A lot of places were commenting about a press release put out by the good folks at Wal-Mart letting people know that they are jumping on the sustainable, green, environmentally friendly, jewelry trend.. My first thought was, really?? You mean after all these years of trashing the environment by pushing their products made in places like China, now they suddenly see the light and are going to try to be more green?? Really??

I’ve commented in the past that a great many companies are using the environment as a marketing tool.. This is no different.. I believe that if Wal-Mart thought that they could make just as much money just ignoring the environment, they would.. But in today’s marketplace it’s important to at least pretend that you care about the environment.. If Wal-Mart had being good to the world as a core value then this would not be news, it would be an announcement from them welcoming everyone else to where they already were..

I’ll be more interested in seeing where they are in two years, and if they are planning to allow independent oversight of their process.. Or even more interesting, will they produce records of just how many of their customers actually use their new website to track their jewelry..

For the record, here is that website, it took a lot longer to find than I would have thought. This should be front and center, instead the link to it was buried 3 pages deep on their website.

http://www.loveearthinfo.com/home.html

I try not to rant too hard on the jewelry trade.. It does feed my family after all.. But I was reading this interesting Time Magazine poll about retail jewelers.. It seems that the number one complaint of 2000 polled consumers is that their jeweler, or jewelry salesperson doesn’t always know as much as they could, or should, about the product that they are selling..

Poll shows need of retailer knowledge

Did you notice the publication date on that page?? 1947.. Yup, 60 years ago people were complaining about the lack of knowledge in the retail jewelry trade.. Take a tour around any of the online jewelry forums.. A common complaint that runs through all of them is the overall lack of knowledge and skill of the people behind the counter.. The stories are nearly endless..

So why is this?? Why are we 60 years down the pipe from this first poll being published and still seeing the same complaints?? I have some guesses..

I think that a lot of it has to do with the traditional nature of the industry.. Information was passed from father to son without a lot of outside influence.. This causes bad information to become fact in a very short time.. I don’t know about you, but I still have trouble telling my dad he is wrong about something..

But, I think the larger problem is simply one of laziness.. There is so much good information out there, easily found, yet so many people in the trade would rather make up an answer and try to bullshit a customer than admit that they don’t know something and ask for help.. A piece of advice for those of you that do this.. our customer probably knows as much, or more, than you do.. And making up an answer on the spot will cost you the sale.. And even worse, that customer will most likely jump online and post their story about the idiot jeweler.. How is that for advertising??

The jewelry trade isn’t the only one that has this problem.. But it really isn’t that hard to learn the basics quickly, and gain more in depth knowledge with just a little effort on your part.. It’s been 60 years.. Get off your ass and learn something..

A new website went up recently labled as a Consumer Guide to Synthetic Diamonds at http://www.consumerguidesweb.com. The site purports to provide a consumer’s guide to the best quality and service from companies providing man-made diamonds.. Great idea, it’s alwasy a great thing to have more information out there to help people decide..

Unfortunatly they seem to have left a little detail out..

Their #1 also happens to be owned by the guys that own the consumer report site.. Imagine that, a consumer report site giving the #1 spot to the company that also happens to own them.. Wow.. It might not be quite so bad if they had bothered to mention that somewhere on their site.. But they didn’t.. Not really a shock with the past track records of those involved..

Take a look here -
http://whois.domaintools.com/consumerguidesweb.com

and here -
http://whois.domaintools.com/diamondnexuslabs.com

The registrant for Diamond Nexus Labs is
registrant-firstname: Robert
registrant-lastname: Joseph
registrant-street1: 2644 Lorraine Circle
registrant-pcode: 60134
registrant-state: IL
registrant-city: Geneva
registrant-ccode: US
registrant-phone: +1.6304020534

And the registrant for consumerguidesweb.com is
Lamb, Lindsey
2644 Lorraine Circle
Geneva, IL 60134
US
6302125152

Interesting coincidence..

I suppose that we should be glad that the other two sites listed are not owned by the same company.. But it does make you wonder about any company that would stoop to this sort of trickery to gain sales.. Beware of Misleading Diamond Simulant Advertising from Unscrupulous Jewelry Vendors indeed..

~Fey

Edited to add
9/05/06: It seems that the consumer website has already been removed and a blank page exists in it’s place now.. I wonder why a consumer based website would fold after just a few weeks??