Modern Jewelry Trends

The DTC finally announced its official list of DTC Sightholders for the 2008-2011 contract period. The complete Sightholder Directory is now available online. Despite the delay in announcing the list there are no big surprises. Modern Jeweler did miss two international sightholders in our March 2008 Global Diamond Directory: Diamanthandel A. Spira, the oldest sightholder, and Vijaydimon, who we listed as a Rio Tinto Select Diamantaire but who is also a DTC sightholder. As you might expect, we also included two companies in error: A.S. Exports (an expected new sightholder) and Bornstein. Apologies to the companies involved and to our readers for the incorrect information, which was our mistake entirely.

But what is most interesting about the new online DTC sightholder directory is the detailed information it provides about Sightholders in South Africa, Botswana, and Namibia, which will no doubt help jewelers and manufacturers who wish to support beneficiation in those countries. This is more information than has ever been available before about these companies and their operations, although most of them are part of bigger international Sightholder groups. And it is all accessible to consumers too: an important milestone in the progress the industry is making to bring diamond cutting and downstream employment to diamond producing countries in Africa.

The new list of international DTC sightholders has been announced and it’s official: 24 companies have been cut. No names have yet been announced, just numbers at this point. Rapaport is calling around to compile a list, available here. Rob Bates is also working the phones and reporting here. The official number from DTC is that there are 75 international sightholders, 18 fewer than the last contract period, and six of the 75 are new companies. The DTC also announced that there are 79 sightholders total when the Botswana and Namibia lists are included, which means there are four companies that are receiving sights in either Botswana or Namibia who aren’t on the international list. That’s where things get a bit complicated. Currently there are three companies on the Namibia DTC list who aren’t international DTC sightholders. That means one additional company on either the Namibia or Botswana list is not an international sightholder. The first of the new DTC sightholders to surface are Arslanian Cutting Works NWT of Canada and Dharmanandan Daimonds of India.

Many U.S sightholders made the new list, including Julius Klein, Lazare Kaplan, Louis Glick, Michael Werdiger, Premier Gem, and Stuller. Longtime U.S. sightholder Hasenfeld-Stein did not.

It’s November and that means it’s time for the new DTC Sightholder list. Of course, we are especially interested at Modern Jeweler, since we publish the world’s only Global Diamond Directory of DTC Sightholders and Select Diamantaires. Generally, the Directory is published in January but this year we’ve delayed it until March, since there have been many indications that there will be significant changes in the sightholder list this year. Some analysts have even suggested that all New York sightholders will be dropped. Other commentators have argued that they shouldn’t be, while admitting it seems likely.

The latest evidence, which has been analyzed in depth by Chaim Even-Zohar, is a new DTC brochure announcing a support group for ex-sightholders. The “Sightholder Support Programme,” is a package designed to assist those clients who will no longer be Sightholders on March 31, 2008 by offering “high profile consultancy support in managing its reputation and relationships with key stakeholders.”

Any group that requires a program for support is likely to be large in size don’t you think? We’ll know soon enough.

As you know, federal law requires jewelry stores to post minimum-wage information in a conspicuous place. Since the minimum wage just changed late last month, you need to update that poster in your backroom. If you haven’t done it yet, the National Retail Federation is offering a new version. You can order it online.

Pearl farmers live in some of the world’s most beautiful places: sheltered lagoons with pristine clean waters and some of the world’s highest biodiversity. But this closeness to nature also means that they are also one of the most vulnerable industries to climate change. At this year’s GIA Gemfest in Basel, which featured leading pearl producers from all over the world, the topic of the threat of global warming to the quantity and quality of pearl production was one of the interesting topics raised. I talked to Jacques Branellec of Jewelmer, the leading producer of South Sea cultured pearls in the Philippines, and Martin Coeroli, the managing director of Perles de Tahiti, about climate change and the possible impact on pearls. As you can see in my video on Pearls and Global Warming, South Sea pearls and Tahitian pearls may be even rarer in the years to come. The threat is most acute in the tropical producing regions near the equator, where even a one or two degree rise in sea temperature can result in oyster mortality. Typhoons, always a threat to pearl farms, may cause additional damage. It really brings home how pearl farming is an amazing organic industry: a clean and sustainable source of employment in some of the world’s most beautiful places that actually improves the habitat for marine life in the surrounding areas.

As Rob Bates so eloquently said on the topic, not buying diamonds from Sierra Leone and other countries where alluvial diggers toil in unspeakable poverty, would be “the equivalent of finding a person in intensive care and then attacking them with a baseball bat.” Of course, as we all know, “to not buy would be worse” is hardly a solution: the problem remains and the Kimberley Process, focused on regulation, doesn’t address any of the deeper systemic economic issues. The Diamond Development Initiative, formed by Partnership Africa Canada, the Foundation for Environmental Sustainability and Security, De Beers, the Rapaport Group, the International Diamond Manufacturers Association, and the Communities and Small-Scale Mining Secretariat of the World Bank, is working to improve the lives of small scale miners in the diamond industry. Now a new initiative, The Madison Dialogue, is trying to widen the focus to sustainable and responsible economic development in general, “promoting communication and collaboration among companies, civil society groups and others seeking verified sources of responsible gold, diamonds and other minerals.” (Including The Association for Responsible Mining, Ethical Metalsmiths, Earthworks, and Conservation International.) The Madison Dialogue just launched a website with a report on the DDI. Although the proliferation of jewelry groups and initiatives focused on these issues, (Don’t forget WDC, CIBJO and CRJP and, in the US, JA and JVC) can seem a bit bureaucratic at times, it’s wonderful to see so many in the trade working to build a better, more equitable industry for all.

As any gemologist knows, gemstones stimulate both the right and left brain. Their beauty may inspire poetry but they also serve as evidence of the patterns and structures to be discovered in the natural world. Bill Atkinson knows something about the intersection of art and science: at Apple Computer, he designed much of the initial Macintosh user interface and wrote the original QuickDraw, MacPaint, and HyperCard software. Today, he is a full-time nature photographer. His new book, Within the Stone, pairs 72 stunning images of ornamental gemstones with poetry and essays inspired by each mineral landscape. The contributors, who treat the intricate patterns in each stone as Rorschach blots, are a talented group of overachievers themselves: Diane Ackerman, poet and psychologist; Philip Ball, Nature editor and dramatist; John Horgan, science writer and philosopher; Andrew Revkin, New York Times reporter and screenwriter; Dorion Sagan, science writer and novelist; Tyler Volk, NASA biologist and architect; and David Zindell, science fiction novelist and mathematician. And the book has its own science to match the artistry of the photos: in an appendix, mineralogy experts Si & Ann Frazier and Robert Hutchinson provide mineral commentary for each specimen.

CIBJO, the World Jewelry Confederation, has written the book on jewelry retailing. The Retailer’s Guide to Marketing Diamond Jewellery is available for free download at www.cibjo.org. The 99-page guide, which is in a pdf format, has a lot of good basic information on evaluating and improving your retail jewelry business. There are some handy forms and worksheets on everything from how to have a friend mystery shop your store to evaluating ad media.

Sections include: Your Business, including strategic planning and using SWOT analysis; Your Customer, including motivation and a template for a customer database questionnaire; Staff Training, with a mystery shopping questionnaire; Branding, which includes seven reasons why it’s a good idea; Merchandising, including a guide to window display that recommends devoting 10 percent of your promotional budget to your windows; Public Relations and Events, including a template for writing a press release; and Advertising and Promotion, including a guide to working with an agency. In addition to business tool formats, the guide also includes case studies of retailers in the United Kingdom in many of the sections. Although all the examples and some of the recommendations are tailored to the U.K., there are plenty of tips that are helpful for U.S. retailers as well. The section on customers is based on De Beers research on customer motivations and how male and female customers have different needs and different expectations. It discusses the power of the “diamond moment” and tips for insuring that your customers achieve it. And, hey, the price is right.

One of the first things you learn as a jewelry journalist is that grading documents that you get from a lab are called “reports,” not “certificates.” That’s because the results they give are opinion and not guaranteed beyond that. But now one lab, Gem Certification & Assurance Lab, actually does issue diamond certificates backed by a guarantee of accuracy. Until now, the lab has given itself one-grade wiggle-room in that guarantee. Yesterday, they tightened that to guarantee the specific quality and weight of the diamond described in the certificate. Of course, GCAL itself judges whether the grade is in fact correct (and, thanks to the Gemprint they take of each diamond they grade they can recognize each gem that is resubmitted for grading again.) You can’t submit a GIA report with a different grade and expect them to pay up. But GCAL’s parent company, Collectors Universe, has already paid consumers $391,000 under similar guarantees in its other divisions, like coins and stamps. Here’s how the new GCAL guarantee works: if you believe your GCAL-certified diamond does not meet the carat weight or quality grades stated within two years of the date on the certificate, submit your diamond for review. If GCAL determines that either the weight or quality grade is lower than the weight or quality grade originally assigned on the applicable certificate, or the diamond is not authentic, GCAL will either reimburse you for the difference between the current retail value of your diamond at the original grade or weight and the current retail value of your diamond at the newly established grade or weight or replace your diamond with an authentic, natural diamond of weight and quality grade as stated in the original certificate. Even without considering grading disputes, the guarantee will probably attract customers who worry about undisclosed treatment or synthetics.

With large diamonds still one of the hottest part of the markets, supply is tight and time is money (as anyone who has purchased a large stone and sunk almost their entire open-to-buy into it will no doubt agree!) AGS Laboratories recently announced it will speed grading of larger diamonds. Diamonds of more than three carats or more will receive express service at no extra charge. Diamonds of seven carats or more will receive grading results in one business day and diamonds weighing 3.00-6.99 carats will receive grading results in three business days. AGS also will offer performance-based cut grades, already available for round and princess cuts, for emerald cuts too in February.