In the Loupe
In the Loupe
5 Jewelry Industry Topics You Should Be Paying Attention To
The jewelry industry is evolving with significant technological, market, and policy developments that are reshaping how businesses operate and connect with customers.
- Google Gemini AI tool can place jewelry onto digital hands and ears, offering an alternative to expensive lifestyle photography.
- Taylor Swift's vintage-inspired engagement ring features an antique cushion cut diamond on yellow gold with ornate engraving, likely influencing future trends.
- Tariffs on Indian goods have increased to 50%, disrupting supply chains and forcing businesses to adjust pricing strategies.
- Punchmark's "Shop This Case" feature expands, creating a seamless connection between online browsing and in-store shopping experiences
- The increasing prevalence of data-driven advertising and AI-generated content is creating challenges for authentic marketing
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Welcome to In the Loop, what this is. I have five topics that I was going to turn into individual episodes but for whatever reason I decided I didn't have enough to turn each one into a full length, 25 to 35 minute episode about these, and instead I decided to do five five minute segments or seven minute segments. So it's kind of like when you go to clean out your fridge and you end up eating like hamburgers and spaghetti. I think it doesn't really go together, but each one is going to be good on its own. That's kind of what I wanted to do Five interesting jewelry industry topics that I figured we should all be talking about. They might not all go together, but I really wanted to discuss them. So listen in, thanks.
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Speaker 1:And now back to the show. All right, let's get into this thing. Here are five topics or stories that I've been following that I think have really caught my eye and I think we should all be paying attention to. Really caught my eye and I think we should all be paying attention to. First, this Gemini AI tool. So, full disclosure I don't really like Gemini. I think it's too goofy feeling. It kind of feels like a little bit it doesn't feel serious enough, whereas ChatGPT sort of feels like it's like a real tool. I don't know. It's like the difference between having, like a professional hammer versus like one that comes with like an Ikea kit. It's like this one feels like it's ready. But what I've heard about Gemini is that it's been tailored the most and it like becomes its own thing the best. Whereas Chachi PT, it always kind of feels like a offspring of Chachi PT. Whereas ChatGPT, it always kind of feels like a offspring of ChatGPT. It feels like it's never stopped being what it was, whereas Google Gemini a lot of people say that it can really be customized really well.
Speaker 1:The one I'm looking at is actually my boss, dan Saroy, who's our CPO and co-founder of Punchmark. He is really interested in following. You know these different AI tools and he sometimes is reading stuff and he shares them with us and we try out the tools. The one that was really interesting is he shows us Google Gemini 2.5 Flash and it's also known as Nano Banana Okay, and what he was using it for. What the the tool he was using it for is. He was taking rings from what we call jewelry on white, which is uh, you've seen it, it's jewelry shot against a plain white background. Usually it's been edited so that it has higher contrast, so that the white is pure white and the jewelry stands out, and that that jewelry, that photography, is pretty much stock, like it happens all the time. It's very utilitarian. Every piece of jewelry, in my opinion, needs to have at least two of those upwards of five if you're doing it right. So I think that Dan was taking it in this Google Gemini.
Speaker 1:He was using it to put it on hands, like a ring onto hands, and what was really cool is he wasn't just using like a solitaire engagement ring, he was using a fashion ring and I think he used a pair. I won't say any brand names so that no one gets mad, but he was using like a dual band, like a cross band type of you know wedding band, and he, I think the prompt that he had to do the best one was like hey, put this ring onto a female model's hand and have it just be the hand and shot in good lighting. So he basically did that and what ended up happening was it generated a hand, and you know, hands with AI can sometimes be a little bit weird, because sometimes they give them extra fingers, sometimes they remove some fingers. So you got to look and it dropped the ring right onto the hand. The scaling wasn't perfect, so, like I think that the ring was a little bit smaller than it maybe should have. I'm looking at it right now. It doesn't look perfect, but it's pretty darn close. And what was really interesting is the hand was just purely generated. I think the other part of it is some of the finger lengths, some of the digits are just like 1% too long and it's hard to even detect. I think maybe I'm just being too critical, I'm looking at it too much, but that was the the, the one that was really interesting.
Speaker 1:Dan also had it uh put in a stud earring on him, which uh worked, but it did not get the lighting right. So that's kind of interesting. So what he did is he had a pair of studs on white jewelry on white, and he took a photo of himself showing his ear, but like his whole head is in it, and then he fed it in both to this Gemini, and Gemini put one of the studs on his ear. It did not get the lighting right, meaning it looks kind of like if you were to Photoshop one of those, you know, those ones that were shot in a light box and put on his ear. So it's not great, but I think like it's close. So that's kind of interesting. But then he also did one last one that did not work and he took, like, um, an earring that's definitely a more decorative earring and had it had to put it on his daughter's ear and that one definitely failed because that one it was. I think the earring was too complex and it did not drop it on her ear, it actually replaced the earring with a different earring and put it on the girl's ear. Kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:It had me thinking because when it comes to selling products a lot of the times, I think that lifestyle photography is increasingly one of the differentiators between a jewelry store and a uh like yeah, jewelry stores kind of photography set using from a vendor versus what you might get in like a brand store, for example, like one of these big ones that are uh like a pocketbook designer, one of those you know-consumer ones, the houses, those ones it always seems like all their photography is so bang on, they hired a shoot, a model with their jewelry on, whereas a lot of retail stores can't afford to do this. I wonder if this is going to be maybe one of the futures and one of the ways that they can kind of bridge that gap. Okay, that is like five minutes on this topic. Let's get into the next one. I don't want to spend too long on each one. It's something I am paying attention to, but the future of AI influencers kind of interesting, kind of dystopian too, but that's a different conversation. All right, next one let's talk about the big one Taylor Swift's ring.
Speaker 1:I have never seen something jewelry related be more mainstream than this topic. In case you didn't know, taylor Swift just got engaged like a week I guess it was the week before last she was proposed to by her boyfriend now fiance, the tight end for the Kansas City Chief and big internet personality, travis Kelsey. I don't have any opinions on it. Good for them, man. I mean they both sound like they are really happy about it.
Speaker 1:The engagement ring, though, is it's I just looked it up A large, elongated antique cushion cut diamond estimated to be between seven and 10 carats, with a 18 carat yellow gold band in an ornate engraving. It looks kind of vintage and I think that's kind of fun. It's very much in stark contrast to the engagement of Cristiano Ronaldo and to his fiance. Now, that one it just it almost felt, you know, like a really rich person's engagement ring, whereas this one, it almost kind of feels like it was intentionally designed to kind of match an aesthetic, where this other one, by ronaldo, uh sort of feels like it was just a super large diamond. It's almost like that one was celebrating the diamond, and and then this one with Taylor Swift was more I don't know maybe more like a considered, like a custom feel to it. It was a custom ring.
Speaker 1:I think that it is going to set a lot of trends. There's already a lot of. I don't want to say the term knockoff, because that has a negative connotation, but I will say like a lot of people are taking a lot of inspiration from it. I saw one of our jewelers had already started working with a CAD designer to make something very similar, um and or just in that kind of vein, and people love that kind of stuff. And who am I to say that they shouldn't have a ring inspired by their, you know, favorite one? I think that that happens all the time with different types of fashion and I think we just saw a real like my not milestone, but more like this is a real moment.
Speaker 1:I think vintage is going to have more time. I hope that estate sales have even bigger time in the sun as people kind of look for that more classic look. We've always been going so ultra modern with everything we do so much tech and so much um, modernality to everything we buy, you know, from cars to, um, you know everything, luxury it sort of is almost due for like a little bit of like, um, you know, uh, a change. I think that people are going to go back to these, this handmade feel. That's really kind of polished.
Speaker 1:The other thing I'll comment on with this one I think is really interesting is the engagement photo style is so iconic and, my friend, I have a lot of friends that are wedding photographers and engagement photographers, but one friend in particular who I'm very close with, she is already despising this photograph series because it's so iconic. Everybody wants to do it. It's like this kind of a blued out, a little bit colder with these big, you know, reds and whites, but it's like in this nice, very tasteful blue, um overlay with this. You know this kind of warmth to it and now everybody wants, wants that like a very kind of intimate feel. Uh, I feel I feel for them, I feel for the uh engagement ring designers that are going to have to make a ton more of these vintage style rings. But who knows, maybe that just means business is good. Okay, let's move on from that one.
Speaker 1:Next, tariffs are back and back to being disruptive. So it kind of felt like the beginning of this year was all about tariffs and then there was like this big lull in like the middle of the summer and now tariffs are back to being like super disruptive again, very transparently, the reason why I'm thinking about because of I lost a project working with a vendor that they had to pull the plug on their projects and the production side of it because of these new tariffs related to India. In case you didn't know, indian goods are now subject to a 50% tariff. So just to repeat that that's 5-0% and that basically means that these duties are now doubled from 25% to 50%. And if you know anything about margins, like a lot of the times margins don't even cover 25% and now that they're covering 50%, it's just, it's just a lot and everybody is going to have to, you know, increase their prices from the very, very top to the very bottom.
Speaker 1:And I noticed that these tariffs kind of send a shiver through the air sometimes, and it's less about the dollars sometimes, it's like less about the percents. A lot of times when we talk about these tariffs, like I don't know why, but in my head I just assume every single tariff is 25% and I just assume it's. You know, that's what the base is. Some of these tariffs are super, duper high and what I've kind of been thinking about is they also are just impacting increasingly just a lot of the legs of the workflow and with that globalization that we've been kind of aiming towards for a lot of years, since before I was born, I've learned that every step of every production is a lot of the times, you know done overseas, or it goes from overseas back to the US and then back to overseas and then back to the US to sell and it just is increasingly adding more and more markups and there's all these rules behind them.
Speaker 1:I won't get into it all because I'm not an expert on it, but it feels like things are like it's like oh, game on, things are serious again. I would love to hear, like, how people feel about this, because to me it does feel like things have sort of changed in the past. I mean, this is recorded as of September 4th and increasingly I think that the yeah, the tariff game is back. It just kind of has a new bite. I felt it when I had a project that I've been working on for several months get, you know, pulled the plug on in the last legs, working with a vendor Really sucked, but you know what. That's just kind of part of it. I think I should probably do another episode or do the episode on tariffs, but I still am kind of still unsure if I should get into it. It changes so much. So all that to say. I hope everybody's doing all right with it. All right, everybody. We're going to take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor.
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Speaker 1:And now back to the show, and we're back Moving on. So Punchmark actually rolled out a new feature very quietly, and the reason why is it's only the second customer that's using it. And this is this new omni channel experience which we talked about one time before, but I haven't really done an update on it because I'm kind of waiting for us to iron out the kinks on it. But it's now this shop, this case. So what this is is when you're online and you see a product and the retailer has the product in their store, then there's the ability to see that they have it in case nine and then go into the store and be like, hey, I saw this online and then be able to go see it in the store.
Speaker 1:But what's cool about it is you can also do it in a reverse way, where you can have the products unlisted, unpriced, in a display case and then have a QR code. That's a nicely designed and elegant, kind of like card that sits on the table or you know, in a spot and then, in order to shop this, the products that are there they would be able to scan the QR code, pull it up and get a collection of products that are in that case, and what you basically have to do is you have to be able to tag products in a unique way and also tag them and update them anytime things shift around. So let's just say, for example, this could save you time on pricing instead of having to, you know, take off the tags, write new tags, put them back on or print new tags. You could, for example, just put them into a, into a carousel and then update it in the edge and it's kind of always staying up to date online. We only have two clients on this. It takes a lot of concerted effort and this doesn't work unless you're really kind of on top of the game. And it's very reminiscent to me.
Speaker 1:If anybody remembers, I did an episode back on Memorial Day of 2024. So that would be like back in May of 2024. And I talked all about this experience, this omni-channel experience I had at Lowe's, and it was so good and it was like very much like one of those things. I went and I went shopping and they were like oh yeah, you should just look online. And I went online and I found where the products were without having to ask people, because everything was tagged and described in the aisle and in the bay. It was so accurate and that's how I, whenever I go to Lowe's or Home Depot, I don't even ask people anymore. I just use the website and I look and it tells me, hey, it's aisle 10, bay 15. And I go in and there you go, and it's always there.
Speaker 1:And I think that jewelry stores can kind of lean into that more, because you should have your products and your pricing up to date online and the more you can have one source of truth, probably the better. It's one of those things it does. Yeah, it does take a kind of a lot of work and I think it's one of those like really exciting in theory. In practice, it's almost like a nice to have and it just takes extra work. Some stores would be down and perfect for this. I just don't know 100% if every store would be able to handle this, but I'm excited to hear how this second tester goes with it. If that's something you're interested in, maybe shoot me a message. I'd be interested in connecting you with Ross, who's the one that kind of rolls these things out. All right, and now the last one. Let's get into this.
Speaker 1:So the last thing I wanted to talk about it's not really just for in the loop, it kind of feels like it's in my life as well, and I've tried to start sharing more and more about my life. I think one thing I'm just kind of feel like it almost feels like data and ads have sort of jumped the shark or they've uh, it's not fun anymore. You know what I mean. Like the amount of data and retargeting that I've been getting lately is so acute feeling, I guess is almost the only word to describe it. It feels kind of like the ads have just they used to be at bay and they used to only live in one kind of realm and now it feels like they live everywhere. To give an example of this, they're starting to be super intrusive on Netflix. Like I use this one family package with my brother and the ads are in the middle of the episode, and I remember Netflix used to definitely not be that. I understand they got to change some things, but it's just like the ads are also not good. You know, the ads are very it feels like an ad, and now this episode is being recorded before the first game of the NFL season.
Speaker 1:But I watch Red Zone, and Red Zone is this thing where you can watch all the football games all at the same time on Sundays. Red Zone is this thing where you can watch all the football games all at the same time on Sundays. And there used to be this joke about, you know, seven hours of commercial free football and you'd lock in, you would sit there and there would be no ads, so you would never have to get up to you know, use the bathroom or like, do any of your chores or responsibilities, because there's always something going on, because there's always something going on. But with Red Zone taking on ads, it almost sort of like it's like a taints or sullies the experience. Suddenly, and even with YouTube, I used to use an ad blocker, which are free and legal, but it's not like it's illegal to have an ad blocker, it's just a thing that blocks them. But now YouTube has this thing that prevents you from using YouTube if you have an ad blocker, which seems kind of crazy, but you know, I have to abide by it.
Speaker 1:And now I just see ads everywhere and this is, I mean, it's pretty rich of me to complain, seeing as one of Punchmark major uh things is advertising you know, is helping jewelers advertise. I just feel like the amount of data that I'm being tracked with is just too intense lately. It feels uh, omnipresent and I I don't know if that's by design, I don't know if anything changed recently where it's like you used to be able to track them this way and now you can track them that way, but it does feel like the ads are becoming like less fun, if that makes sense. It used to be like on Instagram oh, you liked this thing about rock climbing, and now we're showing you a rock climbing ad. Nowadays it feels like it's like much more advanced than that and it's like oh, we, you know, we showed you, you know this thing, and now we're going to show you an, an AI mocked up version of this or this um slop content which is like uh, ads.
Speaker 1:You know those robot voices speaking on top of like either ai created stuff, or um slop, which is like um, these mobile games and just like really like people in minecraft jumping around and they just have a story and it's people reading them, but it's so mindless that it's it's everywhere and I kind of am sort of am I getting old, like I just I'm 30 now and I'm like, oh my gosh, these ads are just everywhere. So this isn't, this isn't anything like why am I discussing this? I don't know. It feels kind of like ads have sort of rounded a corner. It feels like there's ads everywhere suddenly, maybe more than I want. I don't know how I'm going to get rid of that.
Speaker 1:It seems like I can't even sort the original content away from the slop and AI generated content. There's so much of it out there from the slop and AI generated content. There's so much of it out there. Do you know where I see it the most is travel content is I've been looking at maybe doing a trip to Asia next year and as I've started looking, I've just been like they have so many AI generated versions of, like Japanese cityscapes and Japanese walking down alleys and you think that it's original content, but it's not. It's AI generated and at a certain point I caught a couple of them where, like you can catch them in certain ways, like there's a certain camera pan that they use a lot and the faces don't look great and I was like, oh, that is definitely AI. And then I was realizing it's like, oh man, all of this is kind of AI driven. So it's like I've kind of gotten to the point where I'm like I'm not having fun anymore.
Speaker 1:So I thought I'd at least bring that topic up Recently just to kind of make it poignant. Will Smith, the rapper, actor, the fresh Prince of Bel-Air, will Smith he recently got in trouble for allegedly using AI-generated content to show he had crowds at a concert he did. They literally spun up a crowd and it looked kind of real. But they published it and it took people like a couple days to realize this definitely seems like it's not original content. So if the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is using AI generated crowds for his concerts, well, maybe it's even more present than you'd expect. So just a cautionary tale, something I've been thinking about increasingly.
Speaker 1:Okay, well, I think that that's probably where I'll call it. That's five topics that I've been following. This is talking about Google Gemini putting jewelry on hands, taylor Swift's engagement ring, which is a big deal, tariffs and they're back and better or worse than ever, and Punchmark with the shop, this case, and then finally data and ads and just kind of like a little bit of introspectiveness on it. I think that that's where I'll end it. Thanks, everybody. We'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye. All right, everybody, that's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cockrum. Don't forget to leave us feedback on punchmarkcom. Slash, loop and rate the podcast five stars on wherever you're listening. Thanks, we'll be back next week, tuesday, with another episode. Cheers Bye.
