Why we love this business

As the festivities surrounding the 24 Karat Club banquet weekend commence, I found myself having yet another one of those conversations that underscores why jewelry people are different from any other people.

“Different from normal people, you mean,” is what outsiders usually say.

We are a different breed. And we’re damn proud of it.

At the JCK Show Advisory Board dinner Thursday evening, I was chatting with Anna Martin, senior vice president of ABN-AMRO bank, and a lovely lady I’ve known and worked with for years in the Women’s Jewelry Association. Our conversation wasn’t about business, it was about “the business.” I began to say “it either gets into your blood right away and you’re in it for life,” and Anna finished my sentence, “or it drives you crazy and you get out of it as soon as possible.”

Seems Anna’s also had some of the same conversations with her husband that I’ve had with Jim. Aside from the eternal question about why we need so many pairs of black shoes (yes, they are all different!), there’s this peculiar thing that jewelry people share. Call it passion, call it workaholism, call it craziness, call it an addiction to this business—it’s just who we are. All of my industry friends have had this exact same “don’t you people ever stop?” conversation with their spouses and partners, and all of us say the same thing: “And your point is….?”

We go on vacation and spend half the time looking at jewelry stores and chatting with the owners. For that matter, we go on vacation almost anywhere, and we either know people who live there or we run into someone from the industry who’s also vacationing there. Or the whole reason we’re there in the first place is because we’re visiting friends in the industry or industry pals recommended it as a great spot.

You never, ever travel in sweatpants because you will run into people you know all over the world. On a layover in Paris after an overnight flight, I sat with headphones on, happily incognito (or so I thought) behind leopard-print eyeshades—themselves a funny little gift from Swiss jeweler pal Lucie Heskett.

Tap, tap on my shoulder. Tired and cranky, I yanked off the mask, ready to give the Death Ray stare to the offending party. It was Michael Barlerin, formerly of the World Gold Council, also en route to Vicenza, but disgustingly chipper and cheerful after his overnight flight.

Last fall, I was walking across the lobby of the Taj hotel in Mumbai (the Taj probably should just bill itself as The Official Hotel of the Jewelry Industry in Mumbai) when I heard someone call out my name. It was Carlos Ramon, a jeweler pal from Madrid, who happened to be there at the same time and, of course, always stays at the Taj.

We swap stories about where to eat in any corner of the world—and where not to eat—and advice of all kinds: to ask for rooms in the old tower at the Taj or the Venetian (old is relative), to eat at Il Cenacolo in Verona, Italy, and which are the best and worst boats in Basel.

We compare travel schedules to see whose is more impossible. Mine is impressively insane to an outsider but it can’t hold a candle to some of the flight hours logged by my peers like JCK publisher Mark Smelzer, or Anna, Carlos, or Rudy Chavez, president of Baume & Mercier—another pal spending lots of time aloft.

We share tips for navigating airports (great shopping in London Heathrow Terminal Four), how you must go to Dubai, where to get a suit custom made in Hong Kong, what to wear where, and what to buy wherever we are. We hoist a glass (of fine wines our friends recommend) and toast each other and feel terribly sorry for the people who are chained to their desk and don’t have this glorious, exhilarating, crazy life.

Back on terra firma, we’re also permanently connected. Any time I need to quickly dash off an email to a few people on a Sunday morning at home, before I forget to do it altogether and miss a deadline, whoever I beam usually beams me right back.

“You people are totally nuts!” said Jim, throwing up his hands in defeat.

And your point is…???

If we’re all equally nuts, then we’re all perfectly normal to each other.

For the rest of the world, January may mean resting and paying bills after Christmas, and hunkering down and staying home and watching football—but for jewelry people, it means a joyful “happy New Year!” greeting to friends as we begin the next round of show season travel.

I wouldn’t have it any other way, would you?