Jewelry Business Guru by Cindy Edelstein

Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teenagers - NYTimes.com

Twitter is a mini-typhoon of marketing chatter bringing with it a lot of real and perceived value. I'm getting the hang of it and can see its' potential and other jewelry folk like Michael Schechter of Honora Pearls and Daniel Gordon of Samuel Gordon Jewelers have really captured its power.

It starts with a few self-promotional tweets and it can move on to regular communication with key customers or vendors and even twitter-based promotions like tweetups (live meetings amongst twitter fans) and scavenger hunts for your customers with jewelry prizes. There's a lot here - and it could mean good business.

Who’s Driving Twitter’s Popularity? Not Teenagers - NYTimes.com.

Another reason that teenagers do not use Twitter may be that their lives tend to revolve around their friends. Though Twitter’s founders originally conceived of the site as a way to stay in touch with acquaintances, it turns out that it is better for broadcasting ideas or questions and answers to the outside world or for marketing a product. It is also useful for marketing the person doing the tweeting, a need few teenagers are attuned to.

“Many people use it for professional purposes — keeping connected with industry contacts and following news,” said Evan Williams, Twitter’s co-founder and chief executive. “Because it’s a one-to-many network and most of the content is public, it works for this better than a social network that’s optimized for friend communication.”

QVC Sterling Designer Preview Event - inperson AND on TV

Guess I never thought about it since I'm too far away but I think it's cool to actually go to QVC to meet the designers and watch the tapings. This Friday is a BIG day for them ... the Sterling Designer Event with so many key designers and the meet and greet is on Friday Aug. 28th at 7:00 to 8:30 PM ET. The shows start with Robert Lee Morris at midnight  --  here's a link to the whole schedule.

I hear Robert will be given a very special award by the Silver Institute during his show. I'll be cheering from my couch!

The roster of designers includes some of our friends and favorites like the team at Anthony Nak, Elizabeth Rand, Elizabeth Showers, Barbara Bixby, Carolyn Pollack, Seidengang and so many more.

Guess I'll be watching QVC all weekend!

Go to the QVC website if you're interested in attending their Big event. Wish I lived closer......

 

From Robert's QVC Blog:

Most of my air time on SILVER DESIGNER DAY, (this Saturday, Aug. 29) will be devoted to the theme of hearts, crosses and iconic symbols of POSITIVITY. I will be on from midnight to 2am then, prime time Sat, morning (EST) from 9-11am. I'm thrilled to be a part of a very unique day on QVC whereby many new designers will be introduced including my CFDA peer, Dean Harris, a real talent!

Below I have listed an important page to visit: it announces that I will be receiving a major honor, the Designer of Distinction award from Silver Marketing International. You will be able to watch a video clip of me receiving the award during my on air appearances.

Jewelers to take part in Fashion's Night Out

Fashion's Night Out, a five-hour global shopping fest aimed at getting consumers out and purchasing, now counts more than 700 retailers and designers on the event list, and while apparel brands make up the bulk of the participants, the jewelry industry isn't slouching.

And it's not just the big players getting in on the action. Along with Cartier, Tiffany, Yurman and Van Cleef are savvy smaller designers who think broadly about their brand exposure.

Donna Distefano will debut a new suite of jewelry exclusively featuring fair trade gems and recycled gold. Visitors to her 20th Street atelier will get a chance to hear from fair trade gems expert and former Tiffany and Co. Vice President Marissa Harvey about the intricacies and importance of fair trade initiatives, while enjoying champagne, music and extended hours.


Read more: Jewelers to take part in Fashion's Night Out.

Should a designer's website be written in 1st or 3rd person?

About pages in 1st or 3rd person: A compromise — Art Biz Blog.

The 1st person v. 3rd person discussion for About pages on web sites can be a tough one for me to balance with my web design clients since artists’ sites are often light on the amount text they include. Google, an important “target audience” to consider, uses the plain (HTML) text to understand a web site. If an artist’s name appears only in a graphic logo it may be highly beneficial to incorporate the full name into the text on several pages within the site or the site may be invisible to people searching for the artist by name.

Read more of Alyson Stanfield's advice.

Unemployment Can Lead to Entrepreneurship - NYTimes.com

Interesting Article in NYTimes today about entrepreneurship. Down economies give more people the opportunity to start something of their own.

I think it's true that when the status quo is good (at your old job) you just may not have the drive to start your own thing. But when you're kicked out of the nest, so to speak, you learn quickly how well you can fly.

Maybe less true for artists? You tell me if you needed to be kicked out of the nest or did you leap? Leave us a comment....

Unemployment Can Lead to Entrepreneurship - NYTimes.com.

Others among the unemployed are taking the entrepreneurial route. The most recent Index of Entrepreneurial Activity by the Kauffman Foundation showed a slight uptick of new businesses in 2008 — a full recessionary year — over 2007. An average of 320 Americans out of 100,000 formed a business each month, Kauffman said. What’s more, it found, the patterns “provide some early evidence that ‘necessity’ entrepreneurship is increasing and ‘opportunity’ entrepreneurship is decreasing.” Accidental or by design, entrepreneurship is on the rise again this year. LegalZoom, the online legal document service, says the number of new businesses it helped to form was up 10 percent in the first half of the year, compared with the period a year earlier. “We were surprised,” says Brian Liu, co-founder and chairman of LegalZoom. “We expected there to be a drastic downtick.”

Giveaways: How to do it...successfully

Just found this helpful blog - The Accounting Spot Online. Great for smallish design entrepreneurs - especially those with ecommerce sites.

This blog entry gives you a few tips on how to run your own online Giveaways. Great way to pump up some PR and gain new potential customers.

Holly also offers great simple accounting tools and templates -- again, best for smaller designers with less precious materials. Bigger/finer jewelry designers will probably need more extensive tracking tools. But these are a great start!

Centurion Emerging Designer Awards application extended to Aug. 31

The Centurion Show -- an exclusive hosted fine jewelry event held each year in Tucson -- has extended the application for it's Emerging Designer Awards till Aug. 31st.

The Centurion Emerging Designer Awards gives 3 up-and-coming designers the opportunity to introduce themselves at Centurion, in a shared space at the event Jan. 31- Feb. 2, 2010 in Tucson, Arizona.

Judging will be done by a panel of established industry designers who will be looking for a balance between creativity, originality, function, production quality, craftsmanship/skill and the ability to sell in high-end stores.

Full details and the entry form can be found at: http://www.centurionjewelry.com/emergingdesignerawards.html.

Lawsuits Forced Heidi Klum to Discontinue Her Jewelry Line

Heidi Klum is in search of new licensing deals after her jewelry line folded, says New York Magazine.

"Unfortunately, I did have a partner who ... maybe wasn't as knowledgeable in terms of setting up a business. I worked five years very hard on that. But we stopped because we had a lawsuit with Van Cleef & Arpels — they wanted to have the clover, even though our designs had never matched, I don't know how may designs I had done in five years, maybe 800 different designs — but they just wanted to own the clover motif. So they went after everyone who does that — Louis Vuitton! — they said, "We own the clover." And I was like, "Then who's the person with the clover and the person with the heart?" I think when you're a small company, which we are, we're not a Van Cleef — they have a thousand lawyers. I'm a small fry next to that."

Hard to imagine Mouwad, the brand behind Klum, being considered a small fry.

But this is  great way to bow out of the market if you're failing -- victim rather than failure. The lawsuit was for a relatively small amount ($75k).

According to New York Post article from December 2007, Heidi Klum's line of clover-shaped pendants are really sham-rocks, according to a federal lawsuit that accuses the supermodel and television star of selling illegal knockoffs.

The suit filed in Manhattan federal court alleges that Klum ripped off Parisian jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels' trademark Alhambra pieces, which bear a clover-shaped design.

"This design has been extensively promoted by VCA in the United States and has achieved significant sales success," the suit reads.

The suit claims Klum and jewelry maker Mouawad USA "appropriated this design and incorporated it into their jewelry line, attempting to appropriate the good will built by Van Cleef & Arpels to create their own 'symbol.' "

Lawyers for Van Cleef & Arpels filed the suit Dec. 21, seeking unspecified damages of more than $75,000 for copyright infringement, unfair competition and other claims.

Please take our Jewelry Designer Business Survey

https://app.e2ma.net/app2/survey/8645/11093/3f6d017d3e/

We'd love to have more folks take our survey, "JRB Pulse of the Designer Community Survey, " on what jewelry designers are doing online.... how you're using the tools out there, are you following our tweets, posts and various ways to communicate. And most importantly, what else do you need to succeed and thrive this year?

click this link to go to survey:
https://app.e2ma.net/app2/survey/8645/11093/3f6d017d3e/

Please tell us! It's a quick and easy survey -- and we'll use the statistics to help you and your peers.
Tell your friends, too, if you will be so kind as to forward that link so we can capture as many different perspectives as possible.

Here's a sample of the less than a dozen questions -- see? It's not intimidating.

Designer business tips from our seminar last week

It was a great joint venture between our company and Collective-E last week... Beth Schoenfeldt and I each moderated a panel and the 50+ attendees were really on their game. The questions were plentiful.

Tips from the experts include:

Make yourself unique -- we don't need more beautiful jewelry we need more jewelry that has a unique point of view. Sarah Graham has made her name on her blackened metal alloy mixed with yellow and white golds.

Be persistent but not a stalker for press and retailers.

Pitch appropriately -- don't send funky jewels to bridal mags, nor mega-diamond jewels to Redbook. Don't pitch Lucky if you don't have any national distribution.

Court retailers for a while -- they have to cycle people out to let you in so it can take a season or three. Be patient but persistent. And very very friendly about it. Empathy is the key.

Sales reps are very hard to find in the fine jewelry business so before you're established (and some come to you or you meet them at trade shows once you're doing them!) hire an enthusiastic advocate for your designs.

After the seminar we had a tour of the show floor and many of the attendees were so thrilled to meet the exhibiting designers. Here, Erica Molinari, gives great advice to these young entrepreneurs.