Manufacturers, Vendors and Designers (July-August 2007)

Tiffany is the leading vendor and manufacturer in terms of created and used newsbreaks. The Company has recently declared opening its third boutique in Nago, Japan in late autumn. On opening that boutique, the number of Tiffany & Co. stores in Japan will achieve 54. According to the Company, the boutique will house a wide range of collections from Tiffany’s exclusive designers – Elsa Peretti, Paloma Picasso, Jean Schlumberger and Frank Gehry; wedding jewellery; fashionable jewellery made of gold and 925 sterling silver; watches and a wide range of gifts.

Japan seems to be the only country where Tiffany has to make serious concessions in store decoration to bring them into harmony with the traditional local mentality. Design of most of its boutiques is as a rule to remind the head store of the Company in New York. In this case, however, customers will reportedly enter the store through a stone arc decorated with honey onyx. The main features of the interior will be purple tone decoration, rice wallpapers and customised furniture in the traditional Japanese style. Reports of trading companies made during the period in question enable us to identify different approaches to placement of points of sale and dealing with customers. According to a correspondent of nationaljewelernetwork.com, as promotion of brands and exclusive jewelleries has become very important, there is a noticeable trend towards co-operation with manufacturers in the retail business for the purpose of “inserting” their personal little shops in the interior of jewellery stores. Those shops offer a wide range of products from specific designers and their showcases, wall coating and lighting are designed so as to reflect the brand concept in the best possible way. This idea used watch brands as long as ten years ago. Now, big time designers follow their example. That company is not the only one armed with such a concept. Demand for such design solution in Gilbert Displays, which assists retailers and manufacturers in establishment of “stores in stores”, increased by 20 % last year.

Designer Judith Ripka has now such built-in boutique in a store in New Jersey and another in Dubai, but she intends to open ten stores more in the nearest future. Montblanc has over forty such built-in boutiques in jewellery stores, including Zadok Jewellers in Houston, Chong Hing in Los Angeless and William Barthman Jewellers in New York.

A number of practical advices is offered:

Co-operate with designers to whom you trust and who are as close as possible to your customers.

Too many built-in boutiques may turn the store in a kind of a fair and deter buyers from the store in general.

Prepare your personnel for answering questions of purchasers who will note “small shops” and want to know more about them.

Fortunoff jewellery store will be quite different. It will be opened in New York on the Fifth Avenue late autumn. It is proposed to place goods there by goods classes rather than by names of designers. Collections of jewelleries and luxury watches will be on display on the second floor. The ground floor will house a diamond boutique with engagement rings, wedding rings and other jewelleries. The top floor will house children’s boutique (Baby Fortunoff boutique) selling adornments and gifts for children.

Barteluce Architects & Associates known for its co-operation with Gucci, Cartier and Fendi developed the store interior concept. Robbins Bros. opening three new stores in Big Chicago constructs its stores in accordance with a typical project. The Company store is always situated in a single construction building, which must symbolise the “terminal point” for a consumer in his search for goods flow. An important component of the store interior will be its spacious halls with big TV displays on its walls. Part of the trading strategy of the Company is additional services offered to customers. For instance, there is the Perfect Proposal Programme. The Company employees in may assist a customer buying an engagement ring developing and implementing script for that event: fireworks during a baseball match and other similar American-style effects.

For companies making and selling engagement rings, it is now common to make customised rings. On the Company’s website, any customer may “construct” a ring model to his liking and within his pocket. Such ring will be made for him. This is what American The Jewelry Exchange (Goldenwest Diamond Corporation) does. It made a section on its site - Create Your Own Ring™.

London jewellery designer Andrew English creates wedding rings with partner’s fingerprints engraved on them. Every set is made to order based on desires of customers.

Abazias Diamonds, an online company, places a special video on its website – Engagement Ring Casting – to destroy a common misconception that Abazias Diamonds' engagement rings are stamped out in mass production. The video commercial demonstrates the work of a silversmith applying the ancient technique of ring making, hand-made design elements and manufacturing process details. According to the Company, innovations in its website design and customers relations, including possibility to select the ring design contributed to demand growth.

From the middle of July until early August, a number of interesting collections of jewelleries and watches were launched.

Montblanc exhibited significant activity in the American market. Its speciality is writing instruments. The Company began sales of its new jewellery collection in its boutique in San Francisco. Soon, sale of jewelleries with diamonds will start there. Such jewelleries are already sold in France. When organising its jewellery trade, the Company proceeds from the fact that its customer is first of all a woman who comes to its store for a writing instrument for her husband and occasionally may want to buy something for herself. The brand reportedly intends to launch a number of products in the USA in the nearest months. Rogers and Cowan marketing agency will arrange interaction between the Company and mass media, organise representative relations and event management.  Among the Company products, mass media mention two series of commemorative pens, a tribute to actress and singer Marlene Dietrich – Marlene Dietrich Special Edition and Marlene Dietrich 1901 Commemoration Edition. It is made of 925 sterling silver and decorated with diamonds totalling 0.19 carats. That project is a part of the Company’s programme intended to pay tribute to persons representing history of culture. In 2005, Montblanc already made a pen dedicated to the hundredth jubilee of Greta Garbo.

“No peace for the wicked”, mocks Jewelery.com portal quoting the Bible. Paris Hilton got liberty a month ago and is now working again. The model/singer/heir and corrected reveller has just been selected the face of a new collection by Italian jewellery company Damiani. Bliss, its new collection, is for those who look for something “younger”. Silvia Damiani, Vice President and Director of Style of the Company, says that Paris is the perfect choice for their advertising campaign.

The portal reminds that Hilton joined the growing list of celebrities who have rendered their support to Damiani. Brad Pitt (co-author of D Side collection), Isabella Rossellini, Nastassja Kinski, Mila Jovovic, Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Sophia Loren and Sharon Stone – all of them were faces of Damiani. Gold, stainless steel, wood and diamonds will be materials for the collection. Prices will range from 60 to 300 dollars.

Tori Spelling, an actress famous for teenage serial Beverly Hills 90210, developed a collection of adornments, the sale of which began on 24 July on HSN TV channel in the framework of celebrating the 30^th anniversary of that trading company. Collection includes 12 varieties of adornments made of a “golden” metal with semiprecious stones. Prices range from 29 to 129 dollars.

Fissler, a German kitchenware manufacturer, made a saucepan with gold handles studded with two hundred diamonds. According to israelidiamond.co.il, Harrods sells it for £ 100,000. Fissler is hoping it will be included in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's most precious pot. In addition to that saucepan, one may purchase a silver set of 144 items studded with 4,000 diamonds in the aggregate. It will cost you £ 200,000. “Bon appetite!”, the Internet Portal wishes.

The world’s oldest diamond seller Backes and Strauss in partnership with well-known London stores Asprey & Harrods put on the market three watch collections designed in the London Architecture style of the Regency period (Napoleonic wars period). Watches of Berkeley, Piccadilly and Regent collections are made of 18 carat white or pink gold.

Quixotic Watch, a company, which will make and sell luxury watches, enters the American market. The Company owners are lawyer Kit Gallaher, watchmaker Terry Allison and actor Steven Seagull.

15 % of proceeds from sales of the hand-made jewellery collection of Crysobel Jewelry will be donated to restoration of Sri Lanka after the tsunami of 2004. Designer Gaitri Chandra Raj used jewels of her motherland – Sri Lanka – in that collection. The collection consists of jewelleries made of 18-carat gold with sapphires, diamonds and corals.

“Destiny of Titanic continues to tick”, states Jewelry.Com. Metal of the unfortunate ship was mixed with steel to produce a line of watches with prices from 9 to 150 k. dollars. Swiss jeweller Romain Jerome created 2,012 Titanic-DNA watches in commemoration of the hundredth anniversary of the ship loss. Coal which was to have been burned in the Titanic's furnaces has been mixed with ceramics to create black dials for the watches. The website summarises that if you think that 150,000 dollars for a steel watch is too much for you, do not worry because you will get diamonds over that ticking piece of history.

Actress Debra Messing hosted the night dedicated to the Agas and Tamar (Peer and Date) jewellery collection. The Israeli collection is made of gold, precious and semiprecious stones and pieces of antique coins. It will be sold in the Israeli boutique of designer Donna Karan. Eli Halili, the leader of the creative team of the collection authors, notes that the collection combines “elements of an ancient city and modern design”.

GIA holds the traditional jewellery design contest, which is sponsored by London diamond brokers H. Goldie & Co. Ltd. and Goldie International Ltd., 2 or 3 times a year.

This July saw Jennifer Lam win it with her jewellery set of a pendant and ear-rings of 18-carat yellow gold studded with small diamonds of 0.01 to 0.15 carats. Lam won £ 1 thousand and a paid trip to BaselWorld European Jewellery Fair.

American Manak Couture launches a number of collections reflecting the tendency of interest in rose cut stones and colour diamonds. Some jewelleries will be made in the traditional Indian style, which is the corporate signature of the company’s collections. There are colour stones in the design of adornments. Such stones are the key components of reputation of Manak Couture products.

Author of the most scandalous jewellery of this year, artist Damian Hirst, allegedly became the richest modern living British artist after the exhibition, at which his diamond skull was displayed. Meanwhile, the skull itself has not been sold yet. The English cultural community is afraid that the work may be sold to an individual rather than a gallery and that it may leave the country. The skull has already attracted attention of collectors from Middle East, Russia and USA. George Michael, a famous British pop singer, asked its price previously.
Click on the following link to see the picture story of making the diamond skull: http://www.supertouchblog.com/2007/07/21/techniquethe-making-of-damien-hirsts-diamond-skull/

The technique applied by Damian Hirst makes him close to famous Italian designer Fawaz Gruosi, to whom the Financial Times dedicated an article in July. One of his proprietary approaches is the thing described by the French word "pave” (precious stone mosaic). Gruosi became popular for his work with black diamonds cut by him. “Black diamonds by Gruosi were a great success”, the newspapers states. With only one store in 1993, his company De Grisogno now has 14 boutiques in different parts of the world. His company is going to open a store in Tokyo this autumn. It is interesting that his spouse, Caroline Gruosi-Scheufele is the Vice President of Chopard.

Like other companies making luxury goods, De Grisogno cares about fashion and the way its jewelleries will suit jeans. Appearance of a new collection of handbags will add headache to rich husbands this autumn. However, there is a pleasant surprise for them too: De Grisogno/Ericsson mobile telephone studded with black diamonds for £ 30,000.
Rough&Polished