Message To Retailers: Buy Diamonds For Stock!

In today’s economic climate, jewelry retailers need to find new ways to increase margins, while still competing with e-tailers and everyone else in their market. Buying gold has become a necessity for a lot of traditional retailers in order to keep cash flow positive. However, the gold buying train won’t last forever. Even the popular [...]

Groupon From a Merchant’s Point of View

I made a vow that after my daily deals were over, I would write a blog post about my experience as a merchant (and a jeweler) on the deals that we ran at Samuelson’s Diamonds. You read a lot about customers taking advantage of good deals, but not enough about about merchants and whether they [...]

When a Facebook Pic Goes Viral – The Power of Sharing

A little while ago, I wrote a post titled, “Stop Sharing!”. My friend who works at ShareThis was mad about that one, but I was talking about business practices, but not fun stuff like pics, videos and blog posts. Well today a pic went around of a clever Halloween costume. A guy in dressed as [...]

Diamond Market Update: 2011, Q3

As the world economy dips into a recession, we’re looking at our holdings in diamonds and deciding how to navigate our through this market. The stock market has been getting crushed the past couple months and even metals are unstable. Gold reached a high of approx $1920 per ounce and is now hovering at $1650. [...]

Stop Sharing!

Facebook, Twitter, blogs, real conversations (did we forget about them?) – it seems like it’s all about sharing information these days in the new business world. I have shared a lot of information in a lot of places. I share on Facebook and Twitter – articles, thoughts, pictures, and more. On this blog, I write [...]

Lost in Transactions

We’ve been busy here at Samuelson’s with a lot of different projects. We just hired a new Director of Marketing and there have been customers in Baltimore, Washington DC and from all over the country selling their diamonds, silver and jewelry to us. So every day I’m involved in a lot of transactions – whether [...]

JCK Las Vegas 2011 – Diamonds Are King!

Interesting weekend we had in Las Vegas for the annual JCK Jewelry Show. This year they held the show at Mandalay Bay which was a much nicer venue than the Sands at Venetian. We stayed over at the new Cosmopolitan. GREAT hotel – best rooms in Vegas by far. All rooms have a terrace so [...]

The Customer Experience in Washington DC

We made a video describing the customer experience in our Washington DC jewelry buying office. Please take a look at our new office. If you are interested in selling diamonds, silver, gold or coins in Washington please stop by. Even if you don’t have anything to sell, please come up and say hi – we’d love [...]

From Pennsylvania Ave to Wisconsin Ave…

Monday will be one month since we opened our Washington DC jewelry buying office. It’s going better than expected – WAY better. The neighborhood is unbelievable – just like New York City but in DC. High end shopping, great food, beautiful 6th floor office overlooking Wisconsin Ave, nice people. The customer reaction has been so [...]

Treating Your Customers With Dignity and Respect

I was asked to speak at an event last night at my synagogue. The first speaker was the rabbi who was asked to talk about ethics in business. The subject of “when to tip” was the topic of his conversation. Why do we tip the person who takes our luggage out of the car but [...]

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