How New Technology is Transforming Jewelry Industry

A 3D printing technology will be a "shape changer" for the jewellery industry, according to the leading UK supplier of precious metals to the trade.

The technology, called laser sintering, is being employed by Cookson Precious Metals to produce jewellery from computer designs.

Stella Leyton, chief executive of the firm, said as a result, high-street shoppers could expect to see more personalised jewellery offered by retailers.

But others say the approach is relatively expensive, and the pieces produced still require significant work before sale.

Industrial heritage

Inside the highly secure Cookson factory in Birmingham's jewellery quarter many machines hark back to the firm's long heritage.

Large mechanical rollers shape pool-cue sized rods of silver, there's the sound of metal being worked, and the smell of gas in the air.

Laser sintering is different. The machine that Cookson currently use looks like a large piece of office equipment and sounds like a photocopier.

Behind a tinted glass panel 18-carat gold powder, laid down by a robot arm, sparkles as a laser fuses the metal into complex three-dimensional shapes, layer by layer.

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Time Is Money: Wealthy Drop Dollars Online

Google Study Finds Millionaires Prefer Efficiency of Web Shopping to Bricks-and-Mortar Stores for Luxury Purchases

The internet is a shopping destination of choice for the rich -- and the one most preferred by the very rich, according to a study from Google. The study, which looked at wealthy shoppers ages 25 to 64, bucks the conventional wisdom that luxury shoppers prefer the in-store experience. It finds that while both segments shop online, millionaires vastly prefer online shopping to in-store and are much more likely to use the internet than their not-quite-as-wealthy brethren.

In all, 95% of the 263 millionaires surveyed made their last luxury purchase online. Read More >>>

Source: Ad Age

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Vodka Filtered by Diamonds

Creators of the Diamond Standard Vodka have patented a filtration system that utilizes over 600 cut diamonds of up to one carat in size. The Diamond Filtration system took three years to complete.

“Our innovative process creates vodka with the silkiest and most subtle of palettes…Its yield is 750 carats of liquid elegance since each and every drop has been individually kissed by diamonds,” the company says on its website.

The vodka is sold in a perfume-grade designer bottle, which comes with a 25 millimeter Swarovski crystal, and is available at various locations throughout Massachusetts in the U.S.


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GIA Offers Graduate Gemologist Diploma Scholarships

The GIA is inviting prospective students to apply for a scholarship for the 2009 GIA courses and program. More than 65 scholarships are available at GIA with a collective value of $372,308.

The GIA said the scholarships include $227,778 allotted to the scholarship fund by the GIA’s Board of Governors from interest earned through GIA’s permanently invested Endowment Fund.

The Institute’s Board has apportioned $98,500 of the total amount for international scholarships, which are available to anyone who is not a citizen or permanent resident of the U.S.

According to Matthew G. Stuller, A GIA board governor and head of its Endowment Committee, “In addition to last year’s expansion to London and India, we are offering a new opportunity to earn a Graduate Gemologist diploma on campus at GIA Thailand for the 2009 school year.”

Applications for scholarships from prospective students will be accepted through October 15.

Source : IDEX


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World's Most Desirable Luxury Brands

Ask a friend what he would buy if he had a bigger bank account and he might rattle off a list that includes a limited-edition sports car, a round-the-world trip or a million-dollar beachfront home.

Goods by Gucci, however, top the lists of luxury brand lovers. That's according to an online survey conducted late last year by The Nielsen Company, a market research firm. It asked 25,000 consumers in 48 countries which luxury brand they would buy if money were no object. Besides Gucci respondents chose Chanel, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior.

It's easy to see why Gucci reigns. Worldwide sales, though recently tapered, have jumped since Mark Lee became president of the company in 2004, then CEO the following year. In 2007, sales increased 11%; that's on top of a 17% increase in 2006 and a rise of 18.4% in 2005. Gucci is a part of the Gucci Group, which has a number of fashion brands in its portfolio, including Yves Saint Laurentand Sergio Rossi. PPR, a French holding company publicly traded on the Euronext exchange in Paris, owns the Gucci Group.

Complete List: World's Most Desirable Luxury Brands

"Gucci manages to offer high fashion and very commercial items," That red and green stripe is some of the most iconic luxury branding ever created, and people want a piece of it."

Behind The Brands

Born as a leather goods company, Gucci is now most well known for its logo-ed handbags. When the company opened a new 46,000-square-foot store, the largest of its 233 worldwide, on the ground level of the Trump Tower on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue last month, they also launched a "Gucci Loves New York" handbag collection which sold out within two days of opening. Proceeds from the bags went to Playground Partners Central Park Improvement Program.

Chanel and Calvin Klein tied for second. The privately held Chanel, famous for the little black dress, tweed suit and quilted handbag, was founded by Coco Chanel in 1909 and is currently helmed by Karl Lagerfeld. It stays relevant thanks to a slew of consistently classic yet stylish products. The label's current must-haves include a quilted leather envelope clutch and a sleeveless embroidered cashmere dress with pink trim; its current pitch woman is Keira Knightley.

Calvin Klein's global retail sales surged to $4.5 billion in 2006--that's an increase of 50% since Phillips Van Heusen acquired the company in 2003. It manages such reach thanks to its three labels: Calvin Klein Collection (designer apparel and accessories), ck Calvin Klein, (bridge apparel and accessories) and Calvin Klein (better apparel and accessories). Top looks for spring include slim trousers cut on the bias for men and a high-waisted white skirt suit for women.

Shopper Stats

When looking at who actually buys designer brands today, the United Arab Emirates and Hong Kong come out on top. Almost one-third of survey respondents living in these areas claimed to buy the brand with the iconic interlocking-G logo. Only 7% of North American shoppers polled buy Gucci products.

While designer goods are certainly desirable in emerging markets, North America was the least interested in luxury brands, with 35% of respondents claiming they would not be tempted to buy even if money was not an issue. When quality comes into play, 34% of respondents in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America believe designer goods have the highest quality vs. non-designer; that figure falls to 20% for both Europe and North America.

What would you buy if money were no object? Weigh in..
"In emerging markets such as Latin America and the Asian Pacific, designer brands are probably more of a proclamation," says David Boyd, vice president of Nielsen Global Research, "a way to set themselves apart or feel that they've arrived as part of the new economy."

Regional differences also emerge over counterfeit goods peddled at market stalls globally. Over a quarter of North Americans questioned believe that fakes are just as good as the real thing, but in Asia, where most of the fakes are produced, consumers hold them in low regard, with only 8% putting them on par with the genuine article.

"People in Asia can pick out a fake bag like no one I've seen," says Boyd, "But in the U.S., people are less aware and less concerned, because in the U.S. luxury brands are considered more mainstream..

Top 1o Luxury Brands:

1st - Gucci

Guccio Gucci founded the House of Gucci as a saddlery shop in Florence in 1906. A century later, the company's horse bit and stirrup motif is an enduring symbol of luxury. He started out selling leather bags to horsemen in the 1920s and progressed to luxury luggage as his clients graduated from equine transportation to horseless carriages. Today, with Frida Giannini at the creative helm, handbags with the interlocking double-G logo are among the company's biggest money makers.

2nd - Channel tied up with Calvin Klein

Chanel is one of today's best-known fashion brands, and has been practically since it was founded by Coco (Gabrielle) Chanel in 1909. Coco Chanel established herself as the 20th century's single most important arbiter of fashion by offering women no-nonsense, elegant, relaxed and functional clothes. Today, the tweed Chanel suit with a nipped-at-the-waist cardigan jacket remains one of the most popular--and most copied--fashion staples. In 1983, Karl Lagerfeld reinvigorated the brand with a dose of sexiness. He's been designing the collection ever since.

Calvin Klein

In 1968, Calvin Klein and an investor started the company as Calvin Klein Limited with a small line of men and women's coats. In the '70s, Klein won two Coty Awards for his minimalist styles, and by the middle of the decade he had created a designer-jeans craze by putting his name on each pair's back pocket. Advertisements featured a 15-year-old Brooke Shields who famously said, "Nothing comes between me and my Calvins." In 2003 Phillips Van Heusen acquired the brand, and today there are three tiers within the collection ranging from high-end pieces to moderately priced casualwear.

4th - Louis Vuitton

The French luxury fashion and leather goods brand, now a main division of the French holding company LVMH, was founded in 1854 as a luggage retailer. The company is now known for its monogrammed leather handbags and employs designer Marc Jacobs as its creative director. Keeping up with the demand for exclusive luxury, the company is collaborating with a series of artists for limited-edition handbag collections.

5th - Christian Dior

The designer founded the company in 1945 and quickly became famous for the "New Look," a fitted jacket with a nipped-in waist and full calf-length skirt. After the rationing of fabric during the World War II, Dior's lavish use of material was bold and shocking. Since 1996, chief designer John Galliano has been at the creative helm of the French fashion house, owned by the LVMH luxury goods group.

6th - Versace

Gianni Versace founded the Milan-based company in 1978. After his 1997 death, his sister Donatella Versace, formerly vice president, stepped in as creative director and his older brother Santo Versace became CEO. Today, despite talks of going public, the company is still entirely owned by the Versace family. While the collection is known for its flashy, embellished style, this spring the looks that came down the runway put more emphasis on cut and volume than shimmer and bling.

7th - Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani, 74, is the sole shareholder, president and chief executive of the designer brand. The fashion and luxury goods group manufactures, distributes and sells everything from apparel to cosmetics to home interiors under a range of seven brand names, but it is best known for its menswear.

8th - Ralph Lauren

After a stint as a Brooks Brothers tie salesman, Ralph Lauren, 69, started his powerhouse brand 42 years ago with a collection of ties. Today there are over 35 boutiques in the United States. The company offers three collections: Polo is the fast-fashion-fix line for the young metropolitan male; Black Label is a more upscale, edgier version of city dressing; and Purple Label is the ultimate deluxe line. The designer has a personal fortune of $4.2 billion.

9th - Prada

Milan-based Prada was founded as a leather goods company in 1913 by Mario Prada. His granddaughter Miuccia inherited the company in 1978 and grew the business into a fashion apparel company. Her claim to fame was the signature Prada nylon handbag, which helped turn the family company into a billion-dollar business.

10th - Yves Saint Laurent

Founded in 1961, Yves Saint Laurent was the first fashion house to launch women's ready-to-wear. He opened Rive Gauche boutiques for women in 1966 and added men's ready-to-wear in 1974, which helped make designer luxury labels more accessible to the wider public. The Gucci Group acquired Yves Saint Laurent in 1999

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Source: Forbes.com

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E-Commerce 25th Anniversary

"Clearly, e-commerce has gone from kind of a glimmer in someone's eye to arguably one of the most important and powerful developments, I'd say, in modern-day commerce," remarked Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler. "It has become not just popular or pervasive, but also critical for both companies and consumers as they look for goods online and, in many cases, are often selling goods online."
It may not have been noticed in the whirlwind of online transactions on Web sites like eBay or Amazon , but e-commerce turned 25 on Tuesday.
On March 4, 1983, Husband-wife team of Alex Randall and Cameron Hall quietly launched a business revolution that was then the stuff of dreams, when their year-old company, Boston Computer Exchange, sold a computer "on line" to a buyer in South America.
Randall and Hall had started their company as a clearinghouse for buying and selling computers at a time when PCs like the Apple 2, Tandy, IBM PC and Sinclair were first becoming available.
"Almost nobody outside of universities had computers," Randall told the E-Commerce Times. "But we could see it coming.We recognized that eventually you'd be able to trade all kinds of things this way."

"In 1983, the only people who had computers were bleeding-edge aficionados," he recalled. "The only thing we could trade was computer equipment. There was no market for fresh fruit delivered to your door. The only people out there were computer users and people looking to buy computers."
Randall said he and Hall developed a marketplace where computer users could upgrade from old units.
The two started at a meeting of the Boston Computer Society with trading cards and conducted hundreds of transactions over the phone. They began to dominate trading in used computers as a paper and pencil company, Randall said.
They then bought a 300 BPS modem -- a system so slow, Randall said, that the user could read text faster than it came to the screen), bought a new database system called "Alpha 2" and struck an agreement with the owners of Videotext -- which would later become Delphi (NYSE: DPH) -- for an online bulletin board system running software that allowed users to dial into the system over a phone line.
By partnering with Delphi and using its own dual floppy disk drive computer, BCE could post its database of products on a public access system.
On March 4, 1983, Randall and Hall got a call from a buyer in Santiago, Chile, and they subsequently made their first "on line" transaction.
"He was looking at the database online," Randall said. "He saw something that would be good to own. He phoned me he wanted to buy the system."
The caller purchased an IBM PC for $7,000, Randall said.
Randall and Hall later wrote an instruction book for creating a freestanding computer trading enterprise in any city.
The couple sold BCE in 1990 He became a professor of communications at the University of the Virgin Islands. Hall died of cancer in 1998.
"Cameron was a brilliant economist," Randall said. "She was very smart about money, and how marketplaces worked in the abstract."
Date Debate
The actual birthdate of e-commerce is not undisputed.
When told that e-commerce had just turned 25, Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor for Illuminata, paused.
"My initial reaction is that it's an interesting date to pick but also somewhat an arbitrary one," he told the E-Commerce Times. "People have ordered stuff, if you would, via e-mail, certainly long before 25 years ago."
However, the genesis of e-commerce, as the world has come to know it, probably is a lot more recent than 1983, Haff added.
"I wouldn't say 'e-commerce,' if you think about it, really was anything approaching mass market until the Web era," he said. "I'd say we really had mass market closer to 10 years than 25. But, sure, you can find early examples."
"Our original concept was to build databases that could be infinitely expanded for any product," he explained. "It's utterly incredible. We were uploading data at 350 bits per second then, and now we have people buying things from eBay and Amazon on a click of a mouse without even thinking. It's astonishing how far we've gone."
Gartner analyst Avivah Litan shared that enthusiasm.
"I was thinking yesterday about an interview I had with Bill Gates before Windows came out," she told the E-Commerce Times. "I asked him what was in the future, and he said, 'graphics.' Back in the beginning, the interfaces were kind of kludgy, awkward, kind of heavy and hard to use."
For Better or Worse
As much as e-commerce has matured, it's still mostly potential.
"It's still only around 10 percent or less of all sales in the U.S.," At some point, it will probably get 20 to 25 percent. But at this point, more people use it to window shop than actually make a purchase."
The explosive growth in e-commerce hasn't been all good.
"We saw the crooks come in, which is what I follow the closest now."It's not as safe as it used to be."
Whatever its roots are, e-commerce has matured into a major business category, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor's.
"Clearly, e-commerce has gone from kind of a glimmer in someone's eye to arguably one of the most important and powerful developments, I'd say, in modern-day commerce. "It has become not just popular or pervasive, but also critical for both companies and consumers as they look for goods online and, in many cases, are often selling goods online."
Randall said he was content to let others apply their own ingenuity to what he and Hall began in their living room."I feel like the guy who invented the Stanley Steamer," he said. "It didn't end up as the model used in the automobile industry, but it played a part."

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Source:E-commerce times

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Why are online jewelry sales so high?

Officially, it appears that online jewelry revenues were about $4.8 billion or 7.4 percent of total jewelry industry sales in 2007. Preliminary jewelry sales in the U.S. market in 2007 were $64.8 billion.

Total Retail Online Sales for 2007 :

The U.S. Department of Commerce has reported that total online commerce was about $136.4 billion in 2007, up 19.0 percent from the prior year. As a percentage of total retail sales, e-commerce sales in 2007 were 3.4 percent, up from 2.9 percent in the prior year.
The graph below compares online retail penetration for all retail categories versus online penetration for jewelry sales.

Why are online jewelry sales, as a percentage of total industry sales, so high in comparison to the average for all retail categories? Currently, most online jewelry sales represent diamond jewelry. A recent study by ad agency JWT suggests that roughly 80 percent of all online jewelry sales are diamonds and diamond jewelry. Because diamond jewelry carries a much higher average ticket than other jewelry categories, the bias in sales towards diamonds is pushing up the reported online sales penetration. Further, consumers are increasingly buying from online jewelers because they offer the same goods at a much better price than most store-based jewelers.

Source: IDEX & U.S. Dept. of Commerce

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