This is the second of a two-part post. To read the first installation, click here.

I'm not suggesting collaboration is new - I'm suggesting we need more of it. Here are some examples of collaboration from which we can draw inspiration and fuel new ideas.

Ethical Metalsmiths

This group has existed for a long time, quietly gathering a membership in the hundreds. Like many small non-profits, it has suffered from diffusion of its mission. Recently, with a dynamic new board in place, the group has focused on its role in the larger universe of social justice, social responsibility, and environmental protection groups as one of collaboration. Rather than trying to be and do all the things that much larger (and better funded) organizations have tackled, the Ethical Metalsmiths group has decided on a collaborative approach.

Working as an advocate for its own membership, Ethical Metalsmiths will provide a framework to support its members on a journey of better practices. EM will reach out to organizations like Association for Responsible Mining and the Responsible Jewellery Council, and bring back practices and knowledge from them for the EM community. EM members sit on committees for the Jewelry Industry Summit, creating cross-pollination with other groups concerned about the same issues.

This approach will facilitate the growth of EM, and also helps promote the overall goal of sustainability and responsibility by spreading the love around through collaboration.

MJSA Collaborations

The MJSA (Manufacturing Jewelers and Suppliers of America) is always looking for ways to build collaborations among its members to better all the members. Their BEaJEWELER program* is a great example of this. BEaJEWELER seeks to entice new people to the profession of jewelry. It provides a website with extensive resources to direct interested visitors to schools, training programs, and information to help them make a good decision and set out on their path. BEaJEWELER also invites its jeweler members to share their own stories and insights, because it’s that human element that makes a career choice come alive. Of course, this benefits all of the participants, because we all know the struggle of finding qualified help in the jewelry production studio!

Now, MJSA is introducing a new initiative – the Studio Jeweler outreach program. Again, collaborating with members, MJSA will reach out directly to consumers to connect them with the satisfying experience of buying jewelry made locally and traditionally. Both MJSA initiatives are funded in part by a JCK Industry Grant – itself another form of collaboration.

ANZA Gems

Monica Stephenson, known by many in the jewelry industry for the long-running iDazzle blog, offers another example of powerful collaboration. After traveling to Africa as part of the team that participated in the making of the gem documentary Sharing the Rough, Monica became very committed to helping making a difference on the ground in artisanal mining communities. She started ANZA Gem. ANZA Gem takes gem rough from artisanal miners, collaborates with designers and consumers to make and sell finished jewelry, and returns a significant portion of that value back to the original mining community. This effort recognizes in practice what Sharing the Rough demonstrated in film: that the materials we take from the ground form a chain from the person who digs in the dirt for it to the person who ultimately wears it. Monica’s goal is to make sure every piece of that chain also benefits from it, and she chose collaboration as the way to do her part.

Endorsements and Influence

Before the term influencer came to mean a previously anonymous person with 50,000 social media followers, influencer marketing was also a form of collaboration (OK, in truth, it still is). When people with a following endorse specific products, theoretically the sales go up. This works best when it is apparent that the endorser clearly believes in the product and the exchange is not purely financial. So, athletes endorsing shoes they’ve been wearing all along (prior to the endorsement) have more influence than Cindy Lauper being paid to endorse a pharmaceutical.

Are there ways to create stronger collaboration of the influence sort? Sure there are – that’s exactly what social proof is. If you’re not using product reviews and testimonials from customers to persuade prospects, you’re not taking advantage of this potent source of marketing collaboration. And the collaboration isn’t just about you and your customers – it’s also peer collaboration, as consumers rely on friends, acquaintances, or just people who seem like them to give them advice regarding the products they are considering.

Co-Branding

Many retail jewelers have dabbled in collaborations with other local businesses. Most of the time, it doesn’t go beyond basic co-branding for a promotion or event. But what if it did? What if several businesses banded together to create an omnichannel experience for customers that went way beyond one store?

Big corporations can achieve the benefits of collaboration (more minds to tackle tricky problems) just by virtue of their employment pool. And even then, smart corporate leaders often look to collaborate with other corporations to gain competitive advantage. We are all self-limiting to some extent (if not inherently, at least practically), and the way to combat that is by inviting in the wisdom and experience of others. Small business owners need collaborations to compete.

The future of retail hasn’t been invented yet – it’s still being conceived of. The questions are: are you part of that conceptualization, or are you waiting for others to do it? Are you going it alone, or are you looking for the advantages that come from smart people putting their heads together? My money is on the outcomes of strong collaborations, and the smart people who decide to engage in them.

What is a fair compensation rate for retail sales staff today? And how should commissions  be structured? Andrea Hill gives advice for the jewelry industry in this article in InStore Magazine.

From InStore Magazine online, April 2, 2019:

I have an employee who makes $16 an hour and 6 percent on retail (although for loose diamonds, commission is based on gross profit). She earns close to $60,000 a year but feels underpaid and that paying gross profit on diamonds is contrary to the industry standard. How can I convince her she has it pretty good?

She does indeed have it pretty good, says industry consultant Andrea Hill, owner of Hill Management Group, noting that her hourly rate is almost 50 percent higher than the average for retail salespeople of $11.50, and even more than the average of $15 paid by very high-end luxury retailers (think Gucci). The commission is also higher than the industry average of 3-4 percent on retail, although, significantly, Hill notes, “wise” businesses are increasingly moving away from such a formula to pay commission on gross margins. “In this way, sales professionals are challenged to balance the need to get the highest price possible with the need to close the sale. When commissions are paid out on total sales only, then it becomes very easy for the salesperson to sacrifice profits for the easy close,” she says. While exposure to such numbers should mollify your associate, what you really want to do is excite her about the potential of earning as much as $100,000 a year — which is what top luxury salespeople make — although that requires building a “strong book” of customers through active networking, clienteling and prospecting work. Keep in mind, however, that even the most generous commission rate won’t help if you’re not on top of your game, meaning advertising intelligently, keeping up with changing retail trends, providing the right technology for how consumers today want to shop, and maintaining an exciting inventory that reflects current tastes, says Hill. “If the retail business owner does not ensure that they are running a strong merchandising and marketing operation, then even the best salesperson in the world will not be able to turn the promise of commission into actual earnings.”

I was just on a conference call with three experts in digital design. We are preparing for a panel discussion at the Gold Conference in New York at the end of April (you really should join us! Here’s a link to learn more about the conference). We were discussing the transformative aspect of digital design and manufacture, and whether or not the jewelry industry has actually embraced that yet.

Many of us are talking about the struggles in the jewelry industry.  Here are just a few of the more comprehensive writings on this topic:

• What Will Become of Jewelry Retail Stores? Peter Smith (4/12/2016)
• Everything You Know About Luxury Has Changed. Andrea Hill (5/27/2015)
• The Jewelry Industry and Millennials: What do they want? Rob Bates (5/18/2015)
• Past Time for Change: A Post to the Jewelry Industry. Andrea Hill (6/2/2014)
• You Need to Attract the New Consumer.  Andrea Hill (3/17/2014)

And yet, the store closures (~750 last year) keep happening, specialty retail stores are stagnating, and the industry mood is a bit grim.

Digital Design has Already Transformed Industries

So let’s look at what’s happening elsewhere. One of the guys on my call this morning (Harry Abramson, Direct Dimensions) shared a story about his brother (brother-in-law?) who is in the custom t-shirt business. Whereas at one time, if you wanted a custom t-shirt, you had to produce or select a design, then order and stock it by the dozens in each size and color; today you can order one custom t-shirt at a time with virtually the same delivery time. The individual t-shirt may cost a bit more than the cost of each t-shirt in bulk, but there’s nowhere near the risk or inventory cost associated with the old way of doing things. To a certain extent this type of design customization is available today in jewelry stores using Stuller's Gemvision system.

I experience this in my own business as well. Often I receive calls from people asking if we sell any of my business quotes (the benefits of social media, I guess) on mugs, mousepads, desk art, etc. We can and do, one piece at a time, to order.

In the fashion industry, the CFDA has embarked on a significant mission to study how to remain relevant in the age of fast-fashion. In the “old” way of doing things, the fashion industry produced big shows in the spring and fall, showing fashions that will be available for sale at retail six months later. Today, consumers are snapping up those same design concepts at retail almost as soon as the shows are done. How? Fast fashion operations are producing their own versions of what’s hot during Fashion Week very quickly, delivering to demanding consumers the style concepts they saw almost immediately after they saw them.

Paint manufacturers figured out the benefits of fast, digital design long before the rest of us. Instead of stocking 100 colors of paint, your local hardware store stocks a few base colors, and dozens — even hundreds —of colors, all of which can be mixed on demand for each customer.

Publishing, music, printing, television, automobiles, vacation packages, the list goes on-and-on — all have been transformed by incorporating consumer-driven digital design into the process. And by “consumer-driven” I don’t mean consumers doing the design (though in some cases that has happened). By consumer-driven I mean taking into account the real needs and desires of consumers – expressed and yet-to-be expressed – and designing to meet those needs.

There's a difference between "embracing CAD" and  "using digital design for transformation"

I’ve written and spoken at length about how the industry needs to embrace the digital world and incorporate it comprehensively into the bricks-and-mortar world. This is still true. But internet marketing and selling aren't the only digital transformations we need to embrace. How can we bring to consumers the jewelry designs that turn them on — designs that are extremely well conceived, vibrant, contemporary — at retail? How can we achieve what the luxury automobile manufacturers are doing, bringing forward impeccable design and consumer-focused innovation at lower production and marketing costs than in the past?

The tools are there. CAD, 3D growers and digital manufacturing on the design and inventory production side; and advanced CRM systems on the sales and promotion side. But what we’ve focused on in CAD for the past 10-15 years is just getting people to pick up the tools and learn them.

Now that time has passed. It’s no longer sufficient to use the digital tools available to us to simply do the things we are already doing, only faster and cheaper. We need to be innovating new ways, more ways to apply digital tools in our businesses. We need to be so adept at using the digital tools available to us that we start coming up with big new ideas. It’s time to use the digital tools to transform our businesses and our industry. Either that, or let the new world of design, production, and retailing move on without us.

PS. There is still a very important place for hand craft. There always will be. And there should be more hand craft - not less - in jewelry stores. But hand craft alone will not solve the problems the industry is facing. Digital design must also be a big part of the equation.

This week, at Initiatives in Art and Culture’s Gold Conference, the opening evening event – normally reserved for an outing at an atelier or exhibit – was instead devoted to a panel on issues facing women in the jewelry industry.

The topic of gender bias is hardly unique to our industry. But as a small industry, it is perhaps more important to our overall success and more difficult to discuss than for other industries.I won’t try to recap the conversation in a linear way. I don’t think I could. Hedda Schupak kicked things off by asking the panel how the jewelry industry was managing gender bias relative to other industries, and within three or four minutes, the entire audience was involved in the conversation.

Immediately, women began telling their stories. One woman’s career was ruined by a male colleague's idea of a  “joke.” He liked to tell their co-workers that she had slept her way to her current position. After being passed over for promotions for which she was more than qualified, she approached Human Resources. The HR representative told her that the belief she had been sleeping with higher-ups had led to her being passed over. An investigation discredited the male colleague and his “joke,” but it didn’t matter. Her career there could not recover. She transferred to a different company, and the male colleague suffered no consequences.

Another woman, a senior marketing executive, spoke of advocating to be included in a major advertising agency meeting as part of a powerful diamond industry group. She was the only trained marketing executive in the group, and the only woman — in a market that sells almost exclusively to women. And yet, when the meetings commenced, they made her leave the room. It was humiliating for her (and genuinely stupid of the men).

Participants spoke of women in our industry being belittled, ignored, talked over, humiliated, passed by for promotions. Groped. Raped. Trapped in jobs they could not afford to leave. Of women contemplating suicide.

At one point during this free-wheeling discussion, a women in the audience expressed how upset she was with the panel. She said she had expected this to be a positive experience, claiming, “All I'm hearing is negativity! Stop with all the man vs. woman stuff! ” I could see that several women agreed — and many more empathized — with her.

Then I looked at the faces of some of the men I know well — some alone, and some with their wives. Men who would gladly make gender discrimination disappear. It occurred to me how difficult this conversation must be for them. Yet, I could see that these men were fully present, along with us for the pain and discomfort, willing to listen, learn, and participate. And I could see that none of their wives felt the need to shield them, nor make excuses for them. These wives trusted – and expected – their husbands to handle it.

Painful Things are Hard to Discuss

Ask anyone who has ever been on the brink of divorce, only to turn the corner and go on to have a stronger marriage, what changed. You will almost certainly hear that they finally learned to discuss the hard things in a productive manner. Not necessarily a positive manner — it’s practically impossible to have a hard conversation without saying difficult things, and difficult can be scary and painful. But productive conversations lead to positive outcomes.

This isn't just a painful topic. It's a confusing topic. So much of what we know about being men and women, and communicating with one another, is indoctrinated, inculturated social behavior. Much of what we enjoy about hanging out with members of the opposite sex is the dynamic tension and and perspective that comes from being different from one another. But we aren't really equal, are we? When two groups come together to share experiences and work, and one group has inherently more power than the other, even seemingly innocuous statements and behaviors can be fraught with hidden meanings and interpretations. So there are sandtraps and land mines everywhere we turn.

It's also very difficult to understand privilege from the perspective of privilege.

One of the things it is hard for men to recognize is how insidious gender bias is. Most men would agree that groping and rape are wrong. But what about all the other behaviors that undermine women? Studies demonstrate that women are expected to answer phones, set up meetings, fill out paperwork, take meeting notes, fetch beverages, bring or order food for office events, and head thankless committees at more than twice the rate of their male peers working the same jobs. Women are still treated as a servant class within business.

Men are more likely to take calls from other men, more likely to return voice mails left by other men, and take chances on men when making decisions about investments. In other words, men have more access to power and money than women have. They are also the often unconscious beneficiaries of presumed excellence. According to Forbes magazine, “when symphony orchestras started using blind auditions by placing candidates behind screens and drapes, the number of women in the five leading orchestras in the US increased five-fold.”

Women Still Lack Representation in Jewelry Business

In the jewelry industry, it is difficult to identify the percentage of women in leadership, as so much of the industry is very private and family-owned. However, of nine major jewelry industry associations, women make up only 20.5% of overall board seats. This is a far cry from the 50.8% of US population represented by women, or the fact that – other than engagement rings (which, even if men buy them, women still heavily influence) – women make a whopping 78% of women’s jewelry purchases (and wear over 90% of all jewelry sold).

When women cannot penetrate places of power, and cannot benefit from the same presumed excellence that men experience, it damages our ability to improve our lives.

The solution to these problems isn’t A) try harder and B) be patient. We’ve been trying damn hard, and we’ve been more than patient. The solution is for men to make a point of bringing women into their circles of power. If every enlightened man would do that for just two women, how fast could things change? Educated, qualified, hard-working women are extremely easy to find. If you’re reading this and you don't (realize you) know some of these women, give me a call. I’ll be happy to make the introductions.

In addition to issues of access, presumed excellence, and equal treatment, many women on the panel and in the audience agreed that sexual harassment continues to be an issue in our industry. Jenny Luker and Brandee Dallow talked about the sexual harassment training initiative the Women's Jewelry Association (WJA) has put together with the Jeweler's Vigilance Committee (JVC) to educate jewelry  businesses. We need this training at all levels. If people won't stop harassing one another because it's the right thing to do, then at least let them be aware of the legal consequences. If you have never been through a sexual harassment training before, please avail yourself of it immediately. Apparently, character and ethics are not sufficient to solve this problem. So let's all get educated. The more of us who understand what sexual harassment is, the more likely we are to take the proper legal action when it occurs.

But what about all the behavior that is discriminating, yet doesn't meet the threshold of illegal?

The Difference Between Sexual Harassment and Hostile Work Environment

I am a big fan of public shaming. It doesn't happen often enough, because women are trained to politely laugh off inappropriate comments and behavior, and men are trained not to notice it (or to not go against other men). But imagine this: What if, every time one of us – male or female – heard someone else (male or female) make a gender discriminating comment, we said, “That’s not cool. Don’t say things like that.” Publicly, calmly, in-the-moment. If we consistently shamed the behavior, the intentional discriminators would become intimidated, and the obtuse would (hopefully) become educated.

It’s unrealistic to expect people to stand up for themselves in this way. If you’ve ever been at the receiving end of a personal attack, even a joking one, then you know it can take your breath away and leave you feeling unable to respond until after the moment has passed. We must step up and denounce discriminatory behavior for others.

Where's My Prize?

Later that evening and again the next day, several people asked why some are women so averse to discussing the topic of gender bias. I suspect that some have simply drunk the social Kool Aid. Issues of gender bias are currently all caught up in our divisive political discourse - though frankly, they shouldn't be identified with any political position at all. Some people don’t like to think deeply and resent being required to do so.

But some women are carrying around the pain and shame of their own victimization, and self-preservation demands that they keep it buried. My heart goes out to them. It takes a lot of resilience to discuss terrible things that have happened in the past. And now, I have another insight, which came from a woman in her 30s who was in attendance. As we left the building that evening, she asked me – her eyes filled with tears – “Where’s my prize for sucking it up all these years? Because that’s what I’ve had to do."

That, perhaps, is one of the hardest things to explain to gender-discrimination-deniers and the chauvinism-blind. How we suck it up. How we laugh it off. Not because we want to. Not because we think it’s funny. Not because we aren’t humiliated and angry and sick of it. Tired of it. All of it.

As Barbara Palumbo said, we suck it up because this may be the only jewelry company in town, and we can’t afford to spend 15 years in a different industry learning new skills and getting back to what we are earning now. We suck it up because we don’t want to move away from family and friends to do work we love, work that supports our families. We suck it up because the next place could be just as bad, so why make the sacrifice in the first place?

One of my male colleagues asked me the next day, “Is it any better? Is it getting better?” And I told him, yes, it is. If I compare now to the late 1970s, the statistics support (and I’ve seen) a steady, incremental, improvement. But better isn’t the same as fixed, and gender discrimination is still a real problem that holds us back and leaves women more vulnerable to violence and poverty than men will ever experience.

I do feel bad for some men right now. Men who would never use the phrase “like a girl,” or discount a woman. Men who are conscious that, even though they don’t discriminate, they bear the burden of being part of the solution. These men must take accountability for their gender to make things right. These men suffer the skepticism and distrust of this moment; distrust they haven’t done anything personally to earn.

I even have some compassion for the tin-eared men who say inflammatory things about women because they think they are being funny. Men who may be good husbands and fathers, but who struggle to understand their own bias in order to overcome it. This can be a painful, confusing process. I hope they are tough enough to stick with it and get through it.

But I could never, ever feel bad for men the way I feel bad for women. From the mouthy to the meek, young to old, optimistic to jaded — women have put up with men’s insistence on our second-class personhood while expecting us to keep their homes, extended families, and communities functioning for over a millennium. We’re so conditioned to this bullshit that we don’t recognize it when we do it to each other.

So we must have these hard conversations. We must vent, and listen, and strengthen one another. We may have to re-hash the topic many more times, because we’ve been holding it in for so long, and real change requires a lot of attention. These conversations will help us confess our pain, find our support networks, put on our armor, then get out there and change our world. One chaotic, painful, and exhilarating panel at a time.

##

Thank you to Lisa Koenigsberg, PhD, founder of Initiatives in Art and Culture, for making this panel happen at the 8^th Annual Gold Conference. Thanks also to Hedda Schupak, panel moderator, and panelists Wendy Brandes, Brandee Dallow, Jenny Luker, and Barbara Palumbo.

Data published in Tim Smedley’s "The Inclusive Workplace" found that teams that are representative of their target client are up to 158 percent more likely to understand their client. No wonder the diamond industry is in such a mess right now.

Gender Makeup of Jewelry Industry Boards

References

Bergstein, R. (2017, August 9). Female Self-Purchasing Isn't Just a Jewelry Industry Pipedream. Forbes.

Catalyst. (2018). Women's Representation on Fortune 500 Boards Inches Upwards. New York: Catalyst.

Joan C. Williams, R. D. (2014). What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know. New York and London: New York University Press.

M. E. Heiulman, J. J. (2005). Same Behavior, Different Consequences: Reactions to Men's and Women's Altruistic Citizenship Behavior. APA PsycNET, 10.

Pham, T. (2016, December 20). Think You're Not Biased Against Women at Work? Read This. Forbes.

Sheryl Sandberg, A. G. (2015, February 6). Madam CEO, Get Me a Coffee. New York Times.

Smedley, T. (2014, May 15). The Evidence is Growing - There Really is a Business Case for Diversity. Financial Times.

Tristan L. Botelho, M. A. (2017). Research: Objective Performance Metrics Are Not Enough to Overcome Gender Bias. Harvard Business Review.

Williams, J. C. (2014, April 16). Sticking Women with the Office Housework. Wall Street Journal, p. 1.

 Transcript not available yet.

• Individuality is in, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses is out.
• Environmental stewardship is in, unconscious consumerism is out.
• Social awareness is in, ostentatious wealth is out.
• Thoughtful acquisition is in, conspicuous consumption is out.

No wonder luxury jewelry is having a hard time.

Which isn’t news. We’ve been watching the closures, consolidations, and down-sizings of luxury jewelry stores for years now. But it’s still newsworthy, because luxury jewelry hasn’t carved a new, meaningful path yet, an approach that responds to these changing values which not only refuse to go away, but instead, continue to build momentum.

Hedda Schupak conducted a very important interview in the Centurion Newsletter this week with third-generation "überluxury jeweler” Jonathan Dorfman, who recently closed his ultra-luxury jewelry store in Boston. Everyone in the jewelry industry should read this interview (read it here). The article addresses the issues of changing consumer tastes, social awareness, and values. But it also points to an element that has been masking the true impact of the changes in the US consumer. Societies where ostentatious wealth and social competition still have some oxygen — China, Russia, and oil-rich Arabic nations — are now suffering economically. During the past ten years these populations have bolstered the luxury jewelry market while the American consumer was turning her attention to other things. Now, as this foreign buyer steps away from the cash-register, the dramatic changes in our domestic market are painfully obvious.

The Solution is Already Here

There is a jewelry offering that is highly individualistic, often pays greater attention to sustainability, and delivers an experience of art, hand-craft, and the type of preciousness that is handed from generation to generation. It is designer jewelry, art jewelry, jewelry made by master jewelers in their studios. For the conscientious consumer, the story of fine jewelry made by artisans who still get their hands dirty is a compelling story; a story of skill built over years, a story of craftspeople who opted out of the more typical salaried/hourly path to pursue a life of art and creativity, a story of artists who have a passion to create beautiful, wearable things.  Craftsmanship is in. Stories are in.

Retailers totally focused on selling pearl button earrings, 1.0 tcw white diamond studs, 3-stone rings, and 4Cs-driven engagement rings cannot engage the new consumer. Manufacturers focused on creating the same designs they always have, en masse in China, can’t either. And by new consumer I don’t mean just the Millennials. I also mean the women my age (50s – 60s) who have changed right along with our young adult children, who often look at life very differently than we did when we were first starting out.

The Jewelry is Out There

Of course, artisan/designer jewelry is not new. It’s out there; online, in boutiques, in museum stores and specialty stores . . . . and sometimes, in jewelry stores, though the list of jewelry stores that truly focus on artisan/designer jewelry is small. Everyone in the artisan/designer segment of the jewelry business shares the same list of about 200 stores that truly get how to sell artisan/designer jewelry. There are several thousand more jewelry stores offering personalization of jewelry through customization and/or original design, many of them using CAD. Still, as an industry we are doing a poor job of telling this story to consumers, so unless they stumble into the store or onto the website, they just don’t know how exciting, beautiful, meaningful, and relevant jewelry can be.

Let's Tell the Story of Artisan/Designer Jewelry

The dairy industry suffered badly after the low-fat movement began. Suddenly, dairy was out due to a change in consumer values. The industry realized that it had to respond with a broader message, and they did, with “Milk. It does a body good.”

As an industry, we should shift to talking about jewelry in terms of art. We should be talking about its hand-made aspects, and how exciting it is when we combine the newest technologies (CAD, scanning) with old-world techniques. We should be telling the stories of the people who make and design jewelry.

We must be investing in and committed to sustainability, protecting the environment and the communities dependent on mineral and metal extraction for a living. And then, when this aspect of our industry is authentic, we should be telling that story loud and clear.

Am I suggesting one of the jewelry industry associations or magazines should step up and do this for us? No. I think they can play a role, an important role, but I believe that all of us — retailers, manufacturers, diamantaires, designers, consultants, everyone — need to embrace where consumers are now, get on board, and start telling a different story.

Individuality is in.

Social awareness and environmental stewardship are in.

Thoughtful acquisition is in.

Craftsmanship is in.

Stories are in.

Artisan jewelry is in.

Let’s all get out there and stay relevant.

One of my favorite books is Art & Fear by David Bales and Ted Orland. I’ve found it to be an excellent reflection on the artist’s challenge.

In the book, the authors write about a Zen teaching that says when you start on a long journey, trees are trees, water is water, and mountains are mountains. After you have gone some distance, trees are no longer trees, water is no longer water, and mountains are no longer mountains. But after you have traveled a great distance trees are once again trees, water is once again water, and mountains are once again mountains.

Good designers notice things, and good design depends on this fact. They notice things about themselves, their methods, their materials, their customers, and their subject matter. At some point, every jeweler notices the relationship between their will and the will of the material. Before the moment of this realization, the relationship doesn’t exist. Afterwards, it’s impossible to imagine it not existing. And from that moment on every material talks back and forth with the designer’s will.

The jewelry designer’s work is the source for an incredibly large number of such relationships.The relationship of the arms to the bench, the relationship of the file to the fingers, the relationship of the pencil to the paper’s edge. As the designer’s skill develops, conceptual relationships increasingly define the shape and structure of the world they live in. In time, those relationships are the world. Distinctions between the designer, the work, and the world lessen, grow transparent, and finally disappear. In time, trees are once again trees.

This all has me wondering how I can support the designers around me (and there are many of them) for whom inter-connectedness must be an essential aspect of their ability to create. In the past I was a fan of the arguments regarding the difference between art and design. As time goes on, I guess I’m more interested in what differentiates good design from not-so-good design. And is not-so-good design actually design, or is it just “stuff?”

Gene Fowler (scriptwriter) once said “writing is easy: all you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.”

Design is sort of easy that way. It’s lovely when it floats into your head and realizes itself quickly, and every designer deserves a few of those throughout their lifetime – a carrot that keeps you going when the inspiration wears thin.

Truly good design comes only with mastery, patience, humor, and flexibility. It’s not done once the idea is complete, because the execution is an essential part of its success.The world is filled with a lot of things that no-one really needs (I guess that’s the “stuff”).But one thing we could all use more of is truly beautiful things that serve a purpose and inspire us.

So if the Zen teaching above can be applied to the jewelry design journey, then I guess “good” design is design that has been informed by breaking down each of the components – customer, purpose, process, materials, skill, aesthetic – into discreet elements, and then recombining them to achieve a result that would not have been possible had not each one of them been individually considered first.The result is most likely to be masterful. Of course, some might call that art.

Oracles speak in riddles, their messages intended for those curious and diligent enough to solve them. So it’s no wonder that an intellectual cottage industry has formed around deciphering Warren Buffett’s investment choices. I’m not immune.

I think Berkshire Hathaway’s investment choices in the third quarter have two important messages for the jewelry industry, apropos for this final marketing column of 2012.

Long Live Local Advertising

At a time when jewelry makers are hyper-conscious of competing with labor costs and product development from around the world, it’s interesting to consider that your marketing efforts should be more locally focused. Berkshire’s continued investment growth in local newspapers, entertainment, and Internet businesses supports this notion.

First, take a look at what Buffett has to say about his increasing investment position in strong local newspapers: “Berkshire will probably purchase more papers in the next few years. We will favor towns and cities with a strong sense of community, comparable to the 26 in which we will soon operate. If a citizenry cares little about its community, it will eventually care little about its newspaper. In a very general way, strong interest in community affairs varies inversely with population size and directly with the number of years a community’s population has been in residence. Therefore, we will focus on small and mid-sized papers in long-established communities.”

To Buffett, community cohesion offers an economic benefit.

Now consider that idea as it relates to social media, which is not a replacement for a well-thought-out marketing campaign. It doesn’t matter how many people “like” you on Facebook if that doesn’t turn into purchases of your product. So what should you be doing?

For designers and manufacturers, it is important to become a partner in marketing to communities in which your retailers’ stores reside. That may mean designing a co-op ad for the local newspaper (which is remarkably inexpensive), creating a Facebook contest that you share with a retailer and its local Facebook community, taking time to post not only on your own Facebook page but as a participant in your retail stores’ Facebook pages, and looking for all manner of ways to connect with the consumers in communities where your line is available. For retailers it means creating a strong store brand image and imbuing that image with a sense that you are part of the fabric of the community, and then building a community (yours) within the community. This can be done through events, outreach, and local advertising and promotion.

Keep Hi-Tech Accessible and Fun

Go stand in a line somewhere and see what people are doing. Almost without exception they are buried in smartphones, communicating, playing games, trying to figure out where to go and what to do next. Berkshire has increased investments in IBM (heavily focused on providing “content on every device”), DirecTV, Liberty Media (Discovery Channel, USA, QVC, Encore, STARZ), and Viacom. These investment positions indicate just how bullish Buffett is on the economic powerhouse of portable communications technology and its ability to combine and deliver entertainment and information to thumb-twitching consumers.

So how are you using portable communications technology for your business? Forget on-the-street text messaging: The jury is still out on that. But is your website automatically scalable on tablets and smartphones? Are you giving your client base (and their client base, where applicable) fun things to look at or do on their smartphones? These are the two most important things you must do right now to ensure your marketing efforts are relevant—and accessible—to today’s consumers.

The jewelry industry as a whole is way behind the curve in our use of technology, but the consumers aren’t sitting around worrying about that. They just spend their expendable luxury dollars on other fun things that catch their attention.

Follow these two suggestions and you should set yourself on the right track for 2013—and be in step with the Oracle of Omaha.

Published on InStoreMag.com, the letter expresses why it is important to pay jewelers what they are worth, and how the jewelry store can (should!) benefit from that worth by building brand value.

At a time when consumer interests are clearly shifting to products that provide customization and offer a sense of individual identity, jewelry stores with custom offerings stand an excellent chance of attracting a new clientele. At the same time, it's easier than ever for a talented artisan to strike out on his or her own, using the power of the internet for marketing and operational systems, and taking advantage of the affordability of tools and equipment once too expensive for start-ups.

Jewelry retail stores can embrace the jewelers and pay them well to bring them into their businesses, or they can compete against them in an increasingly disrupted jewelry market. Store owners who see the truth in this will surely benefit.

I encourage you to read Mr. Geller's letter. This is something that has needed to be said, and more important, needs to be heard.

 The transcript for this video is not availalbe yet.

I am of a split mind when it comes to  comparison between the jewelry industry and the fashion industry. On the one hand, jewelry is definitely part of a woman’s wardrobe and it plays an important role in her expression of her fashion sense (this is true for men too, but to a lesser extent). On the other hand, jewelry is more enduring than fashion, lasting far longer than for one or a few seasons.

Of course, there is the whole category of fashion jewelry, which is more trend oriented and typically at lower price points than fine jewelry.  Fashion jewelry should be getting a lot of our attention, as social and economic trends show that consumers (outside the 1%) are spending less money less often on luxury goods. In fact, fashion jewelry is where department stores, internet sellers, and boutiques are stealing the independent retail jeweler’s lunch.

These observations cause me to ask two questions:

1. Why do the independent retail jewelers not focus more attention on well-made, well-designed fashion jewelry?
2. Why does the jewelry industry not have more industry-sponsored consumer-focused promotion, similar to the fashion industry’s various fashion weeks and design councils?

I suspect the answer to the first question lies in two issues: First, the jewelry industry tends to be very inwardly focused, which has resulted in it becoming further and further detached from the consumer. Second, the independent retail jewelers are still sitting on far too much inventory - and much of the reason for that could be due to the first issue.  So let's talk about the fact that the industry is not sufficiently consumer-focused.

The Jewelry Industry Isn't Focused on the Consumer

To be fair, there is one organization in the industry that is focused on taking-it-to-the consumer: JA’s Jewelry Information Center (JIC). In my observation, that group, led by Amanda Gizzi, does way more with paltry resources than one would think possible, and does more to keep the industry’s interests on the radar of consumer editors than any other organization or even combination of organizations. Without JIC, the consumer press would form its perspectives of jewelry entirely outside the influence of the jewelry industry. Think about that for a moment. Think about how much sway the fashion industry itself has on fashion publications. Consumers form their opinions of fashion based on what the fashion industry tells them to think, through fashion shows, fashion editorial, and what shows up in retail store windows.

But with all due respect to what JIC can accomplish with its limited resources, it’s not enough. Why? One concern is that the industry sends out information to the consumer world in the form of editorial, but it doesn’t receive any feedback, or certainly not feedback that is consolidated enough to consider the implications. Another concern is that consumer-focused promotion is not addressed adequately (in fact, barely at all) at the manufacturer and industry levels.

We Must Learn from Other Industries

Fashion shows not only provide information to the marketplace, they deliver almost immediate feedback from the marketplace. Not only do the buyers for all the major department stores show up, but so does the press and a large contingent of influential consumers. At, during, and after each fashion show, there is immediate feedback. The fashions are dissected in the fashion press, the fashion press and business press publish both business and consumer reactions to the styles, and the buying behavior of the department store buyers (well-informed by constant and aggressive consumer research) is a direct line of feedback regarding what will be hot-or-not for that season.

This is also how the Consumer Electronics Shows work for the gadgets industry, how Cannes and Sundance work for the film industry, and how the Tokyo Motor Show and the North American International Auto Show work for the automobile industry.

Of course, these industries are significantly larger in dollars than the jewelry industry.*

But jewelry requires more early and ongoing feedback from consumers than other relatively sized industries such as cosmetics or footwear, where lower price points make experimentation at retail more palatable and in which sports stars, movie stars, and the fashion industry have significant influence. Consolidation of retail in footwear and cosmetics means that individual retail companies have larger advertising and promotion budgets, and it’s noteworthy that the manufacturers of those products speak directly to the consumer in major, ongoing promotional campaigns.

Perhaps a better comparison of a similar-sized industry would be the leisure products industry, which sells high-priced goods like RVs, camping equipment, boats, and 4-wheelers. Through publications aimed at enthusiasts and regional sporting goods shows, the leisure products industry introduces consumers to new features and styles. This gets consumers excited about heading out to retail to buy new toys. Large retailers like Cabelas may have significant advertising budgets, but smaller retailers also benefit from the shows and the promotional support of manufacturers.

What got me thinking about this? An article in today’s Luxury Daily that talks about how the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) is looking for ways to improve New York’s Fashion Week. According to Steven Kolb, president and CEO of CFDA, “Fashion Week has evolved over the years with the influence of technology, but the format and function of fashion week have stayed the same.” CFDA has commissioned a study to discover how they can “use technology to its fullest advantage, and how designers can best maximize their resources to engage the customer.”

I think the jewelry industry should take this advice to heart as well. A tremendous amount of energy has gone into demanding that DeBeers support the industry (again) with a(nother) consumer advertising campaign, and DeBeers has responded with a half-hearted re-do of its former A Diamond is Forever message. Not only do I suspect this message’s time has come and gone, I also believe that our expectation that DeBeers bail out the industry is misplaced.

Closed Systems Do Not Evolve

The jewelry industry has become a closed system. The majority of its energy is focused on generating income within the industry, with little attention paid to the consumers we require to keep us in business. What is the answer? I’m not exactly sure, though I have some ideas. But here’s what I do know: As an industry, we must talk about this problem. It’s bigger than sustainability, it’s bigger than sourcing, it’s bigger than low-cost manufacturing from other countries, or Blue Nile or Sam’s Club or Costco. In fact, if the industry doesn’t resolve this major disconnect between the consumer and those of us who make and sell jewelry, we could solve all those other problems and still become entirely irrelevant in the next 10 years.

Let’s discuss.

* (US Film Industry: $679 billion; US Automotive Industry: $524 billion; US Fashion Industry: $225 billion; US Consumer Electronics Industry: $208 billion; US Jewelry Industry: $63.3 billion)

Everyone wants to know:

• What is the future of retail?
• Who will tell us what it looks like?
• What do consumers really want?
• How do we remain relevant?

These are urgent questions. How we get products to consumers has changed dramatically and forever, and a big chunk of our economy hinges on how well we respond to the changes. I think we can all agree that a retail future consisting entirely of Amazon, Walmart, and eBay wouldn’t be healthy.

In the meantime, our supply chain structures are wobbling. In the blink of an eye, consumers saw and embraced the opportunity to acquire what they want, when they want it, from the comfort of their own home, in their cubicle, or while watching the kids play soccer. The industry has primarily tried to address the problem with lower prices and price competition (“Beat the Internet” anyone?), but all that has accomplished is to strip economic value out of the supply chain.

The stress of technology-driven business change is so intense, that perhaps we don’t realize that other people in other times have gone through the same issues. Different technologies, but the stakes were surely the same to them, as were the challenges.

I can almost imagine how it felt to be alive when Guttenberg’s printing press came online. Printing presses democratized knowledge and changed the way we learn, educate, write, and think. The parallels to the way computers have changed our world are very strong, even though this happened nearly 600 years ago. Guttenberg’s invention came in the middle of the Renaissance, a time most people think of as being the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. But we also know that the Renaissance was a time of deep nostalgia for the past, accompanied by a feeling of ennui about the future and the advances of humanity. Sound familiar?

Beyond the printing press, the Renaissance was a time of absorbing new knowledge – primarily mathematics (until then the purview of Arabic peoples). Mathematics and logic transformed thought and behavior, much like modern computing has changed thought and behavior (and without which, modern computing could not have happened). The philosophy of humanism was developed during this time, as people shifted from thinking merely about survival to what it meant to live well. There was an explosion of new techniques in architecture and art, and writing was completely transformed. While some bemoaned the death of poetry, others saw brand new figurative horizons opening before them. Again, sound familiar?

Renaissance history is a favorite study of mine, but it’s also an appropriate analogy for today. For one thing, it reminds us that history has been fraught with dramatic changes, and that humanity continues to plow forward; learning, prospering, and evolving (often despite ourselves). But another comparison is also apt: At its heart, the Renaissance was a period of rich and productive collaboration between thinkers of every discipline. Artists, mathematicians, philosophers, writers, and scientists shared ideas across disciplines, which led to an explosion of human knowledge. Each person, immersed in his individual discipline, was unable to see the bigger picture. The potential for progress emerged as they threw their ideas and questions and insights into the middle of the table and put them up for discovery and debate.

Today we are confronted with multiple challenges to business-as-usual. Technology hasn’t just changed the way we shop; it’s changed the way we think, learn, write, communicate, and socialize. Just as the introduction of math disrupted and changed all the other disciplines 600 years ago, technology has done the same for us (not to us) today. And I believe the way to address that change is to embrace it – with heaping helpings of collaboration.

Just last week, a retailer said to me, “You’re saying that marketing today requires extensive knowledge of how to do online marketing. I’m already too busy. How can I learn to do all this too?”

To which I said, “You’re asking the wrong question. Don’t ask ‘how do I learn to do all this too?’  Ask, ‘how do I find the right people to collaborate with?’”

Small business owners fence themselves in with the idea that they must do everything themselves. Instead, we should be seeking every possible collaboration. Collaboration allows us to focus on what we’re good at, while tapping into what others are good at. In the process, we all learn, and that learning happens more gracefully because it’s not overshadowed by the intense pressure of time and expense (or risk).

In some respects, this is already occurring. Significant numbers of workers have shifted from being employees to being contractors – in essence, providing their collaboration for a fee to companies who need their talents. The ubiquitous cloud is another form of mass collaboration; instead of companies housing and managing their own servers and software, they contract for portions of servers and subscriptions to software, leaving it to the service companies to manage their own software, hardware, and the constant advances of technology.

How can the jewelry industry embrace more collaboration? One obvious way is to create more marketing and selling synergies between individuals, organizations, and parts of the supply chain. The emergence of omni-channel strategies will further disrupt the notion of the traditional supply chain, forcing our current distribution networks to innovate or fail.

The retail store as we know it is almost entirely a construct of the 20th Century. Something else will be next. The word Renaissance literally means rebirth. The outstanding contribution of the Renaissance was the leap forward in human understanding, the mechanism was collaboration. It’s time for our own Renaissance, and I think the nexus, this time, will be rooted in collaboration as well.

Part II of this article: Collaborations to Watch

We discuss both Fairtrade and Fairmined in relation to jewelry industry supply chain transparency, and it’s no wonder that people get confused by the two.

First, don’t think they’re both part of the same thing! At one time they did have a partnership, but after that they decided to pursue their “metals” goals separately. The major difference is that Fairtrade covers a broad range of goods – well beyond metals and mining. In fact, entire communities in Europe call themselves “Fairtrade Communities,” and work hard to only provide goods that are certified as Fairtrade. Fairmined is only concerned with mining. On the other hand, Fairmined has more mines signed up, since they have been in the metals business much longer than Fairtrade. Both are working hard to sign up new members, though the process is intensive and takes a long time to complete.

Second, don’t confuse “Fair Trade” with “Fairtrade.” The Fairtrade label is a standard. Fair Trade - with a space - is the concept of fair trade, but not a specific standard or program.

Finally – get involved. When you buy your metals through a Fairmined or Fairtrade initiative, you become part of the social standard, which means your metal supply chain is audited. This is a good thing. Each of us must take a position in the supply chain as part of the sustainability movement. One of these two standards for metals is a great place to start!

So here is a quick comparison of these two different approaches to supply chain transparency and responsible behavior:

When Will We Start Treating Lab-Grown Diamonds Like a Product Instead of Like an Intruder?

The jewelry industry continues to take polarized positions on lab-grown. It seems like every time we've grown past this debate, another social media group comes to virtual blows over the topic. I'm not surprised - it was the same conversation when Chatham first started offering lab-grown emeralds and rubies. But it's not useful. Not to us, not to our customers.

You don't see grocery stories saying, "we won't carry organic/gluten-free/paleo/pick-a-theme" groceries because they interfere with our other grocery sales. They evaluate consumer interest and potential demand, and offer choices. Fashion has done this with alternative fabrics. Car companies had a harder time doing it with alternative fuels, but that's largely because of the expense of tooling up to produce new equipment coupled with wanting government assistance to do so.

When it comes to lab-grown diamonds, we get all tied up in our shoestrings with our own preferences, fears, and perceptions, and in the process lose sight of the customers.

In the most recent social media post and following thread, I saw all the same black-or-white arguments. Diamond mining concerns are doing great! So much change! Mined diamonds are terrible, so much abuse. Lab-grown diamonds are not ecologically friendly - so much electricity! Lab-grown diamond producers are abusive, they're all in (pick a country). None of these tropes serve the industry, our businesses, or our customers. But if we're going to have honest conversations and learn from each other, we need to get comfortable with shades of gray - because that's all there are right now.

Shades of Gray Shadow Both Mined and Lab-Grown
The social and ecological issues are very challenging to sort. Tens of millions of artisanal miners around the world rely on mining to feed their families. Anything we do in the mining sector must be done not only with regard for their health and safety while mining — but also with regard to their health if they cannot mine. In that regard, the pandemic is causing horrific food insecurity around the world.

Want to help support artisanal miners suffering from food security caused by the pandemic?

On the other hand, diamonds do not "do good" yet. Not by a long shot. They are "doing better," and better is a good direction to go in. So we must keep applying pressure on the mined diamond front.

But let's never demean progress. The natural diamond sector was pretty bad for a long time, they've made progress, and if we treat progress as an all-or-nothing proposition, it tends to stop. We don't want that.

So, are lab-grown diamonds a more or less ethical solution? Like natural diamonds, it all depends. If you're talking about factories abusing their labor, then no. But just because a factory is in China doesn't mean it's abusive. I spend a lot of time in manufacturing facilities around the world, and I've seen rotten treatment of employees everywhere — including in the United States — and excellent treatment of employees everywhere — including in China.

Are lab-grown diamonds more or less ecologically sound? Again, it depends. I know of growers working to use the most responsible power generation possible, and some that don't care about that at all. Until lab-grown producers start disclosing some of those details, it's just impossible to know.

But, if you have a customer who has a really hard time with the concept of digging and blowing holes in the earth, then lab-grown may be the flavor of "responsible" she's looking for. I don't agree with making green statements that can't be validated, but I'm uncomfortable with blanket statements that lab-grown producers are all disruptable too.

Which Holds Its Value Better (Hint: It's a Red Herring)

Do lab-grown diamonds hold their value for the future? That's a laugh — a discussion we shouldn't even be having. Not because lab-grown will or won't hold their value for the future — nobody knows that yet! It's a laugh, because mined diamonds don't hold their value. We should never treat diamonds of any sort as if they are a financial instrument. A very small number of collectors in the ultra-rare mined color diamond sector do use diamonds as a financial investment, but that's it. We should never make any promises or inferences to customers about the future value of a diamond.

Should you Sell Lab-Grown Diamonds?

So - should you or should you not sell lab-grown? Well, you could base that on your own preferences, fears, and biases, but I'll suggest that's a terrible business approach. You should make every business decision based on your businesses core values (which are different than biases), and on the desires and interests of your customers. It won't be the same answer for everyone, nor should it be. If analyze this question with intellectual rigor, self-awareness, and deep interest in your customers, you'll have the right answer - and nobody else can tell you otherwise.

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