Romancing the Stone - How the ICA Promotes Gemstones

It’s a tough jewelry world out there - competition is brutal, successful marketing techniques are difficult to come up with and not everyone, believe it or not, knows their emeralds from their sapphires.

So how does the gemstone industry get its message across and educate the jewelry buying public about its products? Joe Menzie, President of the International Colored Gemstone Association (ICA), explains the organization’s work and how it hopes to persuade the public to put some color in their lives. Whereas the global diamond industry, particularly following the introduction of the DTC’s Supplier of Choice policy, spends hundreds of millions of dollars promoting diamond jewelry, Joe Menzie is keen to point out that the ICA simply does not have anywhere near that amount of money to spend on its promotional activities. That means the gemstone industry is largely dependent on the media to do its work in promoting gemstones by getting news outlets to put out the “right message”.

“We are engaged in a sort of guerilla warfare,” Menzie said. “We do not have the kind of money that De Beers [and its Sightholders] has to promote stones. So we write about the reality of gemstones. We write story lines that the ordinary reader can understand and not scientific articles and try and get the media to present these angles to their readers. A lot of articles look at the problems of the gemstone industry but we try to get the positive side reported.”

A different type of media has also helped boost the image of the gemstone industry, Menzie said, and that is the home shopping channels and coverage of celebrities that is particularly widespread on U.S. television channels and in popular magazines. “They have helped spread information about colored stones and that has been of great assistance to the industry in promoting demand. When people see [actress and singer] J Lo with a pink diamond ring or other celebrities wearing extraordinary jewelry they want either the same thing or a copy of it. With gemstones, they can get a copy but at a much lower price that they can afford.” The J Lo episode led to a huge growth in the popularity of pink tourmaline, rubelite and pink sapphires which continues to this day, while in general blue stones, sapphires and tanzanite, are the enduring color attracting most business. Other colors, of course, also have their day, Menzie said, with turquoise being hugely popular two years ago. Menzie attributes today’s much greater demand for colored gemstones and their rising popularity mainly due to the work of the media and the fact that colored stones allow customers to acquire beautiful jewelry at a price that falls within a cost range they can afford. “People want color in their lives, they don’t want to live in black and white, and gemstones give them that possibility at a range of price points. Colored gemstones fit in very naturally with fashion trends and that has helped raise both awareness of the options available with the stones and, as a result, sales as well,” Menzie said.

However, the ICA does not just rely on trade and fashion magazines and television’s coverage of celebrities and Hollywood to get its message across in a highly focused way. It is currently interviewing companies to find a firm that will come up with an international promotional strategy. In addition, it also plans to translate parts of its online publication The Gazette, currently only available in English and German, into Japanese, French, Italian, Korean and Russian. Then there is the global poster competition the ICA organizes every two years, with the third such contest to be judged at its Bangkok congress next year.

A further important ICA project aimed at finding ways to effectively promote gemstones is market research it is carrying out around the world for the first time ever to discover how the public regards colored stones. Menzie said the survey will give it valuable insights to enable it to promote the gems even more efficiently. The organization is looking especially hard at the huge Chinese and Indian markets, believing they have the potential for further strong growth. In addition, the former Communist bloc of Eastern Europe is also seen as having great promise. “We are trying to understand the nuances of how people see gemstones: why certain peoples like certain colors and are not so keen on others. Clearly, it’s vital to be familiar with these issues if we are to promote gemstones effectively around the world for our members.”

Menzie is keen to point out that he does not see colored stones as competing with diamonds in the luxury market and that is a factor that also helps colored stones sales. “A diamond is forever but a gemstone is for the moment. That gives gemstones a big advantage as they are seen as fitting in with fashion that changes all the time, meaning sales can constantly grow. Diamonds and gemstones have their places and neither works to the disadvantage of the other.” He is also sanguine about the effect of synthetic or created/cultured gemstones on the natural gemstones market, saying each stone has its niche. “Those stones are for customers looking for color who cannot afford natural gems and that is fine as long as there is full disclosure, which there usually is. Whoever tries to sell laboratory created stones as the real thing would soon be found out and would lose all credibility and be out of business. There’s plenty of room for everyone as the market is very large.”