People

Robert Epstein and Darren Fries, both formerly executives with Silverman Jewelers Consultants in South Carolina, have been appointed vice presidents at the Buxbaum Group. The Buxbaum Group provides consulting, evaluation, and liquidation services for retailers, wholesalers, distributors, consumer products manufacturers, and their lenders.

Epstein, who had been an executive vice president in the Silverman organization, has 18 years’ experience in finance, operations, strategic planning, and retailing systems. He has worked in the areas of restructuring, bankruptcy, crisis management, budgeting, and financial planning.

Fries was the controller for the Silverman organization, where he was responsible for due-diligence reviews and analyzing liquidation values of the firm’s clients.

Epstein and Fries will head the Buxbaum Group’s new Southeastern U.S. branch office. The address is 1092 Johnnie Dodds Blvd., Suite B1, Mount Pleasant, SC 29464; (843) 856-2831.

D.G. Jewellery of Canada Ltd. has elected two directors and made two new appointments.

Theodore Bonsignore and Meyer Feiler have been named to the company’s board of directors. Bonsignore has served as general manager of D.G. Jewellery Diamonair since May. From 1975 to 1997, Bonsignore was with Krementz & Co.; he became Krementz president in 1990.

Feiler has been president of Carmen Inc., one of the largest jewelry companies in Canada, since 1993. He has been at Carmen Inc. since 1979.

Also at D.G. Jewellery, Jeanne Eckerson has joined the firm as national accounts manager, based in the United States. She will be responsible primarily for sales development for major accounts associated with the D.G. division. In addition, Richard Benaim has joined the D.G. division of the company as senior account manager. He has 25 years of jewelry experience.

Jose Franco has joined the sales team at New York-based S&R Chain Inc. He previously worked at Michael Anthony Jewelers.

Johnnie Kozma has been promoted to assistant to the sales director from order representative at Hoover & Strong of Richmond, Va.

Lisa Gabrielle Kranz of Elleard B. Heffern Inc. in St. Louis has achieved the Certified Gemologist Appraiser title from the American Gem Society.

Monte Roy Rosenheim, 90, owner and operator of the Tiny Jewel Box store in Washington, D.C., died of a heart ailment Sept. 26. He and his wife founded the the Tiny Jewel Box, an estate and antique jewelry business, in the 1930s. He ran the business until retiring in the late 1970s. It is still owned and operated by his family.

Award-winning jewelry store designer Mariann May Coutchie died Nov. 12. She was 78 years old. The author of Jewelry on Display (STS Publications, 3d ed., 1989), she designed jewelry stores in the United States, Bermuda, and Canada and lectured on jewelry store image at regional and national conventions and American Gem Society Conclaves.

She began her career in retail display at Harris & Franks in Los Angeles and joined her brother-in-law’s jewelry store, J.H. Henkes in Westwood, Calif., in 1961. In 1968, she became a jewelry display instructor at the Gemological Institute of America, where she developed a creative display course and a cassette training tape, “The Look of Your Store Can Sell for You.” She left GIA in 1971 to start her own company, Diversified Design of Woodland Hills, Calif., together with her husband, Raymond Coutchie.

She was a contributing editor to JCK and designed displays for The JCK International Jewelry Shows in Orlando and Las Vegas as well as the Pacific Jewelry Show. In 1976, she served as a consultant on gem displays for Goldwyn Studios. She received the Visual Woman Award from Display World and numerous exhibit awards from the Pacific Jewelry Show.

“Mariann was a lovely woman who had an extraordinary talent and feel for displaying fine jewelry,” says Rick Bay, JCK’s publisher and group vice president. “Her contributions to all the JCK Shows raised the level of display expectations from exhibitors and retailers alike. Mariann had a great many friends in the industry, and especially within JCK. We will miss her.”

Marie Torrance Hoover, 93, chairman of the board of Hoover & Strong, refiners and manufacturers of precious metal products in Richmond, Va., died May 5.

She assumed the presidency of Hoover & Strong after the death of her husband, Dudley Allan Hoover, in 1952. She served as president until 1970, when she became chairman and turned the presidency over to her son, George.