After 108 years of serving the jewelry industry, Modern Jeweler is suspending publication. We’d like to thank all the people who worked hard over the years to make every issue worth reading. We’d also like to thank the retailers and manufacturers who shared their time and expertise with our readers each month. We hope to find a buyer who believes in the future of the jewelry industry as much as we do. But even if we don’t and the August issue of Modern Jeweler is truly the last, we are sure that the jewelry industry’s strong community and generosity of spirit will ensure its recovery is swift and its future is bright. We’ll certainly miss being there to cover it.
- Tim Murphy, Publisher, and Cheryl Kremkow, Editor-in-Chief
Custom jewelry design is about to get much easier. Stuller, the jewelry industry’s largest just-in-time supplier, has partnered with Gemvision, the company that created Matrix, the most popular jewelry CAD-CAM program, to create new software that enables salespeople to create true custom designs at the counter that Stuller will then manufacture and deliver in less than a week.
“This is a tool to make custom design possible for the sales associate,” says Matt Stuller, founder, president, and CEO of Stuller. “When the customer is part of the design processes it fuels the passion and excitement of jewelry. It’s not a commodity anymore.”
The new software, tentatively called “Counter Sketch” was previewed for 50 select retailers at the inaugural Stuller Owner’s Conference in Lafayette, Louisiana on July 14. A beta version will be released to 100 retailers on October 12 this year and the software will be available in wide release in January 2010. Pricing hasn’t been set yet.
“We want to create an experience where the customer doesn’t have to ask for custom design, it becomes part of the shopping experience,” explains Jeff High, founder and president of Gemvision. The design process in the new software starts with existing models of popular jewelry styles. According to Stuller, the goal is to launch with 1,000 to 1,500 different initial models. Each model can then be modified and adapted to suit the customer’s needs through an intuitive easy-to-use interface, creating an infinite number of possible customized designs.
Take a three stone ring design, for example. A salesperson, or even a customer, can use simple sliders to change the finger size, the center stone size and type, the size and position of the side stones, the angle and height of all the stones, the width and profile of the shank. As one attribute of the piece changes, all the others seamlessly adjust proportionately in real time to change the look of the piece to suit the customer’s requirements.
Once the customer is happy with the design, the sales person can calculate pricing and send the model to Stuller for manufacturing. Stuller offers the design as a casting, as a polished mounting, or set with gemstones from Stuller’s inventory, delivered in 5 to 7 days.
Although Counter Sketch allows jewelers with little or no custom design experience to offer the service, even jewelers who specialize in CAD CAM said the new program would improve the custom design experience for their customers. “It’s a game-changer that makes custom the new normal: the biggest change the jewelry industry’s seen since the introduction of CAD,” says Jim Tuttle of Green Lake Jewelry Works in Seattle, the largest Matrix user in the country. “This is the beginning of the mass customization revolution. In what other industry can you essentially design something yourself and get a good quality product? Who would have thought that the jewelry industry would lead the way in the democratization of design?”
Jewelry designer Sarah Graham is known for hand-crafting natural forms, from seedpods to coral, in the most urban of materials: blackened cobalt chrome steel and gold. The inspiration for her new men’s collection, Mr. Graham, which will be launched at the JA show at the end of the month, comes from the sea: tiny radiolarian, a single-celled marine organism.
“I have been doing lots of reading on Darwin, drawing a parallel between the ‘evolution’ of art and fashion as a result of major shifts in society like war and economic swings,” Graham explains. “I foresee great opportunities and exciting design and marketing developments related to earth and nature conservation as we emerge from the current economic downturn with a new consciousness.”
The blackened steel and sterling silver Mr. Graham collection is targeted to the style-conscious man. “There is a whole generation of guys who wear jewelry as a matter of course and it is just a matter of time before their earning potential allows them to trade up to fine designer jewelry,” Graham says. “Historically high end purchases by men have been limited to traditional offerings such as wedding bands and cuff links. While we certainly will be offering those, I also want to focus on nontraditional items with an emphasis on functionality, hence the moniker gear rather than jewelry. A great example is our carabineer – a new take on the traditional key chain – a functional tool that can be used to fasten all kinds of items for both urban and outdoorsman alike.”
The other shoe dropped at Scott Kay. We mentioned in an earlier post that Scott Kay’s new SK Cobalt diffusion line of men’s bands in a cobalt alloy that was being shown at Couture this year looked a lot like the CobaBlu patented cobalt alloy from Spectore’s Edward Mirell. Well now it’s official: Scott Kay is the new exclusive distributor for CobaBlue which will be marketed as SK Cobalt. I have to admit that SK Cobalt is a better name than CobaBlu, so maybe it’s all for the best.
Modern Jeweler has covered a lot of jewelry trends from the Vegas shows, and jewelry with personal significance remains important: initial pendants, jewelry with spiritual and religious symbols, birthstones, engraved messages, lockets, and so on. Our June 2009 issue, for instance, showed off an amazing variety of initial pendants (page 62).
Initial pendants came to mind when I visited Italian designer and artist Fabio Cammarata at the Couture show. I like the unity theme of his “Stories” collection. It has a kind of “We Are the World” peaceful feeling to it. (Apologies if you have that song stuck in your head like me, but it just can’t be helped after all the Michael Jackson media coverage.) The 18k gold and gemstone collection includes initial pendants as well as rings, earrings, and cuffs. Sculptural jewelry features carved gold people wrapped around the designs; others feature a “shadow” effect with people silhouettes carved into the gold.
Cammarata, based in Milan, has some impressive jewelry credentials, both in the academic and business worlds. And like many Italian master designers, he has a long family history in the trade, too. Cammarata Gioielli offers a variety of classic and contemporary designs, including the “Manhattan” line with designs in opal, plus an exclusive collection sold at several Barney’s stores in the U.S. For more information, visit www.fabiocammarata.it. — Matthew Kramer
Looking for some time away from the shop this summer? After all, it’s July, it’s 80 or so degrees out and (mostly) sunny. Perhaps it’s a good time for a little jewelry education and networking, plus an event benefiting a worthy cause, too. Check out these jewelry industry events (and head for the beach soon because you deserve a break, too).
If camping is your thing, the 31st annual Antique Jewelry & Art Conference, known as “Jewelry Camp,” will be held July 17-19, 2009. Learn from the experts about buying, selling, appraising, and collecting estate jewelry. Speakers include Ulysses Grant Dietz, Michael Goldstein, Christie Romero, Gary Roskin, and Janet Zapata. The conference will be held at Hofstra University, Long Island, New York. For more information, call (631) 471-1922 or visit www.jewelrycamp.org.
Meanwhile, the New York State Jewelers Association will host its centennial anniversary with a gala dinner on July 25, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City’s Columbus Circle. Proceeds from silent and live auctions will be donated to the Wounded Warrior Project, a non-profit organization which assists veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in overcoming injuries and returning to civilian life. New York Yankees outfielder Johnny Damon, national spokesman for Wounded Warrior Project, will also attend. For more ticket or sponsorship information, visit www.newyorkjewelers.org. — Matthew Kramer
