JEWELRY of CHOICE: DRIVEN by DESIGN

A diamond ring in Marleton, New Jersey, catches my eye. Its price does as well, for in a glance it sums up the edicts of Supplier of Choice in 2006: Add value. Brand. Market. Sell on romance and luxury, not price. And let it be jewelry.

The ring is Escada, and it sits in the first showcase to the right as you enter the Bernie Robbins door at the Promenade at Sagemore, a Rodeo Drive esque mall in this affluent part of central Jersey. A 1.02 round brilliant is centered between the signature halfoval shanks forming the Escada heart, with white 18k gold shanks inlaid with 3.35 carats of micro-pav?. The main event is a well-cut, very white stone with a touch of fluorescence, and the melee forms two luscious diamond walls. At the end of the day, however, from a purely diamond point of view, it's a carater and some melee. The retail price: $21,200.

"We're doing very well with Escada," says Madalyn Rovinsky, sole partner with her husband Harvey of the nine-store Bernie Robbins chain, which has carved out a chunk of the high-end across a 100-mile swathe of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. They've done that, yes, with Rolex, David Yurman, Michael Beaudry, etc. But increasingly, they've done it with diamond jewelry based, partnership-like relationships with sightholders such as Escada's partner, Pluczenik.

Particularly, with jewelry: By itself, this ring might be a hard sell at that price. In that showcase, surrounded by several dozen pieces reiterating the Escada sensibility and shape, Robbins sold three this holiday season. Rovinsky feels-and insiders at Pluczenik agree, sotto voce-that it took the firm some time to make the transition into diamond jewelry. "But they really get it now," she says, "and this is a branded fashion product, with all the momentum and magic of a true brand."

Down the two half-moon showcase areas that form the display floor, she and Robbins' buyer Sondra Moren show me other sightholder-jeweler products-a virtual walk down the aisles of Supplier of Choice:

Vera Wang. "It's just magic with the girls," says Rovinsky, "the perfect marriage of fashion, diamonds, and bridal. She's even in China now, people are registering with her."

Cento. "It took time for us to get it, but now the 100 facets, 100 ways to say I love you, make it an instant seller. It really helps sell the Roberto Coin one case over."

A. Link. "Everyone's doing the opera necklace," says Rovinsky, modeling a 34-inch specimen that stays on her neck for my hour-long visit. "But nobody does it like them. We've sold six this season." At price points beginning at $50,000.

And Daniel K. And Ritani. And Hearts On Fire-which is now the manufacturer of the "Hoopla. " The Hoopla is massive, 18k white gold loops studded with 60 HOF five-pointers apiece: 30 on the exterior of the front-facing wall of the hoop, 30 on the interior of the back, for maximum full-frontal effect. It's $16,200. "We sold six pairs this season," says Moren.

Since adding designer Katherine Rosenberg-Pineau three years ago, Hearts On Fire has transformed itself into a leading jeweler, and it's done it with a jewelry catalog that searches every nook and cranny for optimal ways of expressing the beauty of a well-cut stone. Owners of HOF doors say they now sell through the jewelry routinely and carry loose perfunctorily. As Robbins' sales associate Ellen Sigel tells me, however, "Jewelry reinforces sales of loose, and vice-versa. I'll sell Hearts On Fire in a mounting, or in a designer mounting. And with the Dream cut, I get full margins I can't with the asscher, radiant, or princess. I have a lifelong customer for add-ons through the years, and the Dream semi-mounts are great."

"The brand marriage of the diamond and diamond jewelry is Supplier of Choice in a nutshell," says owner Harvey Rovinsky. "The synergy of loose and diamond jewelry is the great bonus of SOC. I sell Escada, but I also sell tons of loose from Universal Pacific [Pluczenik's U.S. partner]. Sightholder diamond jewelry is a huge part of what we do, and it was virtually nonexistent five years ago. I get many calls now from sightholders like Shmuel Pluczenik, asking about showcase placement, which promotions are working in Atlantic City. But I remember 25 years ago, my first trip to Antwerp. I asked Shmuel about diamond jewelry. What did I know? I was new to the business. 'This is Antwerp,' he said. Tor jewelry, go to Italy.' He'll be the first to tell you how this industry has changed."

FOREVER OF THE MOMENT

"Actually, it's every industry now," Shmuel Pluczenik tells me a few days later at the JCK Invitational at New York's Hilton Hotel. "The cruise, the holiday, fashion: You need to understand the end consumer, in their totality, in all their layers. If you remain one layer at a time-I'm the supplier, he's the middle-man, he's the salesman-you lose the big picture. She doesn't care about the 4C's, this or that cut. She cares about romance. You used to sell a car with horsepower and sweater with cashmere. But these are layers."

Pluczenik continues, "Am I embarrassed about saying what I did to Harvey 25 years ago? Absolutely not. Do I think Supplier of Choice saved the DTC? I think it saved our entire industry. And is the answer simply jewelry, fashion? No. It's an entirely new way of saying a diamond is forever. You now say that through the trend of the moment. You say it differently in Paris and Moscow and the U.S., an affluent but rather conservative market which is still very strong in larger well-cut goods but also beginning to warm to diamond walls and higher styles."

Down the aisles of this March show, sightholder-jeweler responses to that market are as varied as can be. Tach?, another Antwerp mega-sightholder known for big stones, has stepped into the male self-purchase market in alliance with designer Nikos, selling solid metal bands studded with three small diamonds. "The market for the product is wider than we thought," says Josh Weinman. "It's a commitment ring for a man and his partner, but women are buying as well."

Steinmetz, another Antwerp firm, has entered the U.S. diamond jewelry market through its Mumbai-based subsidiary Steora in an equally unexpected way: High-style, extroverted pieces based largely on microscope-set diamond melee content. There's nothing bigger than a carat, very Italian, but made in India.

That styling, in fact, is consistent with what has become a distinctly Indian trend. You'd mistake it for Italian jewelry, but it's actually an outgrowth of centuries of the Indian goldsmith's unabashed flair. It's been on display in a bewildering, labor intensive array in the showcases of C. Mahendra. CEO Shrikant Parkha has shown me his latest uses for stars, pointers, piqu?, and M to Z color goods for half a decade, an endlessly inventive catalog verging from traditional to bling to bread and butter, from $29 to $2,000 price points. His latest offering: 30 styles of watches with 10 to 30 carats of pav? apiece, with prices topping out at $4,000. "The movements are Japanese or Swiss," he explains of the inexplicably low prices. "Everything else is done in-house."

In jewelry as in loose, price is a huge part of the Indian equation. Sheetal, a Mumbai mega-producer of small goods, has gone into total carat weight jewelry in equally vast proportions through its Chirag subsidiary. Always with a flair: lockets of white gold open-lace studded with micro-pav?; petal rings that rotate on axes extending from the shank; mandala-shaped rings. There are no prices on the goods in these cases, just a dismissive wave when I ask. "We're direct from mine," I'm told. "The customer always saves."

As you move up the price point ladder of Indian goods, price has an uncanny way of easing the ascent, and at each rung you can see the auxiliary SOC edict: to pull rather than push through. This was earmarked at the JCK Invitational with a significant and long-overdue development, given the typical Mumbai allocation and the speed with which Indian cutting factories have mastered the art: hearts and arrows jewelry using I goods. Bridal product, as well as three-stone "I Forever Do" pieces featuring stones 30 points and up, are the new offering from Mumbai sightholder K.P. Sanghvi. There's even a five-stone ring, retailing at $3,999 with triple zero quality goods, each certed at GSI.

Sun Diamond, an Antwerp sightholder known for loose, has introduced its own line of I and SI2 hearts and arrows jewelry pieces, which form a lovely complement to its "Adura" diamond, an 88 facet princess sold only in finished jewelry.

Interjewel, a producer of smallsbased jewelry, has been easing its growing independent jeweler base a rung up the ladder each year. For 2006, the parent company, D. Navinchandra, a DTC and Argyle sightholder, reached into the champagne and cognac family for affordable luxury. At first glimpse at these multicolored offerings, and at their price tags, topping out at $795 wholesale, you'd think you're looking at alloys creating these effects. But they're diamonds, and the prices are real.

The same can be said of the catalog of Jewel Goldi, which has been staking out a growing piece of the repeatable mid-level jewelry market-bread and butter goods taken up a notch each year with the elbow grease of design. The pieces, all with half-point to 25 point diamonds, change seasonally, but always identify themselves as Jewel Goldi. "It's a function of design," says David Nichols, showing me the pieces, as well as one carat hearts and arrows and fine makes marketed through the loose end of the Shree Ramkrishna sightholder parent. "I'll obtain models globally, and I have to stay on top of trends. But if I look like this guy or that, it's pointless. So we design, almost exclusively, for ourselves."

Jewelex has brought a unique touch to its own move up the price ladder as it refines its styles each year: 2006 brings baguette-centered jewelry, in which squared stones are invisibly set in a signature white-with-yellow scrolling look. The concept is carried through a bridal collection, bringing the firm's production of fine rounds into play, both in finished pieces and semi-mounts.

After several years of over-styling product for the U.S. bridal market, the Indian firms have gotten it now. Prism, an Indian diamond and jewelry firm that relinquished its DTC sight years ago and recouped it with the latest list change, is among the leaders in that move. "Our designers get free expression with earrings and other fashion products," president Sanjay Javeri says. "But bridal, and it doesn't have to be solitaires," he says, showing me an array of upscale but affordable three-stone pieces, "is not the time to call attention to yourself. "

A FAST-FLOWING BUSINESS

As you move from fashion to bridal, you move from Indian goods of high, florid styling to what has become known universally as "Hong Kong goods"-pieces that express sensibilities ranging from solid to delicate to luxurious, but always in the service of high-quality face-up appearance. I notice this in the cases of Israeli princess specialist E.F.D., and its "Princess Plus" Une of bridal jewelry. E.F.D.'s designers can be very extroverted-for two years now, their abstract, truly Indo and Italian-hike creations have won shows in Asia-but their U.S. bridal product is solid stuff in which form clearly follows a single function, to show the beauty of the princess.

A new line for the Israel-U.S. partnership EMA-Rama shows the exact juncture of Indian and Hong Kong goods. "We're definitely moving up from our bread and butter goods to higher-quality Hong Kong goods," says Naftali Ratzensdorfer, "but we're able to keep it closer to Mumbai prices through our jewelry manufacturer in seePZ." His partner Russell Schachter outlines the differences with a bridal tray of both finished goods and semi-mounts. Though I can see the difference immediately, I'm not sure why.

"Old world millgraining," Schachter says, pointing to the outside bands of metalwork that provide the contours of the ring styling. "Rather than doing that with lost-wax, where the detailing gets blurred in the heat of the oven, you get the crispness of individually created grains. True, it's done with pneumatic hammers now, rather than at the bench, but the expression of quality is the same, and it makes a huge difference, whether with finished goods or with semi-mounts," he says, showing me a semi-mount whose millgraining and solid heft create a piece that will sell a diamond, rather than just accommodate it.

"The semi-mount is so crucial to this part of the business," says K. Girdharlal's Bob Nachman. "As you move into partnerships with the better independents, it's crucial you have semi-mounts that can sell through in and of themselves," he says, showing me an elaborate multi-carat semimount with micro-pav? and unique side stones-composite diamonds that use small rounds to form an oval floral effect. "It's also one of the junctures where your understanding of the trends and your individual markets can be expressed."

Nachman continues, "One of the things that is crucial now is that you read widely. Not just the jewelry magazines, but architecture, lifestyle, fashion. Because jewelry trends flow-not just from bridal to fashion and back, but from architecture, clothing, throughout the culture. A diamond is a diamond, but jewelry is a fast-flowing business. There is a big picture to be found, and you have to really work to keep the focus clear, or you'll lose that picture in a heartbeat, particularly for the American market."