24 Karat, JIS, Signet, De Beers Sightholders: ‘The Jewelry District’ Podcast

By Natalie Chomet | April 08, 2026

Victoria Gomelsky and Rob Bates cover a mix of fun events and notable jewelry industry news. From the glitz and glamour of 24 Karat Weekend to the colorful, gold-bedecked showcases at JIS Spring in Miami, the hosts take us on a tour of the jewelry events that kicked off the season. Victoria shares her takeaways from JIS, including an enormous gold chain with a price tag she can’t stop thinking about. Rob covers the latest changes coming from Signet as well as the drastic cuts—and one newcomer—to De Beers’ sightholder list.

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Title sponsor: De Beers (adiamondisforever.com)

Show Notes
05:40 24 Karat Weekend roundup
13:40 JIS Miami takeaways
19:45 Signet to close James Allen
21:45 De Beers sightholder changes

Episode Credits
Hosts: Rob Bates and Victoria Gomelsky
Producer and engineer: Natalie Chomet
Editor: Riley McCaskill
Plugs: @jckmagazine; adiamondisforever.com

Episode Transcript
This transcript has been abridged and edited for clarity.

Victoria:
Hey, everyone, welcome to The Jewelry District.

Rob:
You were just in New York City, right?

Victoria:
Yes, it’s always nice to go back to New York. It’s filled with many, many jewelry memories because I started writing about jewelry in New York in 2000. So, 26 years of either living full-time in New York or spending a lot of time there. And it’s wonderful. I have a memory-lane moment almost every time I go. Many people in the business had this very experience over 24 Karat Weekend, because the big 24 Karat gala finally returned to the Waldorf Astoria.

It was a big weekend. The 24 Karat gala is a very trade-focused event, as opposed to the Gem Awards on Friday night, which is a lot more consumer-facing. I’ve always been interested in that parallel, because they’re very different events in vibe. Does that resonate with you, too?

Rob:
Yeah, so there are the main events [during 24 Karat Weekend]—the Jewelers Vigilance Committee, the Gem Awards, and the Jewelers’ Security Alliance—and then there’s finally the 24 Karat gala.

There’s definitely a core of people, and I’m typically among them, who go to all four events. But they all cater to different constituencies. The JVC tends to get people who are very involved in government affairs and social issues. The Gem Awards, as you mentioned, is very glitzy. There’s usually a celebrity or two. Linda Evangelista was on stage this year. They tend to get a lot of consumer reporters. It’s a beautiful event. And then the JSA, a lot of trade people. There’s overlap, but there’s also a lot of law enforcement—police officers, FBI agents, people who are not necessarily part of the industry, but they look at crimes connected to our industry.

And then the 24 Karat Club [gala] tends to get a lot of manufacturers. Sometimes you see people who haven’t been there in a while. For example, the former managing director of the Diamond Trading Company for De Beers, Varda Shine, was there this year. So it’s a more eclectic group, an interesting mix. There are reasons to go to all four events.

I liked what they did with the 24 Karat Club this year. [The guest artist is] usually somebody over 60, and it’s kept secret to the last minute. And they have had some great people. They had Aretha Franklin one year. That was amazing. Everybody was wondering, “What are they going to do?”

This year, they didn’t have that big-name act. They had this troupe of young ballerinas from Youth America Grand Prix. It was a very different, surprising presentation. Nobody expected a ballet troupe to perform. They filled the upper balconies of the Waldorf. It was very visually striking, as ballet tends to be. So I liked that part of it. It was a great event, so kudos to the planning committee. I know planning these things is a lot of work.

Victoria:
I was a guest of Stephen Lagos. He was, of course, up on the balconies, flanked by a number of these stunning ballerinas. It was a gorgeous performance and really unusual. It wasn’t like watching a ballet performance on stage. They surrounded us on the balconies. And there was a modern dance performance on stage later that was also very visually striking. People were impressed. It was a really nice close to this weekend of luncheons.

The JVC luncheon kicked things off on the Friday. And kudos to Sara Yood, the general counsel and CEO. They honored Rebecca Foerster, our most recent guest, on our new video podcast, with the Stanley Schechter Award. And this year it took place at the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Plaza, which was so great. It was a wonderful place to return to. It was nice to be elevated and have this beautiful view. And Sara did a great job of putting together this event. They honored Rebecca and had an economist speak, which was interesting.

Rob:
Yes, Philip Luck, who worked in the Biden administration and is an expert on trade and international economy. He brought up interesting points about economic inequality and technology. He made the point that technology tends to exacerbate economic inequality. He used the analogy of when phonograph records came in. For a while, every area had its local opera singer, who was the best in the region. All of a sudden, phonographs mean you can hear the best opera singers in the world. He said that certain policies have exacerbated economic inequality, which is undoubtedly true, but I thought that was a great point.

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Rob:
Speaking of jewelry events, you came back from one before 24 Karat, in the lovely state of Florida: the Jewelers International Showcase, or JIS. Tell us about that.

Victoria:
Before the JIS spring show, which opened at the Miami Beach Convention Center on Sunday, March 8th, my family and I participated in a Holi celebration. Many people in the industry will know that Holi is the Hindu festival of colors. It takes place typically in early March. And we ended at a Holi celebration in the Wynwood district, which is about 20 minutes away from Miami Beach. It was a really fun party. We got very colorful and it felt like a good prelude.

I wrote a story about being drawn to the color showcases at JIS. I typically am a huge fan of colored stones, and there’s a lot of fun fashion jewelry at JIS. I’d been to JIS Fall in the past, but I’d never to JIS Spring. This is primarily a regional buying show. It caters a lot to people from Florida, but also to people coming from the Caribbean, Latin America. So there’s a lot of Spanish speaking that you hear there. Of course, that’s part of being in Miami. I love the feeling that I’m in the capital of Latin America.

It’s a great town, Miami Beach in particular. It’s a gorgeous beach. And you can easily walk to the convention center from many hotels there on Collins Avenue. So it’s a really easy show to take part in. There’s a ton of great restaurants right nearby.

The show itself is very manageable, and there’s a wide variety. I was delighted because there was stuff that I could buy. There’s a lot of self-purchasing you can do there just as a member of the trade. They have a new lifestyle pavilion, a Turkish exhibition, exhibitors selling cool little handbags, and then I was surprised to find a lot of very high-end jewelers—the kind that you’ll find at Luxury. Designers like David Kord, which had a ton of great opal pieces on display, and Bavna, another luxury exhibitor.

I went around and talked to as many people as I could over two days, and they were all doing well. I was prepared for people to be a little glum. Gold was around $5,100 an ounce at the time, not far off its peak of about $5,500. Yet people were in good moods.

My lasting memory from this show was walking by gold companies. I came across an exhibitor from L.A. called America’s Gold. They had a huge booth, and my eye was immediately drawn to the biggest, most gargantuan Cuban chain I’ve ever seen: 28 millimeters wide, totally covered in lab-grown pavé, 10 karat gold. What struck me—and I’m still trying to understand this—was that the price tag said $995,000. I did a double take. It was a 10-time markup, the exhibitor explained.

The wholesale price was $95,000, and they gave that markup on the tag because they wanted retailers or wholesale buyers to have some flexibility with how much they chose to mark it up. They also wanted to give clients and consumers a sense of “Wow, I must have gotten a great deal.”

It was just another indication of how people are experimenting with pricing. It’s a difficult time to price. I would say that’s probably the No. 1 challenge for retailers, wholesalers, anybody. “I need to consider replenishment costs. If I sell this at today’s gold price, what am I going to be buying tomorrow?” I don’t know how you take on that challenge.

I talked with Abe Sherman from the Buyers Intelligence Group, prior to working on a piece I wrote about volatility for The New York Times, and he had this hilarious comment about how maybe it’s time for jewelers to embrace a “market price” in the way that lobsters are sold at restaurants. “We’re going to tell you the exact price, we’ll just check our indexes and let you know.” It sounded like a joke at the time. Then I thought, Well, not a terrible idea.

To conclude, JIS Spring was a fun time. I really enjoyed it. March is a great time for weather [in Miam]. If you’ve never been to that show, it’s a great way to combine a brief holiday with some fun and very diverse buying. I would 1000% recommend it.

This was a week of events and socializing and generally good cheer, but there’s also a lot of big news coming out. You’ve covered some things with Signet that really caught me by surprise. Do you want to tell us about that news?

Rob:
Signet announced that they were essentially shutting down JamesAllen.com. The current CEO of Signet is J.K. Symancyk. His predecessor was Gina Drosos. One of the first things Gina Drosos did when she came in was to buy JamesAllen.com, which definitely had a bit of a following. It was relatively well known. It did a decent business. It started out as a site called DirtCheapDiamonds.com and later became James Allen.

Under Gina Drosos, Signet bought a bunch of companies—James Allen, Blue Nile, this rental company Rocksbox, and the Diamonds Direct chain. It has a bunch of different companies under its wing. I guess what they’re trying to do now is rationalize. They’re basically taking James Allen offline and making it part of Blue Nile.

For a long time, Blue Nile and James Allen were fierce rivals. Then they became part of the same company. And now James Allen has been integrated into Blue Nile. What’s also interesting is the plan for Blue Nile is to make it upscale. Jared and Diamonds Direct are considered accessible luxury. Blue Nile will be higher than those two.

They’re going to be doing less lab-grown and more custom pieces at Blue Nile. To do that online is not so easy, I would guess. It’s certainly been tried before, and I’m not sure how successful it’s been. But with the “K-shaped economy,” it makes sense that you want to go where the money is, which is the higher-income shoppers. So that’s where they’re pitching Blue Nile right now.

Victoria:
There seems to be a lot going on at De Beers as well. We know this because it’s been for sale. But what was the latest news?

Rob:
It’s been a ritual over the last 20 years that every four or five years, De Beers makes these dramatic cuts to its sightholder list. And they did it again. They had about 69, and they cut more than 20. There are a lot of rumors about who the people are. They also appointed another sightholder, which surprised a lot of people.

In most of the cases, the owner likely saw it coming. De Beers is clearly steering its business toward bigger, better-financed companies. It’s unfortunate because usually in these cullings, a lot of reputable, well-established, smart, and nimble though small businesses lose their privileges. I’ve talked to De Beers executives about this who say they sometimes feel bad. In a lot of cases, they’ve known these people for years, but they also feel that in at least some of the instances, people just hold on to the sight because the father had the sight. It’s tradition, as part of the identity to the company, but doesn’t necessarily make economic sense for them or for De Beers.

Over the last few years, ever since we’ve been in this diamond crisis, De Beers has cut back its production dramatically. So, it’s probably no surprise that they are looking for fewer sightholders. It’s this ritual that, I have to say, I don’t really care for. I think there are probably better ways to do it than in one fell swoop, but that’s how they do it. But I will say, these people were going on contracts that were originally signed in 2021 and kept getting extended. So in a lot of cases, they kept the sightholder status perhaps more than they would have originally.

Victoria:
Two questions: Is it as big a deal to lose a sight now as it was, say, 25 years ago when De Beers had much more of a monopoly over supply? Is it as shattering to a business as I remember when there was so much drama around the idea?

Rob:
There are alternate sources of supply. De Beers’ share of the market is 30% or so. Obviously, if you’re in America, you are dealing with Alrosa, which is the other big supplier, so that closes off a lot of options. And we’re starting to see the mines in Canada close.

I think, in a lot of cases it is about prestige and tradition rather than actual business. It’s hard to say. It used to be a relatively rare thing for a company to lose its sight. And now it’s something that happens relatively regularly. I would guess it’s probably less of a big deal. But I’m sure there are some people who are very upset right now.

Victoria:
Who was the company they added?

Rob:
They have not officially confirmed it, but according to the Indian press, it’s called Shivam Jewels. It’s an Indian company. And they said it’s the first new Indian sightholder in nine years.

To end on an upbeat note, for all the world’s problems, the industry does seem to be holding up.

Any views expressed in this podcast do not reflect the opinion of JCK, its management, or its advertisers.