SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY REIGNS IN ATLANTA
What a difference a day makes. The biannual Atlanta Jewelry Show traditionally ran from a Sunday through Tuesday in August, but a paucity of buyers on Tuesdays in recent years led show managers to shift to a Saturday-to-Monday schedule this year. It proved to be a good decision: The change was hailed by vendors and buyers alike.
The opening day’s buyer traffic may have been moderate, but even that was far busier than the depopulated Tuesdays in years past. “We’ve been jammin’,” Jim Fortescue, owner of StarCraft, a Washington, N.C., diamond jewelry manufacturer, told JCK during the show. “I’ve been hoping for some time they’d move to Saturday.”
Credit the schedule change and other show upgrades – including many more educational seminars – to a new management team led by Carol Young, executive director of the Southern Jewel