Milton Gralla, a legendary publishing executive in our business and whom many have known through his lifetime commitment to philanthropy, has passed away at age 84. Though National Jeweler was founded in 1906, it was when Milt and his brother...

I just learned that Glen Beres passed away on June 20 at the age of 50. Glen and I were reporters together at National Jeweler in the early 90s--surely a different day and age. While I specialized in the diamond...

When my first son was very young and very sick and spending too much time in operating rooms and intensive care, I sought a diversion to distract him from what was happening. Portable DVD players were just becoming available. So...

Could this be the panacea for multi-channel retailing that fine jewelry has been seeking? Over the past decade, we've all watched as online retailing has mushroomed around us. But our product, even for mega-powerful, uber-traffic retailers like Amazon, Walmart and...

The past few years have marked a love-hate relationship between jewelers and precious metals. On one hand, nearly everyone profited from rising prices by buying from the public, a lucrative practice that helped keep many afloat during the darkest days....

Lots of talk cropping up again about the "Swiss-made" label. As most in our business are aware, there are set criteria for determining what level of “Swiss” labeling manufacturers can claim for their watches. Like other magazines, we publish and...

A specialist in custom-design jewelry, Gary Dawson sold his store of two decades and moved exclusively online. Read it here. Gary's story is also National Jeweler's story. It's now been just more than a year since we, too, moved exclusively...

Transitions of power are always a challenge. And the stakes are raised for entities with strong track records. Sterling, parent of Kay and Jared, has proven itself across recent market cycles to be among the very best-run chain jewelers in...

Not that we're out of the woods just yet, but the past week, especially, has brought many signs of a strengthening market. Read Ken Gassman's article here outlining 2011's $68.3 billion in total U.S. jewelry sales, the largest gross ever...

India's recent imposition of a 2 percent import duty on polished diamonds seems to be an unfortunate necessity. In this day and age, the normal response would be to see such a move as an imposition on international trade. After...

Here's a story we just published about Amazon being rated the best company for customer service. Without question. Eons ago, when I was working my way through college in the service industry, management taught us a golden rule: "Kill them...

This 10X blog entry was written by Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst, The NPD Group, Inc. This year’s recipe for retail success came in the expert blending of the following four parts (not all parts are equal). Part 1 -...

Lorraine Garvey embodied many of the personal attributes and characteristics I admire most. President of the Women's Jewelry Association's chapter in her home base of New England, Lorraine represented the model of gender equality—someone to be respected and looked up...

I don't know about you, but I'm bombarded, constantly, by useless information. In media, they call it "feeding the beast." If you're CNN, for example, 24/7 is a lot of air time to fill. And, unfortunately, too much of the...

It wasn't long ago that Americans were exploited by Europe for our rich natural resources. In the heyday of colonialism, it was standard operating procedure for powerful nations to divvy up the world and its spoils, with little interest in...

We've been hard at it at National Jeweler over the past two months, but we're finally slipping comfortably into our new role as an exclusively online content provider. After restructuring workflow and staff and fine tuning our editorial mission, we're...

I spent all last night thinking about it, so I need to revisit the story we published yesterday about the jeweler who sued a man after he had posted antisemitic comments on the Internet business review site Yelp. You can...

Equities markets are on a tear. And that's welcomed relief for millions of 401K-focused American consumers. Economists almost unanimously agree, however, that the primary dampener on full recovery at this point is the tenacious high level of unemployment. Kudos to...

There is nothing so definitive to our business as product. It's jewelry, after all, that makes us jewelers. The well-informed coverage of fine jewelry fashion developments and trends is central to our mandate here at National Jeweler. As the trade's...

Hi all. As our industry's leading online news service, National Jeweler doesn't create the news. We just report it. And in the course of doing so, we find that the prevailing trends in retailing, especially those for fine jewelry, come...

This blog entry was written and submitted to National Jeweler 10X by gem author Antoinette Matlins. Are you one of the increasing number who are buying and selling “composite rubies”—unknowingly? If you buy and sell rubies today, this fact sheet...

As we enter the New Year, it is, as always, a time to reflect. This moving account, of a different kind of store interaction, was sent to National Jeweler by Michael Gross of H.L.Gross & Bro., Garden City, N.Y., and...

Several years ago at an industry dinner, Allen Brill commented to me about an obituary I had written about diamond industry legend William Goldberg. "I hope someone writes something that nice about me when I go," Allen joked. Of course...

Here's a company that's doing something about it, rather than complaining about it. For the past few holiday seasons, electronics have eaten our lunch. They've just been sexier, with more fun, interesting, engaging products on offer. In too many instances,...

(Editor's Note: This post was written and supplied to us by Jack Gindi, CEO of FuFoo & Disney Precious Collection. You can find more information at www.fufoo.com or www.preciousjewelrycollections.com.) Bad news: Toxic metals have been found in children's jewelry from...