Sea Urchin – A New Collection from Sarah Graham with a Rich History and Exciting Future

For the Jewelry collector who treasures the journey as much as the destination; Sarah’s latest line is a storied adventure

Sarah Graham Metalsmithing is known for her unusual and exotic jewelry style, and for her collectors, acquiring one of her pieces is much more than just a purchase.  From the ardently read collection pages on Sarah’s website, each with an extensive account detailing a unique story behind each design, to the scores of personal communications from collectors world-wide, Sarah continues to delight in their enthusiasm and stoke her collector’s interest.

Sarah’s new collection, Sea Urchin, continues her tradition of incorporating the journey into the final design. The idea was borne over twenty years ago while Sarah and her new husband backpacked along the Italian Mediterranean coast where they encountered the fascinating shapes of these captivating echinoids.  While traveling the world over the course of the next two years, she lugged a much thumbed 8lb (!) technical jewelry making book and visited hundreds of jewelry stores. This trip was pivotal in helping Sarah realize her life’s work.

The Sea Urchin Collection offers not only a vivid story of past inspiration, but a glimpse of an exciting future. Finally fulfilling a long held dream, Sarah departs from the Couture Show in May for a summer in Italy which will be spent sharing the journey of searching, finding, and applying design inspiration to jewelry through a blog on her website and facebook posts, which her retailers can share with their own customers.

“Finding the space time to design is the most difficult part of the creative process.” Sarah is most excited about having a dedicated span of time, in a gorgeous environment that is renowned for art and design, to concentrate on the job of being inspired. “I hope to create a rich narrative that my customers will treasure as much as they do their jewelry, and to move people to carve out time to be inspired themselves.”

Jewelry is an immensely personal purchase, yet the story behind the design is often missing.  How did this jewelry come to be? What was the designer thinking, feeling, looking at, and being exposed to when the inspiration struck? What were the challenges and what did the prototypes look like? Sarah expands on her already prolific design details by engaging in an intimate discussion of her process, giving an insider’s view that can be passed along to customers, one on one and through social media.

The value of the story is never underestimated at Sarah Graham Metalsmithing. Retailers should visit her new booth at the Couture Show in May to see the Sea Urchin Collection and learn more about her upcoming summer in Italy and how they can feature her design journey in their own marketing efforts.

Meet Mr. Graham

We have a new man in our life!

This week we travel to New York to introduce our collection for the other half of the population at the upcoming JANY 2009 jewelry show.

‘Spear’ is the name of the introductory collection of jewelry for men, and the inspiration is a radiolarian - a single celled marine organism with a form that is graphic, masculine, and, of course, organic. Mr. Graham combines our signature blackened Cobalt Chrome with sterling accents. Edgier than its feminine counterpoint, the center piece of Mr. Graham is a carabineer type key chain/hold all that embodies the future of men’s jewelry.

Mr. Graham is functional ornamentation for modern men living in the spirit of Ernst Haeckel, George Washington Carver, and Nicolai Tesla. Futurists of their time, all of these men were intellectually multi-dimensional while being deeply seated in the arts. They also set life style trends, not only for their time but for future generations up until the present. Mr. Graham modifies male ornamentation from the traditional standards of men’s jewelry into inventive, elegant design that speaks to the values, technology, altruism and entrepreneurship of the modern gentleman. The designs are organic in nature and expand the established men’s accessory category beyond jewelry into stylish functional gear that improves the client’s ability to organize practical accessories while exuding true fashion proficiency.

The new collection will be available at the JANY show, Booth 1256 Couture Pavilion, and at select locations in the coming months.

To find a retailer that carries Mr. Graham, e-mail us at info@mrgraham.com

mrgraham.com

Mr. Graham in Modern Jeweler

The Problem with Cookies

Cookies at Christmas are great, but what about the kind that store information on your computer? These can also be a treat when they speed up your searches, but can present a real problem if you are showing a customer images on the catalog portion of our website, and your login from a previous session is stored as a cookie, causing wholesale prices to appear.

Sometimes even clearing your private data doesn’t do the trick, so we have added a ‘logout’ function to our website. After you find the prices you need, don’t forget to click on the logout button, so you don’t accidently reveal your cost on the jewelry, making for a potentially awkward situation.

Meanwhile, we’ll be working on the good kind of cookies…only 8 months to go!

Here We Go Again!

As gold reacquaints itself with its old high, I can't help recalling my shock during the early days of my apprenticeship when I learned that gold had at one point hit $861 an ounce. Mind you, gold was $340/ounce at this point, and would fall further to $286 when I went into business for myself. I asked my boss how he had dealt with this unbelievable high, expecting stories akin to those we hear from the great depression: I imagined him boarding up the windows, selling off little bits of inventory to keep his family alive, and waiting out the storm as best he could. Instead, he answered me with a shrug. "It was pretty much business as usual - in fact, I think business was actually up!"

It was hard for me to believe these soaring gold prices hadn’t caused some upset in the jewelry industry, and I hoped it would never happen during my time. But here we are – gold reached its all time high of $868 on last week, and with the falling stock market and declining value of the dollar, most agree it will continue its upward trend.

In 2006 gold inched its way towards $600/ounce, and last year, gold shuffled along from the mid $600’s to the mid $700’s, finally making its way to $800 in November. I suffered my fair share of panic, fear, and indecision. Do I raise prices or do I lower my profit margins to maintain my business? Eventually the decision was made for me – gold rose so far we had to elevate prices, and after an understandably rocky transition, the dust settled and it was…business as usual. In fact, business was up!

I would be lying if I said these last two very successful years hardened me to the ups and downs of the gold market. The economic forecast is gloomy, and it would be foolhardy to think we are completely immune to the market. However, I would like to leave you with a little perspective:

Firstly, our product is a luxury item and many of our customers have unprecedented wealth. The upper class is as far removed from the ups and downs of the economy as it ever has been, and the amount of disposable income they possess is vast.

And for those without bloated bank accounts? You might find it interesting to note that the price of gold at its height in 1980, $861, adjusted for inflation, is almost $2000. Calculated backward, gold’s high of $861 in 1980 was only $337 by today’s standards. What does this mean? That it is very possible for 2008 to be a strong and profitable year for all of us – manufacturers, retailers, the super wealthy and the average, hard working, jewelry-appreciating customer alike!

Post script: Today we adjusted our prices, to keep up with the current cost of gold. Price changes are laborious and cumbersome for all involved, and it is common for manufacturers to set their prices to a higher gold price, in anticipation of further cost increases. We have decided not to do this. We have priced our jewelry in line with the current market, and if gold continues to change we will adjust our prices accordingly (up OR down!), as needed. Please call for current pricing on all special orders.

The Price of Being Different

A letter to all of you who sell our Steel Stacking rings with diamonds (that would be 99% of you!)

Our great success is based on our use of unusual and original materials. And we often find ourselves in equally unique situations when it comes to putting the jewelry together - there is not instruction manual for making jewelry out of cobalt chrome! It can be, at times experimental, and if something doesn't work the way we want, we continue to test and try new ideas and methods. This has been the case recently with our steel and diamond stacking rings.

We have had occasion when the diamonds on our steel stacking rings have come off. This is because the solder joint of gold to steel is just not as strong as gold to gold. Of course we always replace the diamond no charge, no question, and even though this is a rare occurrence (less than .01 percent of all the rings we have sold) and we have made our retailers aware of this potential, it is still our best selling ring, by a landslide! Even so, this has troubled me me to the point of loosing sleep over it. I feel it is unacceptable, because it undermines the confidence your customers have in our, and all of your, jewelry.

So, finally, we have found, if not a solution, a vast improvement. We have changed the way we are attaching the diamond bezels to the steel rings – it involves cutting a seat into which the bezel fits, which helps in two ways: first, it provides much more contact surface, which makes for a strong solder joint. Second, the seat provides a small but significant shoulder on either side of the bezel, which also gives significant support, and holds the bezel steady against hard knocks which may occur with wear.

With this increase in security comes an increase of solder, and a bit more is apparent, primarily on the underside. Minimizing the appearance of the solder joint on the top involves cutting the seat just right - a technique that doesn't allow any room for error! Aesthetically, I am confident that the new rings are still just as beautiful, especially given the increased safety (to the ring, and, most importantly, to your credibility as a fine jewelry retailer).

My thought process is this: It is always best that a customer knows what they are getting upon purchase - no surprises. So, rather than selling rings with invisible solder seams that have potential to fail (this would qualify as a surprise, and a rather negative one, at that), we should sell them rings are constructed soundly, regardless of appearance - and if this construction is not aesthetically appealing, the customer won't buy it.

Now, lest you worry the appearance of your beloved best seller has changed drastically, please allow me to allay your fears. I doubt most of you would even notice the change - it is really quite minor. And, because it is primarily on the underside, it is not seen when the ring is worn.

I really believe form must follow function, especially at these prices. If the design doesn’t function properly, it should not be made, no matter how pretty it is.

As always, I welcome your feedback....

Show and Tell

Welcome to our new blog, we hope you enjoy your stay, and visit often! We intend to keep this page new, interesting, and most of all, helpful. And to this end, we would like to enlist your help.

Have you ever wondered how best to display all those stacking rings? What is the most effective way to promote the jewelry? And what, exactly, is this blackened steel? On our FAQ page, we do our best to answer all your questions, but we bet we haven’t covered them all. So, tell us, what have we missed? Please post your questions as a comment to our blogs; you will help us provide the most pertinent information to all of our stores.

And you may even learn something from each other. A lot of my best designs have come from your customer’s ideas, and so I really appreciate the open communication. How about sharing your ideas and experiences with other stores that carry our work?

For example, how have you all been dealing with this Blood Diamond issue? Have your customers been asking about it? Years ago, while taking a college writing course, my husband chose this topic to write on. We researched the subject together, and I brought all my new found knowledge to the Rosen show, sure it would be a hot topic. But I was wrong – no one wanted to talk about it. I realized that you couldn’t very well tout the diamonds in my jewelry as conflict free if you carried other diamonds that weren’t. It needs to be all or nothing (you can't very well say “this jewelry is great because no one was maimed or killed in procuring the diamonds” without casting a heavy shadow on the rest of your inventory.) But here we are, five years later – A major motion picture with big name actors has made the issue impossible to ignore, and the World Diamond Council has spent millions of dollars on public awareness, including this web site http://diamondfacts.org/.

Most importantly, the Kimberly Process is now law, which means that ALL of the diamonds in your store MUST be certified conflict free. But don’t panic – chances are most, if not all, already are. You should contact each of your designers, and ask them to obtain a written guarantee from their suppliers that they are not using blood diamonds. If they can not do so, you should encourage them to find a supplier that can. It really isn’t as bad as it sounds, conflict diamonds now account for less than one percent of all diamonds traded globally, and any reputable supplier is already in compliance.

So go ahead and contact your designers, so that when your customers ask (and if they haven’t already, I assure you, they will soon) you can confidently assure them that none of the diamonds in your store were used to fund conflicts in Africa. I can’t think of a better selling point than that.

Send in your comments, and be sure to read our customer blog on this topic for more information on the issue.