GemThoughts

I have been posting to this blog for ten years, and I have to say it has been fun.  But now it is time for me to move on, to end these years of venting and commenting on this constantly changing landscape of the jewelry business. I first wrote a published article in 1993, at the urging of George Holmes of JCK Magazine, after he and I had a chat at a trade show about the business.  My first article was about the Internet.  I stated that if one does not learn how to drive on the "electronic highway" one will be run over.  I guess I was a couple of decades too early!  I often wrote for JCK back then, and for years again later on, courtesy of Peggy Jo Donahue when she was editor, with a monthly column I called Our World.   And I wrote for other publications the world over at various times. When publishing long-form paid analytical articles for magazines fell out of favor, I thought I would open this blog, which I did on January 7, 2011, suggesting that it could be a place for ope

 Here is the list of issues we have been covering — we are up to number 10, our last. The Gig Economy Millennials Climate Change Consolidation and/or Decline Natural Diamonds vs Lab-Grown Banking Image  Demographics Retail Evolution Industry Structure _________________________________________ I come now to the last of the posts covering ten aspects of the jewelry business that I see as important for us to consider.  Of course, I started all of this over a year ago, well before we knew the word Covid.  All trends move along- that is part of the definition of that word.  But I took my time, being well immersed in this business, one which rarely moves along faster than a snail. The jewelry business has been around for thousands of years.  Some technologies have remained essentially the same.  Other technologies have enhanced and broadened manufacturing, and, in the process, have made the distribution and selling of jewelry more complex, more inter-reliant, and more regional, if not global