Marriage minded men and the women they love, the time has come. Tiffany & Co.’s first iPhone application, The Tiffany & Co. Engagement Ring Finder, will be available on iTunes June 14 and is sure to spawn a new crop of tech-savvy, diamond ring, wedding obsessed women, www.wwd.com writes. Billed as especially useful for men, this new app makes it easy to research, browse (to scale in six different carat sizes) and save a virtual collection of your favorite engagement rings whether you’re at a bar with the bros, riding the Jitney or just enjoying Sunday brunch with the future in-laws.
The application has five sections, which are Find Your Perfect Engagement Ring, Your Saved Rings, Find the Correct Ring Size, The Tiffany Difference and Expert Consultation. There’s also the option of sharing the engagement ring you plan to purchase for your better half — if you’re a dude — or that you must have — if you’re a chick — with your friends and loved ones through your preferred social medium (and if sharing the ring of your dreams on your Facebook wall and with your fellow tweeps isn’t your style, there’s always the option of using old-fashioned email).
One can go dizzy browsing through the 44 different styles according to shape, setting, metal or design, which range from the classic 6-prong “Tiffany Setting” to princess, emerald and cushion cut rings with either diamond bands, side stones or even pave detailing. But it’s the custom ring sizer that takes personalization the next level. It puts an end to the age-old problem of men being clueless when it comes to ring size because the application literally allows you to take the ring off your finger (or snatch one of your girlfriend’s rings from her dresser) and place it right on to the screen to get an accurate ring size. Unfortunately, you’ll actually have to step foot inside a Tiffany & Co. to purchase an engagement ring.
Last May the American and to a lesser extent British jewelry industry succumbed to a real fuss around the ultra-fashionable gadget, iPad. Companies were competing to offer new ideas about how to use it to their benefit.
It is quite natural that jewelers who had already made headgear graced with diamonds as well as diamond footballs and golden notebooks were immediately dawned with the thought that this gadget may be covered with gold and studded with diamonds. However, we know that first reports about diamond iPads on sale were false - Mervis Diamond Importers had just put up a yarn to attract attention. But the bug was caught and the affair appeared happily completed in Britain. According to www.israelidiamond.co.il, a limited edition of just 10 iPads were designed and crafted by Katherine Hughes and made of solid gold and encrusted with 25.5 carats of diamonds, at a cost of £129,995 (US$187,000) each.
According to www.diamonds.net, American jeweler Hearts on Fire expects to elevate the brand’s experience at the retail level by arming their partners with iPads to use at point of sale. By utilizing the iPad, Hearts on Fire is digitally extending the retailers’ case for consumers by providing a window into the brand's entire inventory. Training for the brand’s presentation will now incorporate the company's web application and the use of iPads at Hearts on Fire University.
Hearts on Fire unveiled the iPad tool at Couture Las Vegas and will begin deploying globally into their retail partners stores by July.
“We had an online tool for our retailers in development, but when the iPad was released in April, we realized it provided the ideal platform for this digital content," said Ed LaPlante, vice president of information technology at Hearts on Fire.
This concept was brought to its logical completion by Jewelry brand Tacori. National Jeweler said the company was doing away with its print catalogs to unveil the all-new "Tacori Virtual Catalog" at the Las Vegas jewelry shows.
Tacori will launch the virtual catalog exclusively on the iPad, Apple's latest buzz-generating super-gadget. On top of that, according to National Jeweler, during the Luxury/JCK show, the first 100 authorized Tacori retailers who made an appointment to see the brand were given the chance to walk away with the Apple iPad and Tacori Virtual Catalog, with no buy-in required.
While the Tacori Virtual Catalog functionality is primarily aimed at retailers, the brand said that development of future iPad applications are already in the works for fall of 2010 and that the new features will expand interactivity options for consumers.
Finally, in mid-April, bridal manufacturer Imagine Designs announced that it would hand out free Apple iPads to retailers who make an appointment in Las Vegas and purchase $5,000 worth of its jewelry.
The brand said in a media release that its Web site, ImagineBridal.com, will now be staged on a 100 percent Web-based business-to-business ordering platform that allows retailers to place their orders, re-orders and special orders right from their iPads or other computing systems.
