Archive for October, 2007
Lil’ Wayne Sued Over Jewelry Bill
San Francisco Chronicle, USA
Rapper Lil’ Wayne has been accused of failing to pay a $146,000 jewelry bill.
The star — real name Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. — is being sued by Jack Sutton Fine Jewelry, who allege he failed to pay for a diamond ring and necklace he purchased earlier this month.
The shop filed a lawsuit at Miami-Dade Circuit Court in Florida claiming Carter agreed to pay the bill in monthly installments — but after they received the first check for $24,000 on Oct. 12 and a second dated January 2008, the payments were stopped.
Proprietor Jack Sutton says, “I’ve been doing business with him for at least 10 years. He’s always been wonderful with paying me. He spent a lot of money with me. I thought we have a really good relationship. I don’t know what happened.”
Carter’s attorney Ron Sweeney branded the incident a “misunderstanding.”
He says, “If, in fact, the allegations are true, then it will be resolved. My client is very responsible.”
The jewelry case is the latest in a series of legal trials for Carter — he is currently fighting drug charges in Atlanta, Ga., gun possession charges in New York and two civil suits in Baltimore, Md., after several women suffered injuries during his homecoming concert.
October 31st, 2007
Pakistan : PGJDC to develop jewelry cluster at Korangi
October 29, 2007
Fibre2fashion.com, India
Construction of a 10.8 acre manufacturing cluster for gems and jewelry entrepreneurs at Korangi Creek Industrial Park has been undertaken by Pakistan Gems and Jewelry Development Company (PGJDC).
A presentation regarding the development of this project was put forward by PGJDC to the stakeholders of gems and jewelry sector, recently.
This project is believed to usher radical changes in the jewellery sector, consequently luring stakeholders to advance their full support for the enterprise.
From jewelry manufacturers and gold refiners to gems dealers and processors, stakeholders coming from all walks of life were seen taking keen interest in the proposition.
While, the industrial park will encompass all the essential amenities like security, water & power supply, natural environment, supporting services, telecommunication facilities and accessibility, the gems and jewelry units would comprise gem processing units, jewellery manufacturing, assaying and hallmarking, gem laboratories, training centers, gem labs and gem exchange facilities.
October 30th, 2007
Jewelry and Fashion Blogosphere 10/28/07
It’s not easy being green. 55 Secret Street braves stormy weather and spilled coffee to see beautiful handmade jewelry and fine crafts at Greenjeans in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood.
Style so inventive that Chanel tried to rip it off? Yep. Stiletto Jungle features the newest bracelets from Jessica Kagan Cushman.
Bag Bliss has fallen for the Limited Edition Handbag by De Couture. Only 50 in the world.
Forget the LBD, Bag Snob has the perfect LBT (Little Black Tote!) from Anya Hindmarch.
Beauty Snob gets a moisture boost for wintery dry skin with Awake Polyphection!
Kristopher’s tough but no punk, so she loves this Kenneth Jay Lane bracelet.
My Fashion Life meets Abigail Lorick - the designer behind some of the amazing outfits on the new TV series, Gossip Girl.
Papierblog looks at the social implication of high end designers with collections for children
If you don’t happen to live in NYC and missed the Princess Grace 25th anniversary hoopla, no worries. Second City Style has photos of the Sak’s window display of unique Princess Grace inspired couture outfits by 6 amazing American designers.
So you’re up on the latest trends but aren’t sure how to put them all together? StyleBakery.com offers this chic cheat sheet to help you figure out what to wear today.
Serious cute overload! Check out Stylehive’s slideshow of the most adorable infant and toddler costumes we’ve been awww-ing over.
WE LOVE BEAUTY Celebrity Stylemaker’s top eyeshadow picks for Fall
See Christina at eBeautyDaily getting rid of her wrinkles with the Rejuvawand home laser treatment!
Halloween fun is still in full swing at the Jewelry and Beading blog, including some cute black cat beaded earrings.
Metal Chik has some tips and tricks for hunting down wholesale jewelry shows.
October 29th, 2007
US Online Jewelry Sales +21% in 3Q07
IDEX Online, Israel
RAPAPORT… Research company comScore listed jewelry among the fastest growing on-line products in the United States as sales rose 21 percent in the third Quarter of 2007.
Total U.S. retail e-spending (excluding auctions and large corporate purchases) grew 23 percent to $28.4 billion during the September quarter. V
Video games, consoles and accessories led the pack of high risers with a 199 percent increase over the 2006 period. Consumer electronics were second in the growth standings for online consumers, with toys and hobbies, event tickets, and books and magazines, completing the top five respectively. Jewelry’s online sales growth was listed in ninth place. ComScore did not provide sales figures for individual sectors.
For the first nine months of 2007, total online retail sales rose 21 percent to $83.58 billion, compared to the same period a year earlier.
ComScore chairman Gian Fulgoni noted that with online retail spending growing at rates above 20 percent year-over-year, “the market is still far from maturity.â€
October 29th, 2007
Dollar Tree recalls some children’s jewelry on risk of lead exposure
October 25, 2007: 10:32 AM EST
CNNMoney.com
NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2007 (Thomson Financial delivered by Newstex) — Dollar Tree Stores Inc. (NASDAQ:DLTR) and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a voluntary recall of certain children’s jewelry products, citing risks of exposure to lead.
The recall involves Beary Cute, Expressions and Sassy & Chic metal jewelry items, made in China, which were sold nationwide from December 2005 to July 2007.
Dollar Tree shares traded up 0.9% at $37.01.
Tomi Kilgore
tk1
Copyright Thomson Financial News Limited 2007. All rights reserved.
The copying, republication or redistribution of Thomson Financial News Content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Financial News.
Newstex ID: AFX-0013-20498245
October 26th, 2007
Charles Tiffany Found All That Glittered In Jewelry
October 25, 2007: 08:05 PM EST
CNNMoney.com
Oct. 26, 2007 (Investor’s Business Daily delivered by Newstex) –
Charles Lewis Tiffany knew he’d have no trouble finding a place to open a stationery and fancy goods store in 1837.
So many businesses in New York City had been failing that plenty of storefronts were available.
A fire, riots over inflation and poor sanitation (free-roaming pigs were the garbage collectors) plagued many of the city’s businesses. In just two months that year, 260 businesses with liabilities of $100 million shut their doors, wrote Joseph Purtell in “The Tiffany Touch.”
But 25-year-old Tiffany and his partner, former schoolmate John Young, saw opportunity, not disaster. They took a $1,000 loan from Tiffany’s father, found a spot at 259 Broadway and opened Tiffany & Young for business on Sept. 18. The first day’s receipts: $4.98. On New Year’s Eve, sales were $679.
That was the start of Tiffany & Co. (NYSE:TIF) , perhaps the world’s best-known jeweler. Today, Tiffany’s TIF annual sales top $2.6 billion, and the company operates over 150 stores and boutiques worldwide.
How did Charles Tiffany (1812-1902) build a jewelry empire that is still thriving?
He didn’t let setbacks discourage him — not even when burglars stole his entire stock one night in 1839.
Instead of dwelling on their misfortune, Tiffany and Young focused on getting back in business. Fortunately, they’d always taken the store’s cash home with them at night. They used that cash to start restocking right away. “Soon, they were happily expanding, renting space next door,” Purtell wrote.
Tiffany wouldn’t ever take no for an answer. Take the time he heard that a consignment of fine Japanese goods had arrived in Boston. He was determined to buy some for his shop. “But we had no ready cash and practically no financial standing,” Tiffany recalled.
He traveled to his hometown of Killingly, Conn., and asked a rich associate to lend him $300. The man refused. “This rebuff, however, only made me more determined,” Tiffany said. He kept asking friends and acquaintances until someone fronted him the money.
Tiffany wasn’t afraid to do things differently. Two years after he started his business, he set up a revolutionary price policy. He marked every item in the store with the selling price — and it was final.
At that time, most stores didn’t mark the price on merchandise. Or they gave a negotiable price. Tiffany’s theory was the no-haggle policy would be a relief to many customers and that it would let him have lower prices than his competitors, Purtell wrote. “The policy paid off handsomely.”
Unlike many jewelers, Tiffany was a stickler for high quality. In 1841, he and Young started making annual trips to Europe to buy the best jewelry and merchandise available. At the time, no other store did this; buyers just chose from the limited stock sent from abroad.
This move boosted the quality of the store’s merchandise and “was to prove a turning point 15r the firm,” Purtell wrote. On the first trip, Tiffany and Young brought back imitation-diamond jewelry in fine settings. It was a major improvement over some of the cheaper costume jewelry the store had carried.
The line was an instant success, so Tiffany started dealing in real diamonds. He imported them in real gold settings. The business took off, and in 1847 the store expanded into much larger quarters uptown.
“I must say that I was hard to please in the way of designs,” Tiffany recalled in an article in the Morning Journal in 1894. “I was also very particular about the quality of the stones I bought. … For every ounce of gold I bought I surely must have handled 10 pounds. I could see that the money was to be made in that direction, and I determined that I would build up a jewelry trade.”
His chance to achieve his goal came in 1848, when Young arrived in Paris on a buying trip at the same time an uprising was taking hold in France. Supporters of the king were desperate to leave France. They had little cash — but lots of diamonds.
The price of diamonds dropped 50% overnight. Young gobbled up as many as he could. When he returned to New York, he and Tiffany immediately began making their own jewelry. Tiffany & Co. later became famous for its designs of other items as well. Tiffany’s son, Louis Comfort Tiffany, was a renowned artist, designing vases, jewelry and the famous Tiffany lamps.
Charles Tiffany gave special attention to his customers. He sold his first bronze inkstand to a “fashionable society woman.” The store’s errand boy had already left for the day, and he didn’t want his customer to have to wait an extra day for her purchase. “So when we closed up the shop I wrapped up the inkstand and carried it down to Cliff Street myself,” Tiffany said.
After his business was a success, Tiffany kept working hard. “All through the famous blizzard of ‘88 he did not miss a single regular attendance at his business,” according to an 1891 article in Harper’s Weekly. “Every morning at half-past 9 he enters the big glass doors of his establishment, where he opens and reads his own mail and newspapers regularly, without the aid of any eyeglasses, and finds enough executive duties to keep him there among the last at 6 o’clock in the evening.”
Tiffany was 79 years old at the time. When he died at age 90, Tiffany & Co. was worth $2.4 million.
This story originally ran Sept. 16, 1999, on Leaders & Success.
Newstex ID: IBD-0001-20512044
Originally published in the October 26, 2007 version of Investor’s Business Daily.
Copyright (c) 2007, Investor’s Business Daily, Inc. All rights reserved. This article is protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of Investor’s Business Daily, Inc. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
October 26th, 2007
Woman makes school-tailored jewelry
Houston Chronicle, United States
HENRIETTA, Texas — If a high school girl could make fashionable earrings using a material as plain as cardboard, think what she could do as an adult with all of Hobby Lobby’s creative resources.
Dana Latham, a stay-at-home mom in Henrietta, returned in June to a hobby she’s pursued off and on since high school: making jewelry.
This time, she’s making necklaces.
The chunky, beaded or beribboned necklaces include a dangling center piece that Latham customizes.
This time, she’s not using the cardboard that she used as a teenager. She’s making festive pieces from — of all things — dominos, creating a product she sells under the name Cattle Call Designs.
Since June, Latham’s jewelry — particularly her necklaces that feature the name of a favorite school — has been a mom-telling-mom phenomenon.
“I’ve been very surprised,” Latham said of the popularity of her beaded neckwear. “I kept thinking it would die down. But it’s just kept on growing.”
Moms in Iowa Park, at Ben Franklin Elementary, Rider High School and at Zundelowitz Junior High have requested customized pieces for their little girls’ soccer teams or for themselves — an easy way to show off school pride.
The one-of-a-kind necklaces start with a single domino — or two or three glued together. She shellacs that centerpiece with a photo, western-themed picture or school name then studs it with rhinestones.
She strings the embellished pendant onto a ribbon or a string of chunky beads or stones. Each one is unique.
The more elaborate creations include a variety of charm-like decorations.
This new chapter of Latham’s jewelry-making hobby began as the first one did years ago in high school, back when she turned cardboard into the large earrings that were so popular in the 1980s. Then as now, she simply made the jewelry to complete her own outfits, recalls her mother, Peggy Lundy.
This time, Latham was again making jewelry for herself that she couldn’t afford elsewhere.
Her sister, Ben Franklin Elementary nurse’s aide Mandy Barmore, began wearing the chunky necklaces. She has since sold some for her sister “right off her body,” Latham said.
Barmore owns 22 of her sister’s necklaces. “Now I wear one every day,” she said.
Inspired by one of those necklaces, Ben Franklin teacher’s aide Mandy Salas asked Latham to make her a necklace using a Christmas picture of her three children. She’s bought several of Latham’s creations, but that one’s her favorite, Barmore said.
Since Latham prefers to customize her creations, “the possibilities are endless,” she said. “Anything you can find a picture of can be turned into a necklace.”
For a while, her biggest hurdle was finding enough dominos. She scoured flea markets and antique stores for the older, more interesting colored dominos she preferred.
Now, her biggest problem is finding time to make the necklaces. Friends have suggested that she take her wares “to market” or sell them on a Web site.
“How big do you want to be?” they ask with a twinkle in their eyes.
Most women who buy the necklaces eventually buy more than one, Latham said.
Her pieces, which sell from about $10 to $100, are currently sold at Mosley Trading Co. on Highway 287 in Henrietta and at Spa Bella European Day Spa and Salon at 1811 8th St., in Wichita Falls.
Latham also plans to host a “necklace party” Dec. 1, giving some proceeds from sales to the Cattle Baron’s Ball.
October 25th, 2007
JSA: U.S. Jewelry Crime Down 20% in 2007
Jewelers Circular Keystone Online, NY
– JCK-Jewelers Circular Keystone, 10/23/2007 5:23:00 PM
Crime in the U.S. retail jewelry industry for the first nine months of 2007 dropped about 20 percent in both dollars and the number of incidents, compared to the same period in 2006, John Kennedy, president of the Jewelers Security Alliance, has told JCK. The JSA tracks crime in the jewelry industry on an ongoing basis.
Robberies declined from 204 in 2006 to 121 this year, with the dollars lost “declining an astonishing 71 percent,†Kennedy said.
No jeweler has been killed during a crime against a jewelry business since March 2006. Ten or fifteen years ago, he noted, 20 or more jewelers were killed annually in the U.S. That dreadful statistic “has been on a steady decrease since,†he said.
October 24th, 2007
Avalilly’s Hosts Laura James Jewelry Trunk Show
dBusinessNews Charlotte (press release), NC
Charlotte -
Avalilly’s (www.avalillys.com), an upscale women’s clothing boutique in Cornelius featuring chic contemporary designers at fantastic prices, will host a Laura James Jewelry trunk show on Thursday, November 15 from 4:00pm – 7:00pm
Laura James Jewelry, which is receiving national and local media attention, integrates Laura James’ affinity for all things vintage and organic. She incorporates organic semi-precious stones, vintage crystal, vintage wood beads, fourteen karat gold-fill, sterling silver, brass and copper into the majority of her designs with a large percentage evolving from recycled materials. Lucky magazine has named Laura James Jewelry as a hot item for this holiday season and will feature her jewelry in their December issue.
“Laura James Jewelry is the only jewelry line we carry in the store because it’s a customer favorite and sells so quickly,†says Haggart. “We are excited to host Laura James in our store and provide customers the opportunity to see and experience more of her collections and buy firsthand from the designer.â€
This special trunk show event at Avalilly’s, which is one of a select few boutiques in the Charlotte area to carry the popular Laura James Jewelry, will include drinks and
hors d’oeuvres and give customers the opportunity to see and buy all the latest in clothing and accessory fashions.
Avalilly’s provides a unique retail concept. The store’s quality clothing lines come from boutiques across the country, including Fresh in Charlotte, which Emily co-owns. Located in the heart of downtown Cornelius, Avalilly’s offers women a uniquely sophisticated, high-energy environment with attentive service for an exciting and fun shopping experience. Please visit www.avalillys.com or call (704) 987-0037 for more information.
About Laura James Jewelry
Laura James Jewelry creator and designer, Laura Schmelzer James, launched her jewelry design career after a lifelong appreciation for antique jewelry and fashion design. Headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Laura’s affinity for all things vintage and organic is evident in her eclectic designs now carried in nearly forty boutiques across North Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Maine in addition to her Web site and multiple online retailers. Laura incorporates organic semi-precious stones, vintage crystal, vintage wood beads, fourteen karat gold-fill, sterling silver, brass and copper into the majority of her designs with a large percentage evolving from recycled materials.
October 23rd, 2007
Local Store Teaches Scouts About Jewelry
Signal, CA
Tammy Marashlian
Signal Staff Writer
Gathered around the display cases at Jewelry World in Valencia, the Junior Girl Scouts Troop 875 of the North River Service Unit got an after school lesson about diamonds on Thursday.
The talk was not part of a homework assignment, but rather an activity the eight girls from North Park Elementary School were able to participate in to get a jewel badge for their girl scout uniforms.
During the talk, Jewelry World owner Jack Freed gave tips on how to spot a real diamond from a fake. By using a tool that jewelers use to classify diamonds, he held up the diamond rings of Troop 875 Leaders Kristy Spector, Wendy Powell and Debbie Yarnell to the instrument.
A green light came on, signifying that the diamonds were real.
Valerie Yarnell, 9, said she learned that the biggest diamond was as big as a fist, while Lauren Spector, 9, said she didn’t know that the black pearl comes from the black oyster, making it the most expensive type of pearl.
The talk put the girls one step closer to earning their jewel badge, as it satisfied two of the six activities they need.
tmarashlian@the-signal.com
Copyright:The Signal
October 22nd, 2007
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