Single Row Diamond

Single Row Diamond

What I Have Learned in My 47 Years as a Diamond Buyer

I entered my family jewelry business in 1971 having just graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with an engineering degree.  I was the fourth generation to enter the business and began working with my father and to a lesser degree with my grandfather who was primarily retired at this time.  My grandfather had joined his father and brother around 1913 in the business they founded in 1910.  As a boy my biggest fascination had been my grandfather's story  of how the store was held up by the famous 'gentlemen' bank robber, Willie Sutton.  When I joined the business in1971 I was attending NYU business school in the evenings studying for my MBA.  I soon began taking courses with the Gemological Institute of America and ended up putting all my efforts into the jewelry business which I guess was in my blood.

When I started in the business my father was doing almost all of his diamond buying from just two or three diamond manufacturers.  It was very simple.  We bought only white stones, a color that today would be around a G to H color.  We bought flawless, VS and SI clarity and ordered them in the various sizes as our inventory required.  In those days when we sold or appraised a diamond it would be referred to as fine white, white, light top silver, silver cape and cape. Today's corresponding GIA color grades would have been D to F, G to H, I to J, K to L and M to P.  At that time diamonds were not sold with any sort of certification, only the jewelers appraisal.  The purchaser had to rely on the integrity of the store selling the diamond or else bring it for an appraisal and hope the appraiser both knew what he was doing and was honest.  It was a common practice in those days that many sellers of diamonds, especially those in the diamond districts, would tell their customers where to go for an appraisal and the appraiser would get a kickback from the seller.  I once got a call from an appraiser on 47th St. in New York,  who I did not know, telling me that someone was in his office with a diamond I had sold. He demanded fifty dollars from me or else said he would give the diamond a bad appraisal.  Today, fortunately, the GIA certification of diamonds has almost entirely eliminated this type of appraiser and practice.

One of the firms we purchased our diamonds from in the 60's and early 70's  was Harry Winston who had a large wholesale loose diamond division at the time.  Our sales rep from Harry Winston, a gentleman by the name of Murray Stamper, was a good friend of my father.  Around the time I entered the business Mr Stamper was to fly to a jewelry show from what is now JFK airport but was found murdered in his car at the airport and his diamonds stolen.  With the loss of this connection with the Harry Winston firm my father and I made the decision to start buying our diamonds directly overseas in the Israeli cutting center of Ramat Gan outside of Tel Aviv.  Almost all of the buying of better diamonds at the time was done either there or in Antwerp.  India was also a major cutting center at the time but known for lesser quality and smaller diamonds.

The diamond exchange in Ramat Gan at the time consisted of two high security connected buildings.  We worked with a diamond broker to whom we paid a 2% commission to handle our transactions.  We would work both in his office in the exchange or on the top floor where, bathed in natural north light, sat rows of long tables where the buyers would sit and the brokers representing the many diamond cutters would circulate and try to negotiate sales.  Diamond parcels typically consisted of many carats of diamonds in various assortments of sizes and sometimes shapes.  We would either make an offer on the entire parcel or a cut of the parcel.  If we wanted to eliminate one or more diamonds from the parcel the price would go up. The qualities of each parcel were usually somewhat similar, within one to two clarity grades.  The asking price was always too high and we would have to make offers and sometimes counter offers in negotiations that could often last a couple of days. The brokers would have to keep going back to the cutters to show them exactly what we were offering on.  There were no cell phones in those days.  We never knew exactly how much we bought until our last day or sometimes not until we got back to New York as some of the cutters reconsidered the offers we made. At the time we were buying for five retail locations and the savings were substantial.

By the 90's things had changed in the diamond industry.  Although the GIA [Gemological Institute of America] had begun issuing diamond grading certificates as early as 1955 they did not catch on as a popular marketing tool until the late 80's.   At this time we stopped our buying trips overseas and concentrated more on finding the best values in GIA certified diamonds from U.S. cutters and brokers that we could.  We were also doing more buying from the public and able to buy at a discount to what the diamond cutters were charging.  Also, a New York diamond dealer by the name of Martin Rappaport began printing a weekly price list of diamonds which served as a general guide to the diamond industry for diamond prices worldwide.  Profit margins shrank yearly for both diamond cutters and retailers as diamonds were sold more and more as a commodity rather than an object of beauty and romance

Today, although Since1910 operates out of a retail location we also sell a large dollar value of diamonds to other diamond cutters and dealers across the country.  With the Internet we can market our diamonds worldwide through industry restricted web sites.   These same sites also make accessible to us GIA certified diamonds from overseas cutters in Europe, the far east and China, where, when we buy in quantity, it is very cost effective for us. 

In the early 2000's, we tried selling some of the branded diamond lines after going to diamond seminars and conferences where they were being marketed as the solution to the shrinking profit margins jewelers were now making on diamonds.  The premise was that if you had a branded diamond such as Hearts On Fire or one of the many others, had the exclusivity of carrying it in your marketplace and that no one could discount it, you could make a 100% markup instead of one which could be as low as in the single digits.  While the customer had the comfort of knowing he was getting an excellent product, such as buying a diamond from Tiffany & Co., the problem was that the price could be up to double what we knew we could sell an identical unbranded diamond.  Although sales were okay for these product we could not in good conscious continue to sell them.  Instead we took the time to educate our customer to the fact that similar quality was available at substantial savings.

Now with my son in the business as the fifth generation and a graduate gemologist, we have added a new dimension with the creation of Since1910.com.  On it, a consumer can search our entire diamond inventory and create your own engagement ring using our selection of designers such as Tacori, Scott Kay, Martin Flyer, Precision Set, Henri Daussi and many others.   It offers our customer the best of both worlds added with the confidence of dealing with a family company in business since 1910.

About the Author

Michael Gross has been in the diamond business for over 48 years. As a fifth generation jewelry store with over 99 years of experience, we provide expert diamond guidance. We are members of the Prestigious American Gem Society, Jewelers Vigilance Committee, Better Business Bureau and Retail jewelers of America.

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