Building a Jewelry Company | Stephen Silver

 

About Stephen Silver

Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry is considered one of the United States’ premier jewelry houses. Founder, Stephen Silver, is a gemologist, artist, and philanthropist.

Toronto born, Stephen moved to the San Francisco Bay Area as a teenager. Intrigued by science and minerals from a young age, Silver studied geology at San Diego State University and earned a graduate degree from the GIA. Stephen began his career in Los Angeles at one of the largest jewelry manufacturers in the world grading, cutting, and sorting diamonds and colored stones.

After college and the brief stint in Los Angeles, he was ready to be near his family in the Bay Area again, and took a job with a retail estate jeweler that specialized in antiques and precious stones. This is where Silver discovered his true passion, pieces from the early 19th century to the mid-20th century, a time when there was more emphasis on artistry and craftsmanship.

Established in 1980, S.H. Silver Company aims for perfection, delivering exceptional pieces that bring old-world craftsmanship forward to the modern luxury marketplace. The company began as an appraisal business working with law firms, financial planners, courts, and estates.

Over the course of the last 35 years, Silver has created a vertically integrated business, leveraging his highly developed global network of contacts in the jewelry trade, operating both retail and wholesale divisions. What began as an estate jewelry business is now a global wholesale/dealer and manufacturer, with diamond and colored stone cutting and a retail presence that includes an upstairs retail salon and two boutique stores.

Resident horologist in Silicon Valley’s venture capital community, the company’s watch boutique opened in 2014. Silver curates an ultra-high end collection of rare and exclusive timepieces including Greubel Forsey, Audemars Piguet, and Richard Mille.

 

Transcript of: Building a Jewelry Company | Stephen Silver

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Stephen Silver of Stephen Silver jewelry. Welcome to today’s show. Thank you. So Steven, for the listeners here, can you give us your background, how you got to where you are today?

Stephen
Well, I started in college, obviously getting an education. And that result driven into geology. So the background is in minerals and stones and my love of that part of my education. And between my junior and senior year, I decided to in an attempt to avoid taking a family vacation, I decided to go to the CIA and do their diamond grading course, which was really fascinating to me as educating geologist to find out about a way to grade diamonds, for the jewelry industry. I was so enthusiastic about the course and the way they taught it, and the grading that went into that system of grading diamonds that I decided to stay on and, and got a college stone degree and then and then I graduate geology degree. So that’s how it all started as a form of education.

Alan
Now, in spite of the education, there has to be a lot more to really knowing this industry.

Stephen
Well, that’s a whole other difference, you know, a whole other thing, understanding the complexities of a product, in this case, gems and jewelry, and then taking that knowledge and driving it into a business is a whole other issue altogether. So that speaks to more of the entrepreneurial side of developing anything.

Alan
So how did you get started with the degrees coming in? In, you know, your education? And yet, what, what drove you to say, I’m going to, I’m going to open up a fine jewelry store and did it? Did it start that way? Or did it?

Stephen
No, no, no. I mean, after I finished school, I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it. And, you know, on the geology side, there’s a very limited path of, of life after education. It’s either, you know, US Geological Survey, or you know, gas and oil exploration. There’s, you know, there’s other avenues academia, if you want to teach, which I had no interest in at all, but the gems in the jewelry I had an interest in. So my grandfather’s brother knew a big jewelry company owner in downtown Los Angeles, they were manufacturing jewelry business. And I interviewed with them, believe it or not, as a Milan shorter. So for my first two years in this industry, I sat at a desk, and I sorted about 100 carats a day, which is the equivalent of 1000 Diamonds a day into seven different categories of, of quality, that were fed into a huge factory that was manufacturing jewelry, for retailers, domestic retailers, anything from JC Penney to Tiffany Company. And that was in the mid 70s. I you know, it’s funny, because I reflect back on those days at that bench, and I’m sitting here with all this education, and I’m sitting at this bench sorting these little, small little diamonds that they used to Povey into jewelry, and I’m thinking, what am I doing? Am I sitting here? You know, sorting diamonds, how am I ever going to apply this to all this great education that my family spent on me. And the funny the funny thing about that is that as I reflect back on what I do today, the the disciplines that I learned in that very rudimentary process, I still apply today on some of the more important gems that we cut today. So all those disciplines and analyzing the cutting styles and the cutting quality, and we’re inclusions are located in stones, and I applied to our business today. So all those questions that I have indecision that I had at the beginning, I successfully apply today to a successful business enterprise.

Alan
So what year did you put your shingle out here?

Stephen
In 1980 so we established the business 37 years ago, and it was a $3,000 investment and a dream. And it started off as an appraisal business, which sort of combined my love of the study of the industry in the history of our industry, and also the practical application of of what we do today. The appraisal process is one that when you execute it, and it’s done properly encompasses all of the knowledge that you really need to have in order to do it. Right. So that’s how it started as an appraisal business.

Alan
Steven, I’m running up against the break. But after we get back I want to talk about how you how you differentiate, find different in gyms and in this market that we’re currently in, as I guess they’ve done crazy prices over the years but amazing here today with Stephen Silver of Stephen Silver Jewlrey, we’ll be right back after these messages

Alan
Welcome back visiting here today with Stephen Silver, Stephen Silver, fine Jewelry. And Stephen in the first segment we talked about, you know, the how you how you rolled into the industry and initially and it may you started as an appraisal shop. But now, if anyone walks into your stores, they see this as just a tremendous value in what you’ve been able to create here. So how did you move from the appraisal to where you are today?

Stephen
Well, I think a lot of it has to do with the way we established the appraisal business. I had been working for a retail jewelry in the Bay Area jeweler in the Bay Area. And he actually was the one that got me into understanding the value of appraisal work. And he was an estate jour jeweler and enjoy that. And that’s really what we’re where I really fell in love with the industry was I was able to apply all this technical knowledge that I had developed over the years. And then I had some of the study, which was the history of the industry. So that got me into the appraisal business. How we differentiated ourselves as an appraisal business as sort of the start of the entrepreneurial side of our of the history of my company. The big, the big barrier to what I perceived as the big barrier to a successful appraisal business was that at that time, it wasn’t oriented to the customer. It was oriented to the business. So if you brought a piece of jewelry and to be appraised in those days, you would leave the piece of jewelry with a company, they would appraise it and two weeks later, you’d be called up to pick it up. I thought wow, what a poor use of time it was a poor use of developing relationships with the customers. Because the customer wasn’t there, and they didn’t really understand what you were doing in the process of appraising what they owned. So I decided to apply whatever technology was existed back then, which basically was a recorder of foot pedal that you hit, you would you would record and and so I decided I would set up shop in a way that the customers would be in front of me, they would see me actually going through the process of raising what they owned, we would enter into discussions about it, such as, who owned it, how long was it in the family that it ended up all these things that were personal to them. And we developed a trust with one another between the appraiser and customer. They actually saw me going through the process. At the same time as I’m appraising it’s recording on the other side and my secretary at the time was was taking dictation in essence, and she was typing the appraisal work. So by the time they left my company, they had appraisal in hand. So I was literally doing a just in time process not manufacturing process, but a service process that really fed into what the customer wanted my appraisal business boomed. I was busy from the day I opened the appraisal offices until today. I mean, it’s just been quite amazing. But it was all driven by figuring out a solution to a problem that I knew existed. And that was the resistance for customers to leave their jewelry with a jewelry company to be appraised. And that’s how it all started.

Alan
Yeah, when people have their appraisals, what’s the incentive behind getting appraisals?

Stephen
Well, appraisals can be asked for for a multitude of different reasons it can it can be an insurance issue, it can be a legal issue, it can be a probate issue. It can be so all kinds of those it can just be understanding what somebody owns and, and and how it fits into their daily lifestyle. The business after the the appraisal process, we were asked to do a multitude of different things could be repair could be refurbish could be redesigned for something that somebody inherited and they don’t want to own it in that form, but they don’t want to sell it. So the natural evolution of the business was to start entering into all these different other sectors of our industry cutting manufacturing, appraisal, obviously. And that’s how this thing really started getting some legs and started growing and building

Alan
here today with Stephen Silver Stephen Silver fine Jewelry Stephen, we’re running up against the break. But when we come back I want to talk about the way the industry has gone today.

Alan
Welcome back and visiting here today with Stephen Silver, Stephen Silver fine Jewelry. And you know, the first segment we talked about the history how you moved into the business of of jewelry. But anyone walking into your store, let’s say this is not your typical jewelry store. It’s really fine. pieces. And how did you how did you move from that differentiation where you were firstly, appraisal, you started into jewelry, now you come you have some really rare, special pieces.

Stephen
So how do I start so the the evolution of the business and the way that we differentiated ourselves was really to pick the area of the industry you wanted to focus on. And my focus and attention was always in being around the finest, the rarest, the most important things within our industry that I could find. That was a drive the driving force behind all of this, frankly, everybody’s got to choose the pathway that they that they want. And I think not doing that is probably the biggest risk that one takes in business is not defining what it is they really want to do. In my case, my love of gems, and minerals is really the way this started. So it was about becoming oriented with the minds, the mind owners, the different idiosyncrasies associated with each of the different minerals within those geological statements around the world and understanding them intimately. So that I could differentiate the difference between Zambian emerald, and a Colombian emerald or a Burma Ruby with an African Ruby or Thai Ruby and Thai rubies were very popular. And at the time I started my my business and those mines were active today they’re not. So now that we have rubies coming out of Madagascar that that weren’t in the market when I first started. So understanding source is very, very important. Understanding how to differentiate quality within those sources is very, very important. Today, we’re challenged by treatments that that are done the gemstones and how to quickly and accurately identify what those treatments are because they have a big impact on the value of those stones. Those are the things that I concentrate my energy on today and also concentrated my energy on at the beginning, developing the infrastructure within my business was also a big challenge. Because when you’re dealing with the top 1/10, or, or even 1/20, of 1% of what the world offers in gyms, you’re really isolating and defining yourself. And so that happens sort of naturally.

Alan
How do you how do you go through your process of selecting pieces of jewelry that you want to showcase inside your stores.

Stephen
So first, you have to understand that we’re primarily a wholesale business, not a retail business. And so what the public sees in in our retail enterprise, or a public enterprise is a filtering of what we do. So when you walk into our Steven silver fine jewelry salon in the rosewood, you’ll see probably have a couple of 100 pieces of jewelry in that store at any given time. But that’s a filtering of 1000s upon 1000s of pieces of jewelry that we’ve handled. On our wholesale side and elected to keep to showcases is the statement we want to make to the public about who we are and what we are, which is extremely high Fiat find fine high end jewelry. And that goes back to what we were talking about earlier about defining what you are and who you are and, and that and the pathway you want to walk. For us. It’s just simply owning the finest you know, regardless of the customer, that’s our statement to ourselves, and then in that process, the customer seemed to find us so, you know, it’s not it’s not about anything really beyond that understanding who you are and what you want to do as a business and sticking to that mission statement. And it’s easy did to get off course. So, because we’re handling estates that have hundreds and hundreds of pieces and some in some instances, and how we deal with those with those estates, if for every 100 pieces of jewelry that we see, one or two or three may make it to the point where we’re showing them on our retail side. The other part of that business is about how we treat those pieces into our trade. So we’re supplying in today’s world in our business 50 to 60 high end jewelry businesses globally. We’re also re cutting, refurbishing, restoring, scrapping a lot of the things that we that we buy. So it’s a little bit more complex than what the public sees on the retail side where we operate.

Alan
And there’s a there’s a saying I guess, in eating when getting a diamond for the first time, they follow the three C’s, the cut the clarity, the four C’s, okay? All right, yeah, with the fourth?

Stephen
Well, there’s carat weight, carat weight, and then the color clarity. Cut. Okay, last one is really important. The cutting, very, very important.

Alan
You see, and you know, I recall and recent trip over to Amsterdam, they they talked, they had a diamond cutting across from the one of the museums over there. And they said, you know, we do 240 cuts on this stone with facets. Yeah, is that is that common in the industry or.

Stephen
So again, this is sort of their I’m imagining this is what is going through their mind. So the basic cut in around stones, 58 facets, so if they’re doing multiples of that 58, that basic 58 facet stone, what they’re attempting to do is to create a different look, or, or reaction to light to the eye that’s different than a 58 facet stone will do. I imagine it’s about creating more dispersion, which is the spectral breakup of white light. So you’re seeing more reds and blues and greens coming flashing up to your eye. And that’s the white light is refracting off of the surface of the stone, or coming into the stone and coming back up to your eye. And that and dispersion is that spectral breakup of white lines. So that’s probably what they’re after him and putting more facets on a diamond lot more labor intensive to do that. So in all probability, they’re trying to drive more value into the into the final product from a retail standpoint and excuse to create more value. And I think that’s probably what they’re attempting to.

Alan
Do first and wanting to reach out contact you how would they do so?

Stephen
The best ways to either call into the corporate office at 650325 9500. Or they can always go on our website@www.sh silver.com or Stephen silver, fine jewelry.com. And there’s info email there that they can drop in.

Alan
Stephen, thanks for being on today’s show. It’s a pleasure. Thanks for joining us here in American Dreams and joining us next week right here on this station.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

Alan Olsen, is the Host of the American Dreams Show and the Managing Partner of GROCO.com.  GROCO is a premier family office and tax advisory firm located in the San Francisco Bay area serving clients all over the world.

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