, and events attended by our editors. It’s the tube for you. We will be posting more videos every week. Future videos will include a look at exciting new jewelry collections launched in Basel this year. Like the videos on Ice.com, the technology is key: you’ll find the videos load quickly and play smoothly with no special software required.

One of the most interesting collections launched at the Baselworld show this year is the extravagant one-of-a-kind jewelry of Wallace Chan of Hong Kong. Chan has long been a gem engraver and his portraits carved inside gemstones are as distinctive as they are original. His new collection of jewelry uses cast and carved titanium to reproduce the natural world. Chan has managed to create large and amazingly light pieces in this difficult metal, depicting insects, fish, and other creatures in bejewelled earrings, brooches, rings, and art pieces of breathtaking scale and detail. The whole collection will officially launch at the September show in Hong Kong.

GIA is inviting consumers, collectors, and retailers to explore the world of jade at its fifth annual Sinkankas Symposium at the GIA Campus in Carlsbad, California on Saturday, April 21, 2007. For most people, jade evokes an image of brilliant green but this translucent gem also comes in many other colors including white, orange, and lavender. Because of its beauty and durability, jade, which includes the minerals jadeite and nephrite, has been treasured around the world for centuries. The Sinkankas Symposium is co-hosted by the San Diego Mineral & Gem Society. Named in honor of the renowned gemologist, author, and lapidary John Sinkankas, the event devotes a full day of discussions, lectures, and demonstrations to one gem, led by an impressive list of experts in a wide variety of fields. More than five different local gem and mineral clubs, from Los Angeles to Fallbrook, plan to attend.
Topics this year will range from types of jade, new discoveries, photography, carving, appraising and many other issues. Many jade pieces will also be on display at the event. Speakers include Fred Ward, National Geographic author and photographer, on Jades of the World; Si Frazier, author, on Nomenclature of Jade; Don Kay of Mason Kay Importers on Burmese Jadeite Jewelry; John Koivula, GIA gemstone inclusion expert on the Microworld of Jade; Richard Hughes, author and gem authority, on Burmese Jade Deposits; Mary Lou Ridinger, Guatemalan jade expert on the Current Guatemalan Jade Market; and George Rossman, professor and mineralogist at California Institute of Technology on the causes of Color in Jade. Admission is $75, which includes lunch. Tickets are available until April 14 by emailing annes@san.rr.com.  For more information on Jade, visit the Friends of Jade website.

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal had an article on the booming market for high-end watches called “What is Your Time Really Worth.” As the fact that collectors will pay $500,000 for a complication that “only a watch buff would recognize as more than nice-looking jewelry” is hardly news to anyone in that end of the market, it does continue to astonish just how high prices for in-demand limited editions can go. But what is really fun about the article is that the Journal rated the watches as investments and issued “Buy,” “Hold,” and “Sell” recommendations for 25 popular high-end watches. The ratings are based on a survey of collectors, dealers, and appraisers and also use auction prices for 400 watches at Antiquorum and Christie’s. These watches received the coveted “Buy” rating: the IWC Destriero Scafusia, F.P. Journe Chronometre a Resonance, Ulysse Nardin Freak, Audemars Piguet Royal Oak City of Sails, Vacheron Constantin Tin Mercator, Martin Braun Eos, Patek Philippe Nautilus, Breguet Marine Chronographe Automatique, Patek Phillippe Calatrava 5053, and the Nomos Tangente Date Power Reserve. Only four watches were rated “sell”: the Corum Bubble, Chopard Mille Miglia, Piaget Polo, and the Hublot Big Bang.