Here’s What Social Networking Is All About
Posted on | July 11, 2009 | 4 Comments
I never claim to be a Social Media “Evangelist” (whatever that means) like all the whako’s on twitter, but my brother-in-law, David, (who happens to be the CFO down here at Samuelson’s) got a Facebook response that really sums it up. He posted a link to our Samuelson’s Diamonds Fan Page on his profile and said, “Become a Fan”. Plain and simple. Below is the response from a friend:
“I am a fan. I will say pre FB, who would have thought I would be a fan of a jewelry store I have not even been to. Or even just a jewelry store for that matter..Yet I know the history of the store, and watched the footage. Prince on the big screen etc..Even Ron’s Strat…
PS..Ron, go for a Gretch Nashville next…Heaven on Earth!”
There you go. It’s not about shoving product down people’s throats. It’s not about selling yourself all the time. It’s about being yourself and showing everyone your brand and what YOU are all about. Whether it’s next week or in 10 years, if this guy is ever in the market for a diamond, I think I’ll be on his list. And even better, maybe we’ll have a jam session!
Tags: diamonds > facebook > facebook fan page > gretch > social media > social networking > stratocaster > twitter
Happy 4th of July!
Posted on | July 4, 2009 | No Comments
Happy 4th everyone – check out this cool video from Jerry, Bobby and Los Lobos. Enjoy!
Tags: 4th of JUly > bob weir > fourth of july > independence day > jerry garcia > los lobos
Diamond Market Report
Posted on | July 3, 2009 | 2 Comments
Like other financial and commodities markets, today’s diamond market is very volatile and unpredictable. A lot of companies going into Chapter 11. That being said, it’s a GREAT TIME to buy or to invest in diamonds. They will be back! The market for super high end colored diamonds is still strong and bridal is doing well. It’s the fashion jewelry and designer brands that are taking the hit. If you’re selling luxury and not value, you’re in trouble. Bottom line is that CASH IS KING. If you’re a jeweler and you’re not paying cash for your diamonds, then you won’t be able to compete on price. The days of memo are over and the days of credit are over too. The credit issue is what got these big companies in trouble to begin with. Now they’re all sorry that they gave retailers goods with flexible terms. Better to take less money and get paid if you ask me. Here’s a great article by Victoria Gomelsky from National Jeweler about the diamond market and of course it opens with a quote from yours truly 🙂
Recession brings glut of diamonds, but few buyers
Baltimore–Last year, Ron Samuelson, chief executive of Samuelson’s Diamonds in Baltimore, bought an 8.5-carat brownish-yellow round diamond mounted in a men’s nugget ring from a customer who was seduced by the “sell your jewelry” offer on the store’s Web site.
“It was a big, ugly stone,” Samuelson recalls. “When we showed it to our cutter, he said, ‘Yeah, I could make this into a fancy yellow.'”
The resulting diamond, a 6.86-carat fancy-yellow radiant, is now part of the store’s inventory, and Samuelson is confident that when he eventually sells the stone, it will net him a tidy profit.
“I’ve almost eliminated my need for diamond dealers,” Samuelson says. “For every one person who wants to buy a diamond, 20 want to sell.”
As a comment on supply and demand in the high-end diamond trade, the Samuelson’s transaction is fitting though hardly anomalous. On Manhattan’s 47th Street, it happens countless times a day.
From the mines to the retail trenches, the perpetual scarcity that defined the business and fueled its tremendous growth over the past five years has, since last fall, morphed into an unfamiliar abundance: so many goods, so few willing buyers.
Take, for example, the market for large, quality diamonds–specifically, the impressive but ultimately replaceable stones in sizes of, say, 10 or 12 carats (not the 40-carat, D-flawlesses or rare vivid-blue diamonds that appear only at auction). A year ago, such stones were impossible to find and came with sticker prices that many described as speculative. Today, they languish on the ultimate buyer’s market. Prices, while said to be firming, are still well below their mid 2008 peak. The auctions are selling them as “real values.”
It’s a sign of these crazy times that not even the Russians are interested.
“We’re not in a crisis because in a crisis, everything goes to hell and comes back,” diamond industry analyst Martin Rapaport, chairman of the Rapaport Group, said during a presentation at BaselWorld. “This is not that, because nothing will be the same. Forces beyond our control are changing the diamond and jewelry industry.”
Citing culprits that contributed to last year’s financial ruin, which resulted in “30 trillion dollars going to hell in a bucket over the last six months,” Rapaport ticked off plummeting real estate prices, soaring unemployment rates and Bernie Madoff.
“Does that affect whether people want to buy diamonds? Duh,” Rapaport said.
The drastic change in consumer sentiment has thrown the diamond industry, like all luxury businesses, into an unprecedented predicament. Crammed full of goods, the pipeline has been in virtual gridlock since last fall, when luxury consumers decided, seemingly en masse, to stop spending. Retailers slashed prices on their holiday merchandise but to no avail. Jewelry continued to literally gather dust in showcases.
“From retailers to producers, it’s hard to think of a more difficult five or six months,” De Beers Botswana Chairman Stephen Lussier says. “We’ve had other crises that impacted one segment of the industry but this one has been universally challenging.”
The rich get poorer
By now, the events that led to such an equal opportunity downturn are permanently imprinted upon the collective consciousness: The United States officially slipped into recession in December 2007, after years of deregulation and chronic risk-taking by the masters of the universe who had created, in effect, a global Ponzi scheme built upon illusory profits and questionable investments.
Throughout the spring and early summer of 2008, however, alarms bells only seemed to ring in the mass market. The trade’s highest echelons claimed immunity to the deteriorating economy, even as signs that things were seriously amiss (Iceland, anyone?) grew difficult to ignore.
It took the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy on Sept. 15 for the biggest spenders to finally grasp that even their rarefied sector of the marketplace could not provide shelter from the storm. Unlike past recessions, which tended to leave the super-wealthy unscathed, this one actually seemed to have the fat cats in its crosshairs.
Sales of luxury yachts, private jets, complicated Swiss watches and, of course, diamond jewels immediately registered the effects of the new consumer mood. A 60 percent decline in fourth quarter U.S. retail sales at Harry Winston (among others) was further proof that a paradigm shift was in progress.
“Luxury is the easiest thing for anyone to cut back on, and jewelry is the ultimate luxury item,” says Pam Danziger, president of Unity Marketing, a consumer insights firm that specializes in the luxury consumer mindset. “People are making a huge adjustment fueled by the media, their own experiences. There’s a bit of leftover guilt from all that spending. These trends were already in the market, making the affluent more careful about their spending. Recession was the tipping point.”
With retail sales down anywhere from 5 to 80 percent after the holidays, wholesale buying largely came to a standstill. It was a simple solution to a crisis of liquidity and retailers embraced it wholeheartedly.
“We’ve got a lot of inventory and haven’t had to fill in as we did last year,” says Brad Marks, vice president of I W Marks Jewelers in Houston. “Vendors have been very good about understanding that things are not moving.”
The one exception, of course, is bridal. Marks, like almost every other jeweler who carries a selection of bridal jewelry, hasn’t had to cut back on that portion of his inventory.
Based on how little actual trade has gone on over the past half-year, Las Vegas market week will be a crucible for the industry. Although many retailers interviewed by National Jeweler at press time said they plan to attend the shows, there is little indication that they will revert to their old spending habits. In fact, if anecdotal evidence is to be believed, sales to retailers won’t pick back up until fall, when it will be easier to estimate how much new inventory the holidays will require.
The companies most vulnerable to the new business-as-usual are jewelry manufacturers, designers and diamond dealers who rely on sales to retailers. Case in point: Doris Panos, the couture designer who filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in April. Not only have customers stopped buying, but banks have stopped lending, leaving them, as far as cash and credit are concerned, on dangerously thin ice.
So what does this say? It’s a great time to buy not just for me, but for consumers. It’s the people that take advantage of real values in this market that will come out smelling like roses in the end. There are sooo many deals out there and I can’t get enough of them, so if you like diamonds now’s the time!
Tags: commodities > diamond buyers > diamond market > diamonds > fancy colored diamonds > martin rappaport > yellow diamonds
Annoying Bluetooth Talkers
Posted on | June 27, 2009 | No Comments
I’m just as guilty as the next guy for checking my phone every five seconds, but the Bluetooth talking out load is so annoying. Here’s how Larry David deals with it. Think about doing this next time you’re listening to a person talking really loud on their phone. A classic scene:
Demo of 426 West Baltimore Street
Posted on | June 20, 2009 | No Comments
Well this morning it was reality. Randy the demo guy came with his Bobcat and smashed through the front of our old store at 426 West Baltimore Street. It wasn’t easy to watch for me and I know it wasn’t easy for my Dad. We’ve been there since 1972, the year I was born. It’s the third move in our 87 year history. Let’s hope that the next 37 years are as good. Check out the video of this “bitter-sweet” moment:
Tags: baltimore > baltimore street > demo > demolition > samuelson's > westside redevelopment
My Advice to Mark Zuckerberg
Posted on | June 13, 2009 | 3 Comments
On another Facebook note, I’ve been following the story of Holocaust denial groups allowed on Facebook, and after the recent killing in DC at the Holocaust Museum it’s resurfaced. Here’s a link to Brian Cuban’s open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook. I agree with Brian on this one. Here’s my take on it. Zuckerberg is Jewish. He’s listed as Atheist on his Wikipedia profile, but if this were 1942 in Eastern Europe, he’d be on his way to Auschwitz just like the rest of us. I’ll forgive the fact that he scheduled his Vanity URL auction on Friday night, so observant Jews had ZERO chance of getting their URL until Saturday night. Hey, I eat lobster so I got mine. But as a Jew, I would not allow any hate groups on my sites – whether it’s Neo-Nazi, Anti-Israel, whatever. I proudly delete that stuff off my fan page. And if you have a racist or anti-semitic comment to make on this blog, I have the right to delete that too. The argument is this “Free Speech” nonsense. If that were the case why not have nudity on network TV? (wait now that might be cool IF I DIDN’T HAVE KIDS) Why won’t Facebook allow porn? Why not have racist TV commercials or programs on NBC? That’s free speech right? The fact is that Facebook is a privately owned website and Zuckerberg has the right and should exercise his right to take any anti-semitic or racist groups off of his site. They took a few off but the comments of Facebook representative Barry Schnitt are scary. Domino’s Pizza is ready to pull their ads, and more will follow.
Brother Mark, I love your site and it’s helped me out a ton, but do the right thing. After all, we’re fraternity brothers. You were in AEPi (a Jewish fraternity) just like me. You grew up in in New York just like my wife, all of my AEPi friends and everyone else I know. You went to Harvard and created Facebook with Dustin Moskovitz. Facebook kicks ass and you did it. Don’t let the lawyers, advisors and investors persuade you…
Tags: anti semitism > brian cuban > domino's pizza > dustin moskovitz > facebook > hate groups > holocaust > jewish > mark cuban > mark zuckerberg
We Got Our Facebook Vanity URL
Posted on | June 13, 2009 | 2 Comments
Well, the time came and went. 12AM on June 12 was the time to grab your Facebook vanity URL as fast as possible. In 3 minutes 200,000 names were taken. In 15 minutes it was 500,000 and now it’s in the millions. I was not so concerned with my profile name. I went after our fan pages.
Here are a few rules that Facebook set for Fan Page URLs:
1) You must have at least 1,000 fans. So for our Diamonds and Gold pages I was good to go. My Samuelson’s store page is not ready yet. Truth be told, all I have to do is cross promote the Samuelson’s page with my Diamonds page and I’ll get to 1,000 easily. But it’s not all about numbers. It’s about QUALITY of fans too – especially for a local business.
2) Generic names like “pizza” and “flowers” may not be used. Well, that was a big one because my original thought was to get facebook.com/diamonds – so that idea went out the window.
There were some other trademark rules, etc that didn’t apply to me, so at 12:01 I went right for our fan pages. I will say that Facebook did a great job and made it very easy and user friendly just like the rest of their site. The first name I chose was “Diamonds” even though I knew it was not possible. I had to do it. Of course that failed and I went to Plan B. We got facebook.com/diamondfans. We also own the URL diamondfans.net so it’s perfect. The Diamonds Fan Page and our website (in development) will match. Then I went to our “Gold” page and got www.facebook.com/goldfans. So that was taken care of.
The next URL to grab was my personal account. I thought about that one for a while. Twitter name (for now) is diamondbuyer – how about that? No good – Facebook is personal – I’ve always thought diamondbuyer was a little cheesy anyway, and Twitter URL’s can be changed (unlike Facebook). I tried just ronnie, but that was not available – I’m sure a Facebook employee grabbed that one. So I saw rsamuelson – that seemed ok. But I just couldn’t pull the trigger, and then, poof, rsamuelson was gone. So I just went for, what else, my name! God forbid the other Ron Samuelson, Huntington Beach Realtor, (who owns ronsamuelson.com) should get it. I crush him anyway and I already knocked him off first page google results. So I got facebook.com/ronsamuelson and I’m happy with it and done!
So that’s my Facebook Vanity URL story – what did you get?
Tags: diamonds > facebook > facebook fan pages > facebook vanity url > gold > twitter
Santana Live in Vegas
Posted on | June 9, 2009 | 1 Comment
Just wanted to share a great video I took of Santana Live at the Hard Rock in Vegas. It was a great show and also featured Baltimore based drummer Dennis Chambers:
Now back to reality and our new store which is open now!
Tags: dennis chambers > hard rock > hard rock hotel and casino > las vegas > santana
Moving Day is Monday, Facebook iPhone App Works
Posted on | June 5, 2009 | No Comments
We’ve been super busy moving ALL of our stuff outta here. Vegas was very nice – Santana 3rd row was a highlight. Facebook Party and show were great too. The most productive part of the show might have been my visit to the Apple Store. My Facebook app has not loaded since I got my phone, which has really sucked. I have the newest 16gig, 3G, etc etc. Well the windup is that my iTunes was not updated to the 2.2 version. So when I got back, I updated my iTunes, synched my phone and bam – it works.
So there’s your tip if your iPhone Facebook app is not working. Go your iTunes and upgrade to the newest version. Hope it helps.
New store is Monday!! Check out our sign that went up today, a cool pic of Santana from the Hard Rock 5/31/09, and good times with friends at Tao in Vegas.
 Here it is! |
 Santana Live Vegas 5/31/09 |
A motley crew
Tags: facebook > facebook app > facebook app problems > iphone > iphone app > iphone facebook app > JCK > las vegas > new store > samuelson's diamonds > santana
Off To Vegas For JCK
Posted on | May 29, 2009 | 1 Comment
Well I’m off to Las Vegas for the JCK Jewelry Trade Show where I will be presenting with Greg Cangialosi from Blue Sky Factory on Sunday at 9:45 PST, 12:45 EST. We will be streaming live so come check it out. Then Monday is a Facebook Face to Face party at TAO. Should be a blast speaking and meeting some great peeps! See you there!
Tags: JCK > JCK jewelry show > las vegas > public speaking > Tao
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