The Style Icon Of The Century

(via The Guardian) Ciao, bella! A roadtrip through its history.....

I liked this one.

How To Be A Customer

Professor John Quelch explains how consumers can market themselves to influence vendors + tips to become a valuable customer @ http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5780.html

Blog: Marketing Know: How

Brilliant!

Billy Wilder's Rules Of Good Filmmaking

Billy Wilder's Screenwriting Tips

As told to Cameron Crowe:
1. The audience is fickle.
2. Grab 'em by the throat and never let 'em go.
3. Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
4. Know where you’re going.
5. The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
6. If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
7. A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They'll love you forever.
8. In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’'e seeing.
9. The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
10. The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then -- that's it. Don’t hang around.

Useful link:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5503804

I think it should work in education + business as well.

Acting Is The Most Natural Thing

The Guardian profiles Morgan Freeman + his experience (s) simulating unique characters on screen and real life + Feast of Love, an ensemble drama directed by Robert Benton about the impact of love, the loss of love, divorce, adultery and grief on a group of interconnected characters revolving around Freeman's college professor @ http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,2178329,00.html

Morgan Freeman is an Academy Award-winning American actor, film director, and film narrator. When he acts he has that unique otherness + age and experience (s) works to his advantage too. He is a natural.

A Free Hand

(via The Guardian) Stuart Jeffries writes about Quentin Blake, Britain's - perhaps the world's - best loved illustrators + other viewpoints @ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2179032,00.html

The Case Of The Escaped Spirit

Michelle Falkenstein shares valuable info on how to handle artworks with care + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1487

Artworks are like gemstones. They should be handled with care.

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Diamonds: The buying public today has more information about diamonds than ever before. The diamond is studied in science courses in schools and colleges. A great many articles about diamonds have appeared in magazines and newspapers. Both technical and non-technical books are published every year. Jewelers and others give many talks about diamonds, both to ‘live’ audiences and to the far larger audiences of television and radio programs. There is an increasing amount of diamond advertising.

All of this can be considered direct information. But human nature being what it is, the assimilation and retention of this information are always perfect. Therefore, the ‘pass-along’ or indirect information people get from other people is not always completely accurate. So the buying public also has a lot of misinformation about diamonds.

As a result, the customer who comes into your store has a definite interest in diamonds. He probably has some basic information, which may or may not be accurate. In most cases he will ask questions. These you must answer with the clarity, confidence and accuracy of an expert.

This section is not intended as a short course on diamondology. Rather, it is intended to present briefly the principal facts about diamonds in which customers have shown the most interest.

What is a diamond?
1. A diamond is a transparent gem made of pure carbon (like the graphite in a lead pencil) which has been crystallized, in nature, by tremendous heat and pressure. It is the hardest, the most imperishable, and the most brilliant of all minerals.

Physical Properties Of Diamond
2. The physical properties are important for a complete understanding of the long-lived beauty of the diamond and of its value in comparison with other gems. These properties are usually expressed in technical terms, but you should explain them in terms that will be clear to the customer.

3. Hardness: Diamond, by a wide margin, is the hardest substance known to man. On a scale that measures resistance to abrasion, for example, diamond is 42, while corundum (ruby and sapphire) is 9 and tungsten carbide is 12. On a scale that measures resistance to indentation, diamond is 8500, while corundum is 2200, tungsten carbide is 1500, and topaz is 1250. On the Mohs scale, a measurement for hardness of gems, diamond has a hardness of 10. This is the top of the scale, and it means that diamond will scratch but will not be scratched by minerals lower on the scale: corundum—9; topaz—8; and so on. However, this is not a true measure of the relative hardness of diamonds because on this scale there is a vast disparity between 10 and the remaining numbers. In fact, diamond is almost 100 times more resistant to scratching than the next hardest substance.

Why is hardness one of diamond’s most desirable and unique features? The hardness of the diamond enables it to be cut with precise accuracy for maximum efficiency in the handling of light. Hardness gives the surface of the diamond a luster unsurpassed by any other transparent gem. Hardness enables the diamond to last forever, in a very literal sense. Hardness provides resistance to scratching and other damage.

4. Toughness: Many people equate hardness to toughness, or resistance to breakage, and to expect a diamond to be unbreakable. This is not true. A diamond’s crystal structure, like the grain in wood, had ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ directions. A blow of sufficient force, in a very exact direction, can crack, chip, split or even shatter a diamond. This characteristic is important for the cleaving step in the cutting process. It is also a warning for the wearing of diamond; a diamond ring shouldn’t be worn on hands that are doing rough work.

5. Refractive index: The refractive index indicates how much a ray of light bends when it passes from one medium into another. For example, when you put a pencil half way into water it seems to bend, because water has a refractive index of 1.333. The refractive index of diamond is 2.417, the highest of any precious gem. In general, the higher a gem’s refractive index, the greater its power of dispersion, or the ability to break up light into colors of the spectrum. Ruby has a refractive index of 1.770; emerald is 1.585.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

Extreme Makeover

Good Books: Jennie Yabroff writes about A. J. Jacobs, who spents one year following every rule in the Bible + his experiences @ 'The Year of Living Biblically'

Useful link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20910659/site/newsweek/page/0/

Walking A Tightrope Without A Net

Kelly Devine Thomas writes about auctioneer's style and expertise + the invisible factors at play + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1486

De Beers Seeks EC Diamond Origin Legislation

Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the concept of origin labeling and quality branding by DTC in order to protect its interest + European legistlations and protection of consumer's rights + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp

Innovative Diamond Tools

Here is what DATA Diamond Technology’s site says about the products:

Handheld Diamond Weigher: VIBE-130 Where conventional weighing scales need to placed on a level base, and require preparation to ensure that air conditioning and drafts do not distort results, D.A.T.A. Diamond Advanced Technology Ltd’s innovative tweezer called the VIBE-130 both weighs and measures the diameter of the diamond in an instant. Using pioneering technology patented around the world, the VIBE-130 weighs all shapes of polished stones, from 0.005 to 1.5 carats. The information is instantly transmitted to the company’s computerized inventory or Excel sheet thus by-passing the need for manual inputting of data. The advantages are clear: diamond offices save time and are able to completely eradicate any possibility of error whether human or due to an unstable working environment. Light-weight and designed to be easy to hold and work with, the VIBE-130 is the only such device in the world. It operates using a specially developed vibration technology that the company has created over the past five years.

Gem Count: DATA Diamond Technology’s Gem Count is designed to bring a highly sophisticated level of automation to one of the most basic activities of colored gemstone manufacturing. To fill customers’ orders, manufacturers often need to count many thousands of gemstones, a process that invariably requires excessive time and effort, and one that is prone to mistakes. Designed to count rough, semi-processed and polished stones in sizes as small as 0.8 mm in diameter, colored gemstone manufacturers will find that the Gem Count eliminates a labor-intensive portion of the production process, thereby making their operation more predictable and efficient, and improving their competitive edge. Like with the Diamond Count, the results of the count are instantly transmitted to the client’s inventory software or to an Excel sheet using Bluetooth wireless technology. This avoids the traditional requirement for manual input and eliminates the possibility of human error, both intentional and accidental.

Diamond Count: Counting diamonds is a labor-intensive task in which mistakes, both accidental and deliberate, can easily happen. Aiming to provide a technologically advanced solution to this problem, D.A.T.A. Diamond Advanced Technology Ltd introduces the Diamond Count machine, which counts rough and semi-processed diamonds and is the only such machine for the diamond industry. With close to 100 percent accuracy, the instrument can count 600 to 1,200 diamonds per minute depending on size. The latest generation of the Diamond Count is able to count diamonds with a diameter as small as 0.8 mm. The machine can count up to 1,700 carats in just minutes. The machine counts a preset number of diamonds and can also separate larger parcels into smaller ones. Results of the count are instantly transmitted to the clients’ inventory software or to an Excel sheet using Bluetooth wireless technology. This avoids the traditional requirement for manual input and eliminates the possibility of human error, both intentional and accidental.

M-Count: Certain companies involved in the diamond and colored gemstone industries have very specific requirements when it comes to counting rough and processed stones. It is for these firms that D.A.T.A. Diamond Advanced Technology Ltd developed the M-Count. The machine was initially developed for major mining companies, whose considerable required throughput necessitated a system with a massive processing capacity. Each M-Count can be modified to suit the demand of a particular client. The M-Count can be configured to count diamonds and colored gemstones ranging in size from 10 carats to +9 sieve sizes. Up to 7,000 carats can be processed in just minutes. The machine counts a pre-set number of diamonds and/or gemstone and can also separate larger parcels into smaller ones. Results of the count are instantly transmitted to the client’s inventory software or to an Excel sheet using Bluetooth wireless technology. This avoids the traditional requirement for manual input and eliminates the possibility of human error, both intentional and accidental.

Useful link:
http://www.data-tech.co.il

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Selling With Information: Every salesman should know his diamonds. But he should also be careful about how he displays that knowledge.

Some young couples, shopping for an engagement ring, want to know all the technical facts about every diamond they consider. Others would be turned off by a flood of information that, in their preoccupation of the moment, they neither want nor understand. Customers for other pieces of diamond jewelry are usually less interested in diamond facts than in diamond fashions.

It is essential, nevertheless, that information be given clearly and confidently whenever it is requested.

A jeweler must be an expert in the eyes of his customers. So when a question about diamonds is asked, you have to answer it. You can’t look it up in a book or a promotion piece without losing that expert image. You can’t turn the question aside.

The language you use is important. One customer may be able to absorb all the technical terms you have; he’d feel you were condescending if you talked to him in simple terms. Another customer might need the translation of technical talk into terms of his everyday life; he’d feel you were snowing him if you talked over his head. It’s a matter of judgment to decide what terms to use with what customers.

Your information about diamonds should always be directed toward their individuality. As the symbol of love, a diamond is a very personal thing; and personal things should be individual. The infinite combinations of the characteristics of carat weight, color, clarity and cut makes each diamond unique. That is important to impress upon your customers.

When information is requested, be sure that you give it by demonstration as well as by words. Not every customer will want to look through a loupe or a microscope. Nor would every customer be able to see subtle gradations of color, even when pointed out. But they should be given the opportunity to do so, if they show the interest.

Selling with information is selling with facts, with confidence. Both should be solid.

Selling With Fashion
Fashion means different things to different people. Many are convinced that fashion is a conspiracy of planned obsolescence; what’s ‘in’ this year is ‘out’ next year.

Actually, fashion is whatever makes each woman look, and feel, her best. Therefore, diamond fashions are permanent, because the diamond is permanent in the way it makes a woman look and feel.

The settings for diamonds can change from year to year, from decade to decade. The same diamond can be put into different settings during its long life. But the diamond is always in fashion.

The diamond engagement ring, for example, may have the classic simplicity of the solitaire Tiffany mounting. Or it may have an infinite variety of settings, with center stone, side stones and precious metal all making integrated contributions to the intricate design. But each setting, be it classic or modern, is fashionable because it is personal.

Many couples are afraid that the ring they select may go out of style. You’ll be selling with fashion if you convince her that, as long as the setting continues to mean to her what it means on the day she first wears it, her ring will be her style. And should there come a time when she changes, as women often do, she can have her diamond put into another setting that will be her style then.

Fashion is highly important in the selling of other diamond jewelry. A diamond is a gift of love, be it ring, pin, watch, earrings, necklace or bracelet. But a diamond gift is also something to be worn as a fashion accessory.

One aspect of selling with fashion is the demonstration of your fashion sense by showing the capabilities of the different styles of diamond jewelry. The traditional is classic and timeless, and it can be worn with almost everything. The antique and the modern can also be worn with almost everything, but for different and special effects.

Another aspect is showing the versatility of a single piece; the more ways it can be worn, the more valuable it becomes. It’s simple economics that the more often a diamond piece can be worn, the less it costs for each wearing.

For example, a pin or brooch is usually worn at the shoulder. But you can show, with today’s fashions, that it can also be worn on a sleeve or cuff, on a belt, at the neckline, or on a hat or in the hair. Ear clips can be worn on a neckline, or even on the shoes. A necklace or bracelet can be wired for a tiara. Even a ring can double as a jewel for belt or scarf.

Your women customers will be particularly impressed when you sell with fashion. But even a man who is buying a gift for a loved one can be impressed with the versatility you can show him, to show her.

Selling with fashion is selling both for today and for always.

After The Sale Is Concluded
The consummation of a sale at the counter should be a beginning, not an end. You have established your market potential. You have brought traffic into your store. You have made the sale at the counter. A shopper has become a customer.

The next step is to make that customer a client, one who will naturally turn to you for all his diamond jewelry in the future. Your merchandise and salesmanship have made a customer. Interest and service will make a client.

Interest can be shown in many ways. For instance, you could take a picture of a young couple as they buy their engagement ring. Since the girl will wear her ring constantly, she has no need for the ordinary ring box; so you could package her ring in a box that could be used later for another purpose. You could send a card of congratulation on their wedding, after the birth of each baby, on each anniversary. You could call or write to any customer whenever you have something of special interest for her, or him.

Your study of your market potential can show you what types of expression of interest can be most effective for you. Service is simply interest applied for a specific purpose. At regular intervals you could call or write to suggest that a ring, or watch, or pin, be brought back for a cleaning and any necessary adjustments. And a client’s visit for such a purpose is store traffic.

Market potential. Store traffic. Counter sales. Clients. They all add up to more sales of more diamonds.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

Nizam's Jewelry

Economic Times writes about Nizam's jewelry exhibition via National Museum, displaying one of the largest and richest collections of jewels in India @ Nizam's jewellery on exhibition in Delhi...

A Day In The Life Of A Diamond

Prem Panicker finds out how gems go from rough pebbles to brilliant stones @ http://specials.rediff.com/money/2007/sep/17sld1.htm

Top Photo Collectors

Kelly Devine Thomas profiles select active photography collectors @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1474

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Other Promotions: Some jewelers have been very successful with special parties. A party could honor a visiting jewelry designer, or it could exhibit a special collection of unusual jewelry. The personal touch in the invitations is highly successful here; so is the relaxed and festive atmosphere of the party itself.

Direct mail, telephone and personal contacts are all useful and successful ways of inviting people into your store. One very effective form of personal contact is speaking engagements, if you have a flair for talking in public; as a diamond expert, you would be welcome on a great many club programs in your community.

Don’t forget publicity. Cultivate the editors of your community papers and the commentators on your TV and radio stations. Show them new and exiting diamond pieces and they will talk about them.

No one ever won a war by taking potshots at the enemy, and no one ever won a market with sporadic and disassociated promotions. Consistent and continuous planned programs for promoting your store and diamonds do get results, do bring traffic into your store. For example, stage an annual Diamond Week, in which your advertising, windows and interior displays focus attention on the gem.

From this point on, it will be up to those who actually sell the diamonds to take advantage of the opportunities for sales created by your promotion efforts.

Selling At The Counter
You have studied your market and have stocked merchandise for those to whom you wish to cater. You have established your image, done your promotions, and attracted traffic into your store.

Now comes the payoff—selling at the counter.

Every diamond purchase is highly important to the purchaser, whether it be a quarter-carat or a five carat engagement ring, a gold pin with a single 10-point diamond, or a necklace with dozens of carats.

Therefore, every diamond customer must be treated individually. No matter what your store image—even pressure cooker—your diamond sales will be easier, surer, if you give the customer more individual treatment than you give customers for other merchandise.

There are three principal appeals on which the best diamond salesmen draw, sometimes only one to a sale, sometimes a combination of all three:

- Romance—a diamond is a gift of love and a diamond is forever.
- Information—a diamond is for real.
- Fashion—a diamond is for now.

These are more than appeals. Actually, each contributes to the background and the framework for the selling situation, whether the purchase is a diamond engagement ring or a diamond gift.

Selling With Romance
No two diamonds in the world are exactly alike. They are as individual as fingerprints. They are as unique as the love each man feels for his beloved, and she for him.

Diamonds are a miracle of nature, just as love is. The hardest of all minerals, they will endure forever. Unique in their structure, like little prisms, they will reflect all that is put into them, just as love will.

It is no wonder, then, that this jewel of such beauty and such meaning is the symbol of the single most important emotion known to man.

When a young couple in love enter your store in quest of the symbol of love, they are enjoying a very special emotional experience. Try to remember what it is like. Help them to find the very diamond that will capture and hold these moments for them forever.

You are a part of their adventure. So there’s no place in this scene for an insensitive salesman. You have to understand love, and in-love-ness. No one expects you to be gooey about it. Just have the empathy to take pleasure with the couple in search of their diamond. Be a happy jeweler.

A diamond room is part of selling with romance. There’s a certain togetherness when you and the couple are alone with the diamonds under consideration, away from the rest of the store. If your security arrangements permit your leaving them completely alone for the moment of final decision, so much the better.

Granted, price tags are not very romantic. But times have changed. It used to be a sign of consideration for his fiancée if the young man came to the store first to discuss the price range he could afford for an engagement ring. A general selection of stones was made in the acceptable price range and the boy would then bring in his fiancée for the final selection. But there is a growing trend in the other direction. An intense feeling of togetherness among young people today tends to make it unnecessary for the young man to shield his fiancée from the reality of price. Some young couples are vitally interested in price while others lean more toward style. Style is usually a better starting point, of course. Once you resolve the style you can easily determine the proper price range without upsetting the aura of romance.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

Why The Future Keeps Catching Us Out

Richard Watson explains why innovations succeed/fail + other viewpoints @ http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/innovation/watson/future-catching-out-092507.html

Masters Of Design

Fast Company profiles the new superstars of design 2007 + newcomers @ http://www.fastcompany.com/design

Useful links:
Yves Behar
Bob Greenberg
Sam Lucente
Paola Antonelli
Philippe Starck

Smell Test

Joan Raymond writes about the science of smell + other viewpoints @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20836711/site/newsweek/

Beatlemania

(via The Guardian) The Rolling Stone interview Audio: John Lennon speaks to Jann S Wenner in this historic interview, released as a series of podcasts.

The Great Pretender: http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2155883,00.html
Official Beatlemania: http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2155884,00.html
Paradise Lost. Reality regained: http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2155885,00.html

I thoroughly enjoyed the articles. They are unique reflections of people who knew John Lennon's character.

Lock, Stock And Chinoiserie

The Economist profiles Fortnum & Mason + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9854799

Chinese Photography: Beyond Stereotypes

Barbara Pollack writes about China's new generation of artists + photography, a recent development in China’s relatively young contemporary art history + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1485

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Budget For Communication: A great many media of communication are available to jewelers for communicating with their markets and promoting store traffic. Some are relatively inexpensive, except for thought and ingenuity. Some are relatively expensive and require the help of experts in the field.

Some jewelers spend as little as 2 percent of their annual gross sales on advertising and promotion. Others spend as much as 7 percent. The average seems to run about 5 percent.

This is for general and continuing promotion. When some jewelers want to try for an additional and new market, they estimate their possible sales and then set aside an extra 5 percent, or more, of that figure, as the budget for the special promotion.

Windows
Virtually every jeweler has a window, and this is your least expensive medium of communication because it is built in. It tells your story to the passerby, and it can be a highly effective medium for promoting store traffic.

There is no general rule about windows, except that they should be consistent with the image that you are presenting. Some jewelers get excellent results with highly dramatic windows in which only a few jewels are featured. Others load their windows with merchandise, and they get excellent results too.

But windows should be changed regularly. If you present the same merchandise, or even the same type of merchandise, in the same way, week after week, you tend to create an impression that you aren’t very imaginative.

Advertising
In some communities, the most effective medium is a daily newspaper. In others, weekly newspapers are more effective than the dailies.

A woman’s TV program can be an effective medium, and so can a TV news program. In some communities, a ‘People Speak’ type of radio program that lasts for two or three hours at night can be highly effective. Young people usually listen to disc jockey programs, whatever the time of the day.

One jeweler gets his best results from advertising in the movie theater down the street from his store. Another maintains that the outdoor theater is the only place for him to advertise.

In college communities, some jewelers get good results with complimentary ads in the campus publications. Others get even better results with selling ads.

When selecting media for advertising, you should ask three important questions. Do they fit within my budget? Do they reach the markets I am trying to reach? Does my use of them build traffic for my store? If you can afford an advertising agency to help you answer these questions, so much the better.

Whatever advertising media you choose, make sure that your windows and counter displays follow the same theme. When advertising attracts customers, windows and counters should keep reminding them of that attraction.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

Platoon

Greatest Opening Film Lines (Platoon - 1986):
There are times since when I’ve felt like a child born of those two fathers. But be that as it may, those of us who did make it have an obligation to build again, to teach others what we know, and to try with what’s left of our lives to find a goodness and meaning to this life.

Coffee Notebook

Sanjay Gupta writes about caffeine, its unique special effects improving--temporarily--cognitive function (s) + the common symptoms when taking in too much caffeine + other viewpoints @ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1663847,00.html

Who Says Quitters Never Win?

Wray Herbert's total internal reflection @ We’re Only Human… blog

Useful link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20894499/site/newsweek

Everybody Must Get Stoned

Anoothi Vishal writes about the biggest trend in colored stones and jewelry: mix and match concepts + the new cultural spin + gemstone basics + other viwepoints @ http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?autono=298836&leftnm=5&subLeft=0&chkFlg=

The Most Erotic Artworks

Carly Berwick writes about eroticism in art + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1455

The Beethoven LifeGem® Diamond

Here is an interesting spin-off via High Pressure High Temperature (HPHT) to create diamond (s) from Ludwig van Beethoven’s hair. This could be a new collector's market. There will be more celebrity diamonds via High Pressure High Temperature technique (s).

Useful link:
http://lifegem.com/secondary/BeethovenLifeGem.aspx

The Missionary Mogul

Zev Chafets writes about Lev Leviev’s ever-expanding business empire + his link to Chabadniks, adherents of the Brooklyn-based Hasidic group Chabad — fundamentalist, missionizing, worldly and centered on the personality and teachings of the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe + his Russian connection + other viewpoints @ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16Leviev-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Promoting Store Traffic: Store traffic is the product of communication with your potential market. The basic elements of that communication are what you are—that is, your store image—and what you say—that is, how you present your diamonds.

Your store image is a prime factor in the promotion of your business. You cannot be too careful in building it. Furthermore, you must see it as your customers actually see it, not just as you expect them to see it.

Not all jewelers can present the same image, and they shouldn’t even try. The main thing is to hit a happy medium. Whether your store is four stories high or only ten feet wide, whether your sales numbers a hundred or just you, you can establish a store image that will appeal to the groups you want for your main market without alienating the others.

Décor is important for attracting today’s modern minded consumer. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive, nor does it have to be completely new. Just a touch here and there can show that you are aware of—and keeping up with—current thinking in decorating.

More and more jewelers are giving special attention to lighting. Very bright lights throughout the store help to keep traffic moving for fast turnover. A lower level of lighting gives a more relaxed atmosphere. So a combination is most effective—subdued store lighting for relaxation—dramatic lighting for the display of merchandise.

A diamond room is important for the customers who prefer privacy. It need not be large; only a screened alcove will do, if it fits in with the rest of the store. But if you have a diamond room, save it for diamonds and customers; don’t use it as a catchall for things you want to put out of the way.

Finally, the sales attitude of your staff contributes to your image. People will shop where they like the owner and the sales people. They will like you if you are neither haughty nor overly familiar, if you are helpful and knowledgeable, not only about diamonds, but also about fashion and what’s going on in your community.

The best image that your store can present is one where you are more interested in helping the customer to buy what he wants than you are in selling what you want. When you accomplish both at the same time, that’s salesmanship.

Remember that sales are often the result of personnel who can help control the atmosphere of the store by being positive, polite, informative, patient and neat in appearance. And, most importantly, everyone should project the feeling that he wants the customer to be totally satisfied and that he cares about future business.

Your Diamonds
Diamonds mean different things to different people. Consider these five definitions:
- A diamond is a symbol of love.
- A diamond is an art object, a thing of beauty.
- A diamond is a status symbol, lending stature to its owner.
- A diamond is an ageless tangible, with a definite financial value that does not diminish with time.
- A diamond is a thing of fashion, an accessory, when it is set in an imaginative design.

All these definitions are true, and each can be a motivating factor for different people in your market. For example, an engagement diamond is a symbol of love for a young couple just starting their life together. For a successful couple celebrating their 25th anniversary with a large engagement ring, the diamond can still be a symbol of love; but it can also be a status symbol and an investment.

For a man buying a diamond pin for his wife’s birthday, the diamond can be a symbol of love. For a single woman buying a diamond pin for her own birthday, it can be a fashion accessory and an art object.

Love is the greatest single motivation for the purchase of diamonds. But the wise jeweler will also appeal to the other motivations under appropriate circumstances.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

A Day At The Races

Greatest Opening Film Lines (A Day at the Races - 1937):
Emily, I have a little confession to make. I really am a horse doctor, but marry me and I'll never look at any other horse.

I liked this one.

How Far Can You Go?

Linda Yablonsky writes about contemporary art vs sex + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1454

Girl With A Pearl

Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni profiles Victoire de Castellane and her jewelry + her Christian Dior connection + other viewpoints @ http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1659346_1659345_1658237,00.html

A Dangerous Game

(via Newsweek) Garry Kasparov's reflections on life, career, politics + chess vs real life + other viewpoints @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18986275/site/newsweek/

There's Nothing Better In Life Than Diamonds

(via The Guardian) I really enjoyed reading Charlotte Chandler's interview with Mae West + her unique reflections on life, men, Hollywood, diamonds + her interpretation of sex with love + what I liked most was this one:

What kind of 'life' do you look for in a man?
Fire. A man can be short and dumpy, but if he has fire, women will like him.

In the diamond industry, the term 'Fire' would be interpreted as dispersion, a unique optical property in diamond--it's life. So when Mae West talks about fire in men, it makes sense. For women, men without dispersion will be dull or inert.

Useful links:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2159152,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2154762,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2159227,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2159211,00.html

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Students: If yours is a college community, you have available the most exciting of all markets. However, the full potential of such a market will not be yours unless you understand what’s happening in the student’s lives and have the empathy to communicate with them and to provide the kind of merchandise that interests them.

Students are knowledgeable and demanding. They like to browse, because it’s entertaining for them. They like to ask questions, because that’s a form of entertainment, too. They like action and change. They move, and they like places and things that move also.

It has been estimated that the average college student has $3000 a year to spend after tuition, room, board and books. This makes the student market well worth cultivating. But you can lose it if you aren’t geared to the fashion, fun and quality that students expect. They’ll go to the jeweler who is so geared.

Engagement Diamonds And Diamond Gifts
The engagement diamond is a sure sale. With four out of give brides wearing diamond engagement rings, and with the number of marriages increasing every year, this is a sure and expanding market.

However, it is likely that too many jewelers overlook the fact that the engagement ring is only one expression of the consumer’s interest in diamonds. They neglect the possibilities for selling diamond jewelry.

Less than one in three wives has received a gift of diamond jewelry since her wedding day. Among single women the proportion of those owning diamonds is even smaller. Here is a great market for diamond jewelry, as gifts or as self-purchase.

The Competition
No study of a market is complete without a study of the competition. Many jewelers believe that their main competition is the jeweler in the next block or in another shopping center. It really isn’t, because when another jeweler sells a customer on the idea of diamonds he is broadening a base that can be beneficial to you as well.

Rather, your main competition come from other products, from such items as furs, automobiles, major appliances, even vacation trips. There must be a pattern of this type of competition in your community. Once you learn it, you can lick it.

This, then, is your potential market. It is the people from all walks of life with whom you can communicate to persuade them to buy diamonds from you. It is the engagement rings and diamond jewelry that you can sell them. It is the competitive products you must sell against.

Once you’ve studied all this, you’re ready to take the next step in selling diamonds.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

Design Notebook

Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.
Eliel Saarinen

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Robert Heinlein

Almost all quality improvement comes via simplification of design, manufacturing... layout, processes, and procedures.
Tom Peters

You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.
Walt Disney

Tea Notebook

Mr. Churchill, if you were my husband, I'd poison your tea! And if you were my wife, I would drink it!
Winston Churchill

A woman is like a tea bag, you can not tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.
Nancy Reagan

If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.
Japanese proverb

It's A Family Affair

Kate Betts writes about the 100-year-old diamond company, Kwiat + other viewpoints @ http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1659346_1659345_1658229,00.html

The Economics Of Human Behavior

Daniel Gross writes about Alan Greenspan + his new memoir, 'The Age of Turbulence' (see an excerpt here and an interview) + human behavior = psychology = anthropology = economic irrationality + other viewpoints @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20824935/site/newsweek

I liked it.

The Role Of A Lifetime

I found Michael Douglas's philosophy on work/family @ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20657189/site/newsweek interesting and insightful.

I liked it.

Matisse And The Nun

Rebecca Spence writes about Henri Matisse's friendship with Sister Jacques-Marie + the creation of the Chapel of the Rosary in Vence + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1947

The Tale Of Prince Raven Of Bangalore

Chaim Even-Zohar's fairy tale version of linking diamond industry personalities with Prince Raven was brilliant. http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) The Professionals: Traditionally, these people have been considered your best prospects for diamond jewelry. They are different. They spend easily. They are interested in new things.

Like the wealthy, they are interested in quality and service. They buy where they have confidence, and you must convince them that you are as professional in your calling as they are in theirs, if you are to win them as customers.

Many of the professionals—particularly the business executives—are highly mobile. They travel a lot, and so they can buy jewelry elsewhere if you don’t win their confidence. They are often transferred from one community to another as they climb the business ladder. So you should watch for and cultivate any professionals who move into your community.

Middle Management
Most of these are young people on the way up. They have good incomes, but they also have expenses for children and schooling and homes and entertainment.

Diamond jewelry fits into their way of life, but when they buy diamonds they want to get the most of their money. So you can appeal to them by showing them the versatility of diamonds; how the same piece can be worn as a different piece for different occasions.

Furthermore, these people tend to be group oriented. Sell one member of a group and you have pre-sold many others in it.

White Collar And Blue Collar
As pointed out earlier, the distinction between white and blue collars is fast disappearing. Members of both groups want beautiful things, just as members of other groups do, and with increasing incomes they can afford beautiful things. This is the mass market for diamonds.

If you are going to communicate with this market, you and your sales people should know—and share—the interests of its members. You should know how to talk to all of them and to each of them. You should show what merchandise appeals to them, and here generalities are useless because tastes vary from community to community. You should know the practicable price ranges—and they can run higher than you would think.

Some jewelers seem to be afraid to cater to the blue collar group lest they alienate their other customers. It is difficult to be all things to all people, but it is not impossible. You can serve a millionaire and a truck driver side by side, if you enjoy the confidence of each.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

Saint Augustine

The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.

How true!

About Music And Gemstones

Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music.
Angela Monet

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.
Sergei Rachmaninov

To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.
Aaron Copland

Music takes us out of the actual and whispers to us dim secrets that startle our wonder as to who we are, and for what, whence, and whereto.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Music fills the infinite between two souls.
Rabindranath Tagore

I think there is a link between music and gemstones. The moment you are able to see through the soul of colored gemstones/diamonds you realize that a lifetime is not enough.

Hannah And Her Sisters

Greatest Opening Film Lines (Hannah and Her Sisters - 1986):
God, she's beautiful. She's got the prettiest eyes. She looks so sexy in that sweater. I just want to be alone with her and hold her and kiss her, tell her how much I lover her, take care of her. Stop it, you idiot. She's your wife's sister.

I like this one.

Why Small Is Big

Linda Yablonsky writes about unique but intimately scaled sculptures by creative artists that are making a large impact in art arena + new ways of exploring the effect of form on space by different artists + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1946

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) Your Market Potential: You can start with the assumption that almost every woman and girl in your community wants to wear diamond jewelry. So your market is the people in your community with whom you can communicate.

But to be able to communicate with them, you have to know who they are and what makes them tick. Therefore, it would be a good idea for you to look at your community as though you had never seen it before. How does it make its living? What are its income levels? How does the social order break down into life styles and motivations?

These are the influences that will determine how these people look upon you and what they expect of you. These are the factors that can clue you on the slant of your promotions and displays and on the type of merchandise you should carry in your store.

I think that almost any community has six groups that can be good customers for diamonds:

The Wealthy: Is the wealthy class in your community a large one—or is it relatively small? Is it conservative? Or does it follow the current fashions? Do its members buy jewelry in the community? Or do they prefer to buy in larger cities or abroad?

A few wealthy customers can be a tremendous asset for even a fairly large jeweler. They can be counted upon for a fairly regular annual volume. And they exercise a certain natural leadership that will bring others to your store.

You don’t have to stock big ticket items to attract the wealthy. They are interested in quality and service. You can appeal to them with diamond pieces of good design and craftsmanship—in the traditional mode, if they are conservative—in the modern manner, if they are more adventurous. You can win their confidence by demonstrating your sure knowledge of diamonds.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

UniverSoul Circus

New Business Models: Oscar Raymundo writes about UniverSoul Circus + How An Independently Owned African-American Circus Made It To The Big Top + the unique experience the concept provides to family live entertainment+ the business with soul-factor + other viewpoints @ http://www.fastcompany.com/articles/2007/09/universoul-circus.html

Selling Diamonds

(via Diamond Promotion Service) I liked the concept. It's simple and effective. I also think it should work for colored stones + jewelry as well. The important thing here is being able to see through and connect the dots.

Selling is a fascinating occupation. When you sell diamonds, you can be proud of it. You can be proud of the product and proud of your sales know-how.

Almost anyone can be an order taker—that is, someone who is competent enough to accept money in exchange for any item selected by the customer. But to be a diamond salesman requires not only specific knowledge of diamonds but also specific knowledge of the professional art of building sales and creating customer satisfaction.

Selling diamonds requires that you take three steps:
1. Study your market potential
2. Promote store traffic
3. Follow through and sell at the counter.

All three steps are equally important. Studying your market potential tells you who your best customers are. Promoting store traffic brings them into your store. Once they are in the store, selling them diamonds at the counter puts money into the cash register.

Generally, store management assumes the responsibility for the first two steps. Then the sales staff is responsible for selling the individuals who enter the store, whether they are prepared to buy or are just looking.

So that you will function well in all these selling steps, it is useful to review and analyze each procedure from time to time. Your salesmen can’t do their best if your management doesn’t bring people into the store. Your management is wasting time bringing people into the store if your salesmen don’t follow through. It’s all part of one integrated effort.

Selling Diamonds (continued)

About Flowers

As a lotus flower is born in water, grows in water and rises out of water to stand above it unsoiled, so I, born in the world, raised in the world having overcome the world, live unsoiled by the world.
Buddha

If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.
Buddha

He is happiest who hath power to gather wisdom from a flower.
Mary Howitt

I liked this one.

Chocolate Wisdom

(via Elaine Sherman, Book of Divine Indulgences) Chocolate causes certain endocrine glands to secrete hormones that affect your feelings and behavior by making you happy. Therefore, it counteracts depression, in turn reducing the stress of depression. Your stress-free life helps you maintain a youthful disposition, both physically and mentally. So, eat lots of chocolate!

'Las cosas claras y el chocolate espeso.' (Ideas should be clear and chocolate thick.)
Spanish proverb

(via Lora Brody, author of Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet) Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty. Chocolate isn't like premarital sex. It will not make you pregnant. And it always feels good.

(via Forrest Gump in 'Forrest Gump' - 1994) Life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're going to get.

I liked this one.

An Actor's Journey: From Electrifying Youth To The Heart Of Darkness

Marlon Brando 1924 - 2004
(via The Guardian) Peter Bradshaw reviews Marlon Brando's passionate, most sensual, and most thrilling acting career + other viewpoints @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2162223,00.html

Why Have There Been No Great Women Comic-Book Artists?

Carly Berwick writes about the rightful place of women in the comic canon + Linda Nochlin's famous essay 'Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?' + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1924

Treated Flux-Grown Synthetic Rubies

It has been reported that flux-grown synthetic rubies using the Kyropoulos Method have been treated by inducing rutile 'silk' similar to those found in the natural untreated rubies + it's a spin-off product. The treatment (s) is detectable by experienced gemologist (s) + 3 carat plus size stones are already in the international market and sold without disclosure.

(via Tairus) Kyropoulos Method
Chemically pure Al2O3 powder is used as raw material. A unique technique of raw material preparation allows sapphires to grow with Al2O3 purity, up to 99.997%. The whole growth process (25 kg sapphire crystal) takes 14 days and is controlled automatically. Raw material is loaded into the growing station, where optimum conditions are maintained. The essence of the improved Kyropoulos method is that sapphire crystal sprouts deep into the melt and during the process of crystallization. The crystals become cylindrical-shaped due to the formation of shrinkage cavity. The occurrence of shrinkage cavity is due to the difference in the densities of the liquid and solid sapphire ( 3 and 4 gm3 accordingly). Maintenance of the required diameter of crystals is carried out by automatic displacement of the seed crystal (without rotation). During the process the crucible is fixed. The pace of the draw of the crystal is lower than the pace of crystallization. As a result, only a small layer adjoining the growing surface, not the whole crystal, is in the melt. Thermal gradient, which provides the growth of crystal is maintained by the furnace construction that gives wedge-shape form to the crystallization front. The melt in crucible is achieved through resistive heating. Decreasing capacity on a heater is carried out with the use of precision system for capacity adjustment. Coating of crystals occurs in the same zone of growth inside the crucible. Such method allows the crystals to grow with minimal mechanical stress.

Philip Roth

My God! The English language is a form of communication; conversation isn't just crossfire where you shoot and get shot at; where you've got to duck for your life and aim to kill; words aren't only bombs and bullets / no, they're little gifts, containing meanings.

I liked this one.

Al Pacino

I am a Al Pacino fan. He has played in some of the greatest movies of our lifetime. Here is an excerpt of an interview by Ken Burns @ http://www.usaweekend.com/03_issues/030126/030126pacino.html

Eastward Ho

The Economist writes about Russian art collected by two great exiled Russian musicians, Mstislav “Slava” Rostropovich and Galina Vishnevskaya + the trend of rising prices at auction sales when Russian Oligarchs and their acolytes are likely to be the dominant buyers + other viewpoints @ http://www.economist.com/daily/columns/artview/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9821091

(via BBC) Billionaire buys entire auction
Alisher Usmanov, the Russian billionaire pays £20m, for an art collection owned by late cellist Mstislav Rostropovich, days before it was due to be auctioned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/6999330.stm

Artful Traveler

Robin Cembalest writes about the mystery of Pariti + researchers findings + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1940

Argyle Pink Diamond Tender

It has been reported that the 23rd annual Rio Tinto Diamonds Argyle Pink Diamond Tender will be held in New York from Oct. 1 – 12, 2007, followed by two other sales in Perth (recently completed) and in Hong Kong (Sept. 18 – 28, 2007). The event will feature 65 of the world's rarest pink diamonds from the Argyle mine in Australia--the reliable source of pink diamonds. The colors range from vivid purplish reds, deep pinks, and grey violets of different intensity.

The rarity factor does play a role in Argyle Signature Stone's popularity. From its annual production (30 million +/- carats of rough) only about 8000-10000 carats of polished pink diamonds are produced. The experts select the best (65 carats) that are suitable for the Pink Diamond Tender. It is believed that the mine will run out by 2018. Here lies the investment option + rarity factor. The attendance is restricted to approximately 100 or so key clients from around the world who will have the opportunity to view diamonds in secret locations in Hong Kong, New York or Perth. There will be high security + the exact locations will be revealed to bidders only in the last minute. It will be very difficult to know the exact values of the pink diamonds due to confidentiality + other factors. But it's intriguing and this adds extra luster to Pink Diamond Tender.

How To Profit From Scarcity

I found 'How to Profit from Scarcity' via http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5776.html interesting and insightful.

Ted Turner

To be happy in this world, first you need a cell phone and then you need an airplane. Then you're truly wireless.

I liked this one.

The Art Of Profitability

Good Books/New Business Models: (via Emergic) I enjoyed reading Adrian Slywotzky’s The Art of Profitability. It's the pocket Bible on how to grow profits. Adrian shows 23 business models. I liked the conversational format (between an extraordinary teacher (David Zhao) and a senior executive (Steve, from a company called Delmore) ); it was fun reading + it packs a lot of thought into its chapters. Like the Bible concept, the author recommends to read one chapter a month, and then play with the ideas discussed. It's theory + practice + if executed/delivered properly = near success to success. It's a good book + fun tweaking with the concept (s).

From the book’s description:
What do Barbie dolls, Nokia phones, and American Express credit cards have in common? They all represent a powerful business model called pyramid profit. How about Intel, Microsoft, and Stephen King? They all exploit another model called value chain position profit. The Art of Profitability reveals the invisible but important governing principles that can mean the difference between business failure and success. Writing with wit and provocative insight, bestselling author Adrian Slywotzy tells the story of eccentric strategy teacher David Zhao and his young student. Each of the book's twenty-three chapters presents a lesson from the exuberant and always challenging master-and a profit paradigm that will open your mind to the many ways to make profit happen. You'll understand-from a different perspective-how your company and your competitors generate profit...which business models can be best applied to your profit-making strategy...what specific actions your organization can take in the next ninety days to improve its bottom line...and more. With scores of examples from today's global marketplace, a weekly assignment, and an eclectic business reading list ranging from Obvious Adams to Einstein's Dreams, THE ART OF PROFITABILITY invites anyone in business to engage in the lively exchange between mentor and protege. Enter the classroom. Discover the art. And learn which form of profitability will help your company succeed today and grow tomorrow.

Slywotzky was interviewed by the CEO Fresher about the book. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

What exactly is a profit model?
Wherever there is profit, you can find the essential forces that cause it to happen in a particular situation. Ohno at Toyota always said, "Ask 'Why?'" five times. By the fifth time, you'll start getting close to the real answer." You have to treat profitability as a puzzle and find out how it can happen for your business. I've chosen 23 profit models for this book and used illustrations and stories to show readers how they work.


What's the biggest mistake that companies are making that is preventing them from making a profit?
Profitability has to be understood by each company on its own terms. They can't just copy a profit model that worked for another company. They have to choose the right model after carefully analyzing their business, their customers, and their competitors.

How can a company stay profitable if their competitors keep coming in with copies of its products at lower prices?
Several ways. Intel uses a "time profit" model. When they are first to market with a new product, profits happen in the first four or five quarters and then drop down very quickly to almost zero after that. To make a profit, Intel must work hard to maintain a two to three-year lead over its competitors. Diffusing the product as instantly as possible helps extend their period of profitability.

Why does a company like SMH, makers of Swatch, bother selling all those low-profit margin plastic watches when the majority of their profit comes from their luxury lines of watches? Isn't that keeping the company less profitable?
You're right that the plastic Swatches made by the parent company SMH have low profit margins, but actually they are just as important to SMH's profitability as the high-margin watches. By producing the plastic watches, SMH builds a firewall against competitors who may try to produce cheaper imitations. They won't be able to develop the economics to move up the pyramid. This is called a Pyramid Profit Model because the profit-generating watches are at the top of the pyramid and the defensive plastic watches at the bottom. It turns out that 70% to 80% of SMH's profit is from the top of the pyramid, but the base of the pyramid is just as important.

I can see how you can sell the same product to different levels of customers at different prices, but can you sell the same product to the same customer at different prices?
It happens all the time. Coca-Cola, for example, sells you a soda for 8 to 10 cents per ounce in a vending machine, 10 or more cents per ounce at a restaurant, but only 2 cents per ounce at a grocery store. All of us as customers behave differently in different situations; therefore, to maintain profitability, prices should reflect different price sensitivities in different environments.

In an interview with the Wharton Journal, Slywotzky said:
Someone recently told me that if you want to understand leadership and you are in an organization, don't look up. Look in the mirror. And so, I think the first step is to understand that anybody with the right ideas can play a leadership role. I think the second thing is to have the right content and the right agenda. And I think a fantastic way to begin is to start asking the series of questions that are posed in The Art of Profitability. 1. How does profit happen? 2. How do we get everybody in our organization to understand it and act on it? 3. What's our next profit model? No profit model is forever. And no. 4 is the greatest achievement doesn't happen very often but it is phenomenally valuable. It is to ask the question, can we create a unique way of being profitable? Dell has done it. Starbucks has done it. Toyota has done it. It is most important to understand how profit happens and get everybody aligned behind it. But it is exceptionally valuable to ask the question; can we develop a unique profit model in our industry, so that we can compete differently from the others? And the rewards of that are just phenomenally high.

Wyeth’s World

Deidre Stein Greben profiles Andrew Wyeth + the artfulness and the ability to connect with familiar subjects + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1904

You Must Meet Goldfinger

2007: Joseph Goldfinger is from a different generation + an iconic figure in the diamond industry. I can imagine what was it like running a diamond business in the good old days. There are lessons to learn from the old fashioned diamond dealers because they had the intuition + special skills to be quiet international superstars of the diamond world. They knew how to mix and match the magic combination of relationship + transaction concept + luck in every deal. It's an art + gift from the gods.

(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:

Tel Aviv, London, New York, Tokyo—or somewhere else

“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they told me in London, when I said I was going to New York.

“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they told me in New York, when I said I was going to Israel.

“But you must meet Goldfinger,” they said in Antwerp, when I told them I was on my way to Tel Aviv.

Frankly, I thought they were all pulling my leg. For I had met Goldfinger through Ian Fleming some years ago: and Ian Fleming and I had had a bit of an encounter when he was writing his book about diamonds—but that’s another story. Anyhow I thought all my advisers were confused about the Ian Fleming books and that somehow Goldfinger had got mixed up with diamonds.

When I arrived in Tel Aviv I told my friend, Jona Hatsor, about Goldfinger, and Ian Fleming. “Of course, you must meet Goldfinger,” said Jona, “and he’s thoroughly mixed up with diamonds.” Quietly and patiently Jona explained that Mr Goldfinger was Israel’s Mr Diamond—a real, live Goldfinger who got a lot of fun out of the probability that when Ian Fleming wrote his book about diamonds he heard about Joseph Goldfinger and noted the name for yet another James Bond story. All this means that the real Joseph Goldfinger has a high sense of humor: for he is certainly not a prototype for a Fleming villain. He is different sort of person altogether.

In the end I did not meet Joseph Goldfinger. He’d gone off on one of his many peregrinations—from Tel Aviv to London, from London to New York, from New York to Tokyo and goodness knows where else. And so I had to ask somebody else to write and tell me something about Joseph Goldfinger of Tel Aviv, London, New York and the other places. This proved far more difficult than one would think, for when my special writer was in Tel Aviv, Joseph Goldfinger was in Tokyo or somewhere else. And so the pen-picture of this modern Gulliver, which I had so much wanted, reached the International Diamond Annual as the last article it was possible to include before the printing press started rolling: and even then, Mr Theodore Loevy, editor of ‘Israel Diamonds’, to whom we are indebted for this profile, wrote to say: “It has been rather difficult to write this article because….Mr Goldfinger was not in Israel when I returned from my trip.”

Joseph Goldfinger is a busy man (writes Theodore Loevy). And he shuns publicity. But that is not the reason why he has been rushing around the world since that day in early May when you asked for ‘a piece’ about him. It is his business that takes him round the world several times a year.

For Goldfinger is one of the truly international diamantaires of Israel. He’s got an astonishing brain. It can think on several different levels at one and the same time. For Joseph Goldfinger’s diamond business is on several different levels—and he has the truly wonderful capacity of being able to think about all these different levels simultaneously in relation to making overall dispositions and detailed orders for coordinated activities in several different parts of the world.

As an importer and dealer in rough diamonds—he is the third biggest customer of the ‘syndicate’—he has to assess the general market position and the state of the diamond industry as a whole; as the owner of polishing plants in Israel and in America, he must view these circumstances also from the manufacturing viewpoint; and as an exporter—with the whole world as his market place—he must balance trends and tendencies and fluctuations and bring them into a coordinated business strategy. And within that strategy he makes tactical dispositions at each level of his business.

Joseph Goldfinger is a businessman par excellence. He will work from morning to late evening in his offices—spacious and luxuriously furnished—on the thirteenth floor of Diamond Exchange in Ramat Gan. Cables, telephone calls and visitors stream into him from all over the world. Managers of his different enterprises come frequently to talk over specific problems. And almost ceaselessly he is examining parcels of polished diamonds with his quick, expert, appraising eye, while another level of his mind applies itself dictating letters or issuing instructions.

After a full day Joseph Goldfinger will seek his rather modest home—for essentially he is a modest man—and there his other personality emerges. He sips his glass of after-dinner tea while his visitor he serves with something ‘stronger’, as preferred. He will have glanced through the evening paper and will be ready to discuss the current issues of Israel and the world. He brings a benevolent but not uncritical viewpoint to such matters, for he has a keen sense of tradition and an appreciation of the eternal values derived from his religious upbringing. These strongly influence his actions and his thoughts.

As a young man Joseph Goldfinger studied at Yoshiva in Lithuania. When a little later he came to Palestine, he continued to attend religious institutions while earning a living as a teacher. In 1944, when the diamond industry came to Palestine, he found work in the trade. Two years later he became one of the first diamond industrialists in the country but his initial operations were on a very small through lack of adequate raw material. But vigor, courage and optimism won through and in 1949 he was able to obtain his first sight. He continued to expand his business with hard work and ingenuity: he started importing rough from a variety of sources—not merely for his own manufacturing operations but also for reassortment and sale to other manufacturers.

With the development of this side of his business he came to be included in the list of syndicate’s dealers. This was in 1962—the real turning point in his career. Now his interests extended to every phase of the diamond industry and trade—from the import of rough to polishing to exporting. Progressively his business developed its many-sided character: and, of course, its strength lies in this very ‘spread’, which is an effective insulation against the fluctuations that do arise in different sectors from time to time.

At the same time—and this is another aspect of his strength as a businessman—he is always looking for new business ventures, for new opportunities , for new outlets—maybe, off the beaten track. He likes facing challenges, especially new challenges.

“There are no bad times in the diamond business,” he stresses. “There are always new possibilities. But you have to look for them. You have to try new ways. You have always to balance possible risks against prospective gains.”

When he talks about his business policy, Joseph Goldfinger becomes animated. His face lights up, his eyes shine—and he is the essence of the venturesome pioneer to whom success come naturally.

“In this business one has to be cautious and yet enthusiastic—innovative and imaginative,” says Goldfinger. “Cautious, yes; but not in the conventional way.”

Joseph Goldfinger believes strongly in his own assessments. Much of the diamond business involves credit. Where credits are involved, Goldfinger relies on his own personal impressions of the man or the company he is dealing with. He sizes people up. He recalls that there have been not a few cases of his having given credit to people who had been refused credit by others. And he says, he has never been disappointed. “Bad debts in my business are practically non-existent. I’m a cautious risk taker.” What Goldfinger finds out is not only whether the man is honest and knows his trade, but also something about his personal life, his family life, even about his customer’s wife. Mr Goldfinger wisely comments that a man’s wife is certainly a dominant factor in the business behavior of Mr Everyman.

Goldfinger extends his spirit of ‘cautious risk-taking’ to his activities as a buyer. Diversification has enabled him, for instance, to purchase the whole output of one supplier without having to adapt such purchases to his immediate needs. He is able to take calculated risks.

At least once a month Joseph Goldfinger is ‘on the road’. The DTC offices in London are as familiar to him as his own offices in New York, where his business is in very good hands. With the growing importance of the Far East, Goldfinger travels frequently to the Orient. This is, he says, ‘the new and coming America.’

Gold Diggers Of 1933

Greatest Opening Film Lines (Gold Diggers of 1933 - 1933):

Gone are my blues and gone are my tears. I've got good news to shout in your ears. The long-lost dollar has come back to the fold. With silver you can turn your dreams to gold. So...

Shooting The Messenger

Chaim Even-Zohar writes about the emerging national debate between diamond manufacturers and unions in Botswana + the media reactions + other viewpoints @ http://www.idexonline.com/portal_FullEditorial.asp

A House Without Right Angles

Aleksandra Shatskikh writes about Konstantin Melnikov + the way he translated his innovations of the visual artist (s) into architecture + Russian art tradition + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1903

When You're Famous You Run Into Human Nature In A Raw Kind Of Way

(via The Guardian) I found the article on Marilyn Monroe by Richard Meryman @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/story/0,,2155615,00.html interesting and insightful.

Jewelers Are Drawn To An Already Gilded Avenue

Jane L Levere writes about the new trend among high-end retailers to be at Madison Avenue (the perception: the best location for a jeweler is right next to a jeweler + clustering tends to focus consumers on the category + it leads to commercial success for everyone) + other viewpoints @ http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/realestate/commercial/12jewel.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Dumbfounded

2007: This Harry Winston story is brilliant.

(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:

There is one story Harry Winston enjoys telling more than others, because he is a great believer in fate.

It concerns the Hope Diamond, which has a fascinating history and has acquired notoriety for bringing bad luck to its private owners. Harry Winston defied the Hope Diamond legend and trusted his own fate by buying the diamond from the estate of the late Mrs Evelyn McLean for one million dollars. This was in 1947.

Let Harry tell his story here:
“A little later I was in Lisbon with my wife, Edna. As our two sons were still quite young, Edna and I decided to return home on separate planes, as people with children often do. So Edna took off for New York on schedule on the Friday evening and I booked to follow the next day.

“Edna’s plane landed at Santa Maria, in the Azores for the usual refueling. Some slight engine trouble was discovered and there was a delay of some hours. The passengers chatted amongst themselves and it soon got around the lounge that Mrs Harry Winston was a passenger. One man refused to continue the journey and asked to be booked on the next plane.

“On my way to the airport the next evening I was handed a cablegram from Edna announcing her safe arrival. I put it in my pocket. On the plane I took a sedative and had a pleasant nap, with nobody in the adjoining seat to disturb me. On reboarding the plane at Santa Maria, after refueling , I found a very talkative man in the seat next to me. He told me how he had escaped from traveling on the same plane as the wife of the owner of Hope Diamond.

“I’m not superstitious, he claimed, ‘but why should I tempt fate? I decided to change planes and here I am. Besides, there was engine trouble on that plane.’

“He talked and talked for quite a time but eventually grew quite enough for me to begin to drop off to sleep again. Then his voice broke through to me: ‘I wonder if that plane arrived safely.’

“I could not resist it. I fished the cable out of my pocket and passed it across to him to read. The he gazed dumbly at me. He never opened his mouth again that night. I slept well.”

First Japanese Diamond Unearthed

(via Kyodo News) Japan Times writes about recent discovery of diamond (s) by researchers in Ehime Prefecture, Japan + other viewpoints @ http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20070911a4.html

Crimes And Misdemeanors

Greatest Opening Film Lines (Crimes and Misdemeanors - 1989):

We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale, most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.

I liked this one.

Pearl S Buck

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.

Subodh Gupta: Cow Dung, Curry Pots, And A Hungry God

Pernilla Holmes writes about Indian contemporary artist (s) + the Indian perspective + the way the artist (s) connect with the world (via gentle humor and provocation) + other viewpoints @ http://www.artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=2325&current=True

Smaller Houses Can Win Big

Kelly Devine Thomas about smaller auction houses + the way they do business + other viewpoints @ http://artnews.com/issues/article.asp?art_id=1898

King Of Raconteurs

2007: I am a Harry Winston fan. I collect articles written on Harry Winston because they are truly priceless. He has a remarkable way of telling real stories + he is one of a kind jeweler who had the fortune and good luck to meet interesting people from around the world. He is the king of diamonds. It's educational and entertaining.

(via International Diamond Annual, Vol.1, 1971) A N Wilson writes:

Prince Of Diamonds
Some anecdotes of Harry Winston

Harry Winston is not merely the prince of diamond merchants. He is a king amongst raconteurs. His repertoire of anecdotes about diamonds is imperial. Prince and potentate, with diamonds in their crowns, have been his clients and his confidantes. Both the crowned and uncrowned heads of Europe and of Asia wear the jewels that Harry Winston found and sold to them. And a great sparkle of joy, as brilliant as the gleam from his latest tiara, shines in Harry’s eyes as he turns to tell you his next story of how he sold a whopping big diamond t o the King of Siam. The great thing about Harry Winston is that he enjoys himself. When he recalls an anecdote, he lives again every moment of it and he enjoys the fun of it all over again.

I sat entranced in his secluded office in New York’s Fifth Avenue as Harry Winston responded to my request for some of his best stories.

“You know,” he said. “I sometimes feel I’m a bit of a fool. When I get up in the morning and shave and look in the mirror, I often say to myself ‘What sort of a crass idiot are you? Here is a crass idiot if ever there were one! Why do you do this? Why do you go on doing this? Why do you fret yourself employing three hundred people in that building of yours and another whole floor of them across the way and something like 3000 cutters in several different countries—why do you do it? Harry, there’s a sickness in you.’

“And, of course, it is so, it is a sickness. But it does not need any medicine. It is in the blood.”

You can sense that sly humor and the fun in this man as he talks like that. But you can also recognize the enjoyment he gets out of diamonds and out of what he has done and still does with them.

“There it is—it’s in the blood. I rejoice in this. I love diamonds. They are my life. And this is how I live still—a little bit of madman, no doubt, as some people will say: but I’m quite content to be like this, so long as I am enjoying my life as much as I do.”

Whisper has it that Harry has turned seventy. Nobody really knows and he would not let me into the secret. But whatever his age, he’s still a dynamic man. He still does a great deal of selling himself, dealing personally with clients of long standing. He likes to go on exercising the long-range judgment, the experience and the intuition which, together, have made him the greatest diamond merchant in the world.

“You’ve got to have ‘guts’ and you’ve got have ‘wits’ in this damned business,” he says. And he always returns to the point in the conversations I have had with him, that it is no use dealing in this diamond business unless you have a love of diamonds and of gems as a whole. Farouk of Egypt was one of Harry Winston’s clients. Farouk was always a great purchaser of diamonds, occasionally for cash, more often on credit.

“Farouk was an interesting man himself. We had many amusing and exciting conversations together,” recalls Harry. “As a king and a client I thought he must be reliable, for the he had the wealth of Egypt at his command.”

On one occasion—in 1951—Winston made a deal with Farouk, who bought a 700000 dollar emerald. It was for Farouk’s new bride, Queen Narriman. Soon afterwards Harry and his wife, Edna, went with their children to the south of France for their usual holiday. Farouk and Queen Narriman were at Cannes and they invited the Winstons to dinner. The beautiful Narriman wore the emerald. It was a very pleasant and happy occasion. Then the Winstons reciprocated by inviting the royal couple to dinner at their lovely home on a promontory looking out over the Mediterranean. Farouk sent his bodyguards to surround the residence and his coffeemaker to superintend the production of the meal.

“It was all great success and, as things do on such occasions, proceedings continued well into the wee small hours. Sometime about four in the morning, the early dawn was coming and Farouk and I walked out on to the terrace. The morning star was there in the east—in glowing brilliance. At that time I happened to have a magnificent diamond, which I had called ‘The Star of the East’. It was a great gem—a pear-shape of great beauty, of the finest color and finest quality. Eighty-three carats! I loved it dearly. I told Farouk about it. And one thing led to another—the stars in Narriman’s eyes—and Farouk said he would like to buy the diamond. We settled on $1,125,000.”

As Harry Winston described the romantic scene, you could just see and hear it all happening.

“I had no reason to doubt the man,” continued Harry Winston. “After all, he was a king—and I had done business with him before. So I agreed to sell and Farouk was delighted. The diamond was delivered to him. I’d said to Farouk ‘I understand your circumstances at the moment—you can pay me at your convenience.’

“A year went by—and the king’s convenience had not turned up. One day in July 1052, I was at my country home outside New York. A call came through. It was from Alexandria. Farouk was on the line. He said he had a 55-carat emerald which had belonged to Catherine the Great. In view of his debt to me of nearly two million dollars, he wondered whether I would have arbitration about the value of this emerald and accept it in part payment of his debt to me. And then the line went dead.”

Later on Winston heard the story of what had happened. The American Ambassador to Egypt, Mr Jefferson Cafferey, had gone to Alexandria to say farewell to Farouk on his abdication and departure from Egypt in the royal yacht. As Mr Cafferey took his leave, Farouk pressed into the Ambassador’s hand the Catherine the Great emerald. It came to America in the diplomatic pouch, with the message from Farouk that “rest will follow”. But “The Star of the East” did not follow—nor did its equivalent in cash.

In due course, Farouk set up his court in exile in the Isle of Capri. He left Harry Winston know that ‘The Star of the East’ had been left behind in the palace safe in Cairo. Winston took legal action, which led to a search of the safe deposits in the palace. But the diamond was missing. Then legal action was taken against the Egyptian government and Winston won his case. But Colonel Nasser ignored the court’s injunction and not a sou was paid. Some time later Harry was at a party in the south of France where he met a cousin of Farouk’s, who had been Minister of Finance during Farouk’s regime. The cousin said that Farouk, in exile, had nevertheless been getting a lot of gold out of Egypt, shipping out his assets quite freely. This alerted Winston to the possibility of recouping some of the debt Farouk owed.

“I have since employed a very smart investigator,” remarked Harry Winston, ‘and the story is not ended.”

One immediately understands from the way Harry says this that some quite remarkable development can be expected to happen in the quite near future.

But what a setting all this is for one of the greatest best sellers of all time! There are all the ingredients—a king, a beautiful queen, a great world famous merchant, a royal honeymoon at Cannes, a mansion on a promontory overlooking the Mediterranean, the royal coffeemaker, the royal yacht at Alexandria, the American ambassador, the diplomatic pouch, the Isle of Capri, beautiful and historic emeralds, special agents—and, at the center of them all, this lovely 83 carat pear-shaped gem, ‘The Star of the East’. I had always thought these things were the figments of an imagination as lively as the late Ian Fleming’s—but no, here they are in a real life drama. Stories like this bubble out of Harry Winston, if you can get him in the mood and with the time to tell them. I egged him on.

“Yes,” he said, “there was also a certain king of Saudi Arabia—a man of very, very great wealth—from oil, you know. He had a very large court—four wives and something like eighty concubines. He was a considerable exponent of the art of love. They were all young girls. A connoisseur he was. The king became a client of mine—he needed many jewels.

“I told the king at one of our meetings that I had a diamond of perfect quality—a 62-carat pear-shape—but it was not for sale. I loved it so much I’d done something I’d never done before—I’d called it ‘the Harry Winston Diamond’. The king became excited. He said:

“Harry, I must have it’ and he went on insisting. And, anxious lest I should change my mind, after I had been persuaded to sell, he asked that the diamond be wrapped up there and then and handed over to him.”

Eighteen months later the king visited Boston from Saudi Arabia for treatment to the retina of an eye.

“I was summoned to Boston to see the king. He needed more diamonds and I sold him two million dollars worth of jewelry. And when we had concluded our deals, the king passed over the table a small parcel. It was in the familiar wrapping of our house. It had not been opened. I recognized it.

“Harry,” said the king. “I hope you will credit me with this against the jewels I’ve just bought from you.” I was astonished. “But you can’t give this back,” I said in my amazement, “It’s the most beautiful diamond.” The king looked at me quizzically.

“Harry,” he said, “I’m fond of living, just as you are. I want to go on living. If I gave this stone to one of my four wives, well, my life would not be worth a moment’s purchase.”

“As I was taking my leave, the king asked: “By the way, Harry, if you have three other gems just like that, let me know.”

Harry Winston knows a good story when he has one, and he would certainly not paint the lily.

“But Shakespeare also says, ‘tis very silly
To gild refined gold, or paint the lily.”

But there is a sequel to the story of the king of Saudi Arabia that I think justifies its being added here.

“I always believe in fate,” said Harry Winston. “There’s a great deal of luck in this world of ours. But it’s not all luck. Foresight and a lot of other things go into it too.”

“Anyhow, about three weeks later, in the normal course of business, I was asked to value some estate jewelry. It had belonged to the late Mary Byron Foy, a daughter of Jack Chrysler, the motor car tycoon. I opened the parcel and, to my amazement, I found what appeared to be an exact replica of ‘the Harry Winston Diamond’, the 62-carat pear-shape the King of Saudi Arabia had handed back to me. I rubbed my eyes. But it was a diamond all right—not a replica. It was a perfect match. I called for my diamond to compare the two. They were perfectly matched. But mine was 62 carats and this was 60 carats. The difference was so infinitesimal—it was negligible. They had to be a pair of earrings—they were made for each other. I bought the Foy diamond and made a pair of earrings. “In due course some old clients of mine got to hear that I had something special. They were Mr and Mrs Killam, of Canada. When Mrs Killam came to see them, she burst out: ‘These are mine’. And so they were—immediately.

“If you believe in fate, here’s a perfect example of how it can work to your advantage most unexpectedly.”

And then Harry began philosophizing a bit. “It’s not just fate or luck. You have to work hard—and work hard following your fate, pursuing your luck and taking advantage of what comes your way. You need imagination, perception, intelligence, perseverance—and luck. And you must know what you are doing.

“There’s something about jewels—they grow on you. You get to love diamonds, you get to love jewels—emeralds, rubies too. You love them for themselves. You life wraps itself round them. And, although it sometimes breaks my heart to do so, I enjoy selling diamonds. I find it a very absorbing and entertaining pastime.”

When I remarked that Harry Winston shared with the late Sir Ernest Oppenheimer a love of diamonds for themselves, Harry Winston’s personal assistant, Jill Ciraldo, chimed in: “You know, Mr Winston plays with diamonds as if they were toys.” And Harry nodded—delighted.