Patriotic Pins, Bracelets East Pressure for R.I. Jewelers
By Sarah Sparks
WASHINGTON – Lee Mogavero has found a charm to keep his jewelry business afloat in the sinking Rhode Island jewelry market – a bracelet featuring icons of New York City, including a yellow cab, an apple and the Statue of Liberty.The charm bracelet is featured in Bloomingdale’s fall catalogue but the timing is pure serendipity. When his Providence-based Vero Industry produced the bracelet last May, Mogavero couldn’t have predicted that in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, all things having to do with New York would suddenly become popular totems.
“I had forgotten about it. I never connected it,” Mogavero said. After watching sales of regular jewelry decline for the past year and go off a cliff after Sept. 11, he was shocked when the $48 bracelets took off almost overnight. “We’ve sold 4,000 without any real promotion,” he said. “Anything relative to New York is important at this time.”
Sales of the New York charm bracelet and a $20 sterling silver cuff bracelet engraved with “United We Stand” that Mogavero produced after the attacks have helped see the company through perilous economic times. And his company is not the only one.
In the weeks following Sept. 11, the Manufacturing Jewelers & Suppliers of America, a national trade group based in Providence, was “flooded with calls” from jewelry and department stores wanting referrals to makers of patriotic jewelry, said Stasia Walmsley, a spokeswoman for the trade group. Referrals are still holding steady at about 10 calls a week, she said. “We have heard from our members that the increase in interest in patriotic jewelry has been tremendous.”
Walmsley said that of the group’s 260 Rhode Island members, 21 are manufacturing patriotic jewelry. Most are donating part of their patriotic jewelry sales to the Red Cross, the United Way’s Sept. 11 Fund and other charities.
Rhode Island produces 25 percent of American jewelry and the industry employs 27,600 people in the state, but the softening economy and sinking consumer confidence have hurt the state’s manufacturers and retailers. “Patriotic jewelry is giving the jewelry industry a little bit of an extra boost because many people may go to look for patriotic jewelry when they may not be looking for jewelry otherwise,” Walmsley said.
Jane Breaknell, owner of J.H. Breaknell & Co., a custom jeweler in Newport, agreed. The silver and gold apple pins that came out just before the attacks have given the company a boost, she said, along with a silver angel holding a banner that reads, “Fear Not.”
“Unless it’s Christmas, we sell about six [angels] a month, but we sold about 75 from Sept. 15 through the end of October,” Breaknell said.
The surge in patriotic jewelry sales has been all that’s keeping some manufacturers afloat. The Rhode Island jewelry market, sinking over the past year, has been at a virtual standstill since September. Jewelers of America, another national trade group, said in its 2001 Cost of Doing Business survey, released in October, that the industry’s overall growth rate slowed from 10.5 percent of median sales in 1999 to 3.3 percent in 2000. Independent and mid-range manufacturers had only 0.8 percent growth, and designer and custom jewelers saw sales decline by 4.5 percent from last year.
Joel Bazar, president of A.S. Manufacturing Inc. of Providence, which makes rhinestone jewelry, said he has moved 90 percent of his 30 employees into making patriotic jewelry – pins bearing flags, “USA.” or red, white and blue hearts – as the rest of his market dried up during the past two months.
“This year we would have been down about 15 percent because of [the terrorist attacks],” he said. “It hasn’t increased sales; it’s replaced sales. Stores are taking their budgets and buying entirely flags instead of jewelry they would regularly buy.”
It’s the same story for Joel Bazar’s cousin, Peter Bazar, vice president for Imperial-Deltah, a pearl jewelry manufacturer in Providence that also sells costume and fine gold flag brooches. Four of the company’s 100 employees work on its patriotic jewelry full-time, and more may be added; Imperial-Deltah has a two-to-four-week backlog on orders.
“There is a shortage on everything related to this,” Peter Bazar said. “We’ve sold 200,000 units in the past two months, and when we went to the retailers there were open orders for millions of pieces. We couldn’t sell anything else.”
Yet the patriotic jewelry boom, which has brought in $50,000 from costume flags and $100,000 from gold ones, has done little for the company beyond “keep people busy,” Peter Bazar said. “Before Sept. 11, we were ahead of last year’s September sales. After, we’ve dropped about $300,000 from last September to this. The chain stores just stopped their orders.”
The company is still down almost 20 percent in sales. Patriotic jewelry “did not fill up the loss in business,” he said. “$100,000 isn’t even on the map for us.”
Crystal jewelry manufacturer Swarovski of Cranston has seen perhaps the biggest boost in sales from its patriotic line. The company is manufacturing 6,000 patriotic pins each day, according to Swarovski spokeswoman Melissa Cardin, including a $95 flag pin and a $125 eagle pin that had already been part of the company’s jewelry line and a $35 “Brave Hearts” pin honoring the police, firefighters and rescue workers killed at the World Trade Center.
“We had samples within a week [of the attacks], and we’re continuously shipping and taking orders,” Cardin said. “We have 600 employees company-wide dedicated to the “Brave Hearts” pin, just because it is a new item and there’s an incredible demand.”
Eighty percent of Swarovski’s manufacturing resources have been committed to the patriotic line, which will expand late this month to include $8 crystal body temporary tattoos featuring patriotic themes, which Cardin said she expects to sell well. “People feel that they want to show their support even if they were not directly affected [by the attacks],” Cardin said.
Joel Bazar agreed. “This same thing happened about 10 years ago, with the Gulf War,” he said. “It’s a pretty broad base [of interest].”
A.S. Manufacturing’s pins also have sold well so far at Lord & Taylor, Air Force base stores and outlets. A.S. Manufacturing expects to sell 15,000 to 25,000 pins by the end of the year for $1 or $2, giving 50 cents from each to the Red Cross.
Swarovski has donated $100,000 to the United Way Sept. 11 Fund and will give a “Brave Heart” pin to the families of each of the emergency workers who died during the Sept. 11 attacks. They have distributed about 400 so far, Cardin said.
And Mogavero said his company has just finished samples of a new pin commemorating the World Trade Center, which he plans to market through Federated Department Stores – parent company of Macy’s as well as Bloomingdale’s – and other retailers in time for the holiday season. Chaffee & Partners, a Providence graphic design firm, donated its work to help create the pin.
Mogavero said he is already seeing a good response to the pin. “Everyone wants to keep themselves and others reminded of this date,” he said. “War is one thing, but we’re letting the world know that we’re united.”
