Jewelry Firm Launches ‘Live Your Color’ Motto at JCK
Diamonds.net, NY
(Rapaport…June 7, 2006) Brother and sister jewelry designers Ryan Vaughn-Zahm and Carly Todisco were quite young when their father Philip Zahm started exhibiting at the JCK Las Vegas show more than a decade ago. But now the two have come along way, in age and experience, in designing their own jewelry for the family business.
Todisco told Rapaport News that her father’s firm, Philip Zahm & Associates, had a decent sales year in 2005, but a slower one in 2006, as has been the case with many other jewelry wholesalers in the trade
JCK brought in new business however, “a lot of it due to referrals,” Vaughn-Zahm said.
For the “lesser known brands” referrals have helped to fuel growth more than simply marketing goods by the Aptos, California-based company, said Todisco. Nonetheless, the jewelry company launched a new marketing campaign along with a new company logo, and offered new designs specifically for this year’s JCK Show. Philip Zahm & Associates’ new company logo is “Live your color.”
“Most of the time buyers start with smaller purchases” to test the marketplace, Vaughn-Zahm said. “People are tracking inventories much better today, which means they may hold off buying.” Philip Zahm & Associates offer a range of loose gemstones, rings, and necklaces to the wholesale trade with price points of between $1,500 and $2,500 “for the most part,” Todisco said, “It depends upon the stones of course.”
Vaughn-Zahm describes their clients as, first “they need to fall in love with color to buy it and be in love with it to sell it.” All of the gemstones used in jewelry designs are natural color and roughly 95 percent of settings are white gold.
The two described regional differences in how they see distribution trends: “The coastal areas are usually of smaller (stones,) elegant and simpler pieces,” Vaughn-Zahm said. The Midwestern consumer in the United States desires a “bigger look with more splash” while the northeastern part of the country prefers traditional jewelry using colored gemstones, he said.
Vaughn-Zahm designed a 3.60 carat cushion-cut pink sapphire ring, which also uses a total weight 90-points of diamonds and is set in 18 karat white and yellow gold. Todisco designed a 2.83 carat blue-green Tourmaline oval with a total of 41-points of diamonds set in 18 karat white gold.
One centerpiece necklace on display at Philip Zahm & Associates’ booth was designed by Judy Evans for the company and serves a dual wear purpose as either a necklace or a brooch. The design uses 5.13 carats of fancy colored sapphires and a total weight 96-points of diamonds and is set in 18 karat white gold.
The company’s designs are all one-of-a-kind and Vaughn-Zahm said that he and his father travel the world in search of gemstones to use in their designs. He said that sizes larger than 2 carats are currently difficult to locate.
