High visitor turnout at JCK Las Vegas and Couture shows

06 Jun 2019

Visitor numbers were high at the JCK Las Vegas and Couture trade shows, featuring strong promotions of diamond jewellery and a big turnout by lab grown diamond suppliers.

JCK, held at Sands Expo in downtown Las Vegas, was a vibrant selling event, with many booths crammed with retailers ordering new stock.

UK exhibitors at JCK included award-winning Birmingham-based designer Fei Liu, widely stocked in the UK and China, who reported brisk sales and enquiries, and said he would return next year. De Beers Group Industry Services also had a high-profile presence at JCK to showcase their state-of-the-art diamond detection capabilities.

A large turnout of lab grown diamond suppliers exhibited at JCK, underscoring the growing requirement across the global industry for efficient diamond detection to counter mixing of undisclosed lab grown diamonds with natural stones in the supply chain.

Le Vian, whose wide variety of coloured diamond jewellery is stocked by Ernest Jones in the UK, staged a catwalk event at to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their Chocolate Diamonds. The company has pinpointed value in gem-quality fancy dark brown diamonds, which they trademarked as Chocolate Diamonds, tapping into a high supply of brown diamonds, notably from Argyle mine in Australia.

“We can help make millions of people become collectors of natural diamonds,” CEO Eddie Le Vian told The Jeweller.

International Jewellery London (IJL) held a successful cocktail event during the show, which aimed to promote the international profile of IJL; from bloggers to international buyers, the event was attended by over 80, making it extremely successful.

Couture

Across the road, at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel, the high-end Couture show attracted a number of UK-based designer fine jewellers, including Birmingham-based Deakin & Francis; and London-based Stephen Webster, Fernando Jorge, and Satta Matturi.

Couture had a much more “luxury” feel than JCK, and was more intimate with elegant cocktail networking events to reinforce its status.

Italy-based jewellery analyst Paola De Luca, founder of The Futurist, a luxury market intelligence agency, gave a talk at Couture about how the digital era will impact on jewellery design.

“Overall the market seems vibrant,” De Luca said, referring to the Las Vegas shows.

“Some companies were busier than others as always, not only based on having good or bad products, but linked to how active they are in sales and communications. Shows nowadays are more about relationships than writing orders.”

Another event staged in the city in early June was The Collective, combining selling events in estate and antique jewellery, contemporary jewellery, diamonds and gemstones, which took place in Las Vegas Convention Center.

UK exhibitors included Hatton Garden-based Bjorn Diamonds, a supplier of so-called “salt and pepper” diamonds, which contain black and white inclusions, giving a grey tone to the stones.

David Brough