Welcome to the jewelry district, a podcast by JCP Magazine and JCP online. Happy 2020. Today, JCP's

Rob Bates and Victoria Gamalski will talk about the Golden Globes, Tucson, and holiday sales. They'll also cover a weird jewelry story of the week.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the jewelry district. This is Victoria Gimelski, editor-in-chief of J-C-K and J-C-K Online.

And this is Rob Bates, news director of J-C-K and J-CK Online. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Let's talk about the holiday sales. Yeah. Christmas, this is the big one for the industry. It is. So far, and again, this is very early on, I think most of the news I've heard is pretty good. I think it was a decent season. I did hear that some of the mall stores are a little challenged. Last year, there was a huge issue. When I'm talking last year, I mean 2018, right before the holiday, there was a bunch of Trump tweets about China.

And for a lot of people, it really, it seriously hurt their business.

And I spoke to at least one diamond dealer who had a big diamond sale and was all good to go.

And then it kind of fell through it the last minute after all those tweets.

So there was nothing like that that killed the holiday this year, which is good. It seems all the international craziness was saved till after New Year, which is good.

Small blessing. Small blessing, right? Thank God for small favors. There did, and I'm 100% sure this is true for jewelry, but there did seem to be a lot of discounting this year. Things

were very, very cheap. You know, I bought like some jeans for like $8. I mean, you know, things

were really, which I've never seen before. I was just actually reading a study. They said that

there was some of the highest levels of discounting this last holiday than there's ever been.

So we'll see how it goes and we'll see if profit margins hold up. From what I understand, even though it was a decent holiday for diamonds, you know, the pipeline is still a little full and that's still going to continue to be an issue for the rest of the year. Overall, things were good and the holidays weren't canceled and that's great. Okay. Well, that all sounds, yeah, relatively good.

I think everything I'm hearing is that people are generally in good moods.

And that always then fuels the business in the early part of the year when we have a spate of jewelry and gem shows.

And as everyone knows, we've got the Tucson gem shows coming up.

And, of course, the finished jewelry shows that kind of bookend those. We've got Cent Tucson gem shows coming up and of course the finished jewelry shows that

kind of bookend those. We've got Centurion in Phoenix. Of course, JCPay Tucson opens February 5th in

Tucson. There's another show, the Select Jewelry show that's also in Tucson. And then of course all the

loose gem shows. And so in talking to some dealers and some influencers and just people who are kind of nitty-gritty

in the thick of the gem market, we've gotten a few leads on the colors and the stones

that are going to be big this year.

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