Southern Jewelry News
  • Featured
    • All
    • Featured
    • Featured Retailers
    • Retailer Roundtable
    • Sponsored Content
    • Supplier Spotlight
    Jeweler brings Midwest to the Southwest
    Tara Fine Jewelry: Atlanta’s not-so-secret, best-kept secret
    Finding the Big Ones; Zambian Trophies for the Ages
    The Golden Girls of Gemstones
  • Latest News
    • All
    • COVID-19
    • Furry Friends
    • Industry Awards
    • Industry Events
    • NRF
    • On The Move
    • Other News
    • Tradeshow News
    • Video
    • What's New
    NDC Education Partner Program
    Mystery shopping results reveal opportunity for proactive consumer natural diamond education
    Jewelers of America announces 2023 GEM Awards winners
    jeweler
    ASA partners with BrankoGems Academy to offer testing loose and mounted diamonds and gems training
    skull rings
    KIL N.Y.C. introduces the Cranium Ring
  • Podcast
  • Columnists
    The Story Behind the Stone: Diamonds on Pins and Needles
    Jewelry Marketing Survival Guide
    The Story Behind the Stone: Out of the Blue
    What’s Hot Now!: Latest Designer Trends 2023
    A Winning Strategy: How SEO and buying intent can skyrocket your sales
    business people shaking hands
    Networking for small business owners
    Is the customer always right?
    Successful Custom: A Clean Disaster
    Brad Huisken
    A quick note about technology
  • Classifieds
  • Subscriptions
    • Newsletter Signup
    • Print Subscription
No Result
View All Result
Southern Jewelry News
  • Featured
    • All
    • Featured
    • Featured Retailers
    • Retailer Roundtable
    • Sponsored Content
    • Supplier Spotlight
    Jeweler brings Midwest to the Southwest
    Tara Fine Jewelry: Atlanta’s not-so-secret, best-kept secret
    Finding the Big Ones; Zambian Trophies for the Ages
    The Golden Girls of Gemstones
  • Latest News
    • All
    • COVID-19
    • Furry Friends
    • Industry Awards
    • Industry Events
    • NRF
    • On The Move
    • Other News
    • Tradeshow News
    • Video
    • What's New
    NDC Education Partner Program
    Mystery shopping results reveal opportunity for proactive consumer natural diamond education
    Jewelers of America announces 2023 GEM Awards winners
    jeweler
    ASA partners with BrankoGems Academy to offer testing loose and mounted diamonds and gems training
    skull rings
    KIL N.Y.C. introduces the Cranium Ring
  • Podcast
  • Columnists
    The Story Behind the Stone: Diamonds on Pins and Needles
    Jewelry Marketing Survival Guide
    The Story Behind the Stone: Out of the Blue
    What’s Hot Now!: Latest Designer Trends 2023
    A Winning Strategy: How SEO and buying intent can skyrocket your sales
    business people shaking hands
    Networking for small business owners
    Is the customer always right?
    Successful Custom: A Clean Disaster
    Brad Huisken
    A quick note about technology
  • Classifieds
  • Subscriptions
    • Newsletter Signup
    • Print Subscription
No Result
View All Result
Southern Jewelry News
No Result
View All Result
Home Columnists

The Color Report

Konrad Darling by Konrad Darling
April 4, 2018
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
Reading Time: 6 minutes

The Tucson Show has come and gone. All the sparkly jewels picked through like packages on Christmas Day. But now, the fun begins. Jewelers get to exhibit the new stock, trends, what will be fun and exciting for the upcoming year. Here are some of the items that should do well on the internet and retail stores alike this year.

One of the newer and popular trends spiking this year is blue moonstone. This stone, belonging to the feldspar family, made a great deal of noise in Tucson. The majority of available material was cabochons with a vibrant blue sheen, semi-transparent, and eye-visible inclusions. This quality comes with an affordable price point and will be great for fashion jewelry in calibrated sizes as well as larger free form pieces for custom jewelry.

Konrad moonstone

This quality has gained some traction with online vendors, which led to its increased popularity at Tucson as well. While this look was most common, there is some premium grade, clean material available as well. However, it carries a much higher price per carat.

Konrad rhodo

Rhodolite garnet’s popularity recently picked up as well, even though it was “Color of the Year” a few years ago. Displaying a nice, purple-red hue and brilliant cutting, this is a great choice for everyday fashion wear. This stone runs the gamut of sizes and shapes with cushions, ovals and rounds being the most popular.

Spinel made a major impact on the show floor, too. The rise in popularity of this stone has been incredible. Once brushed aside and forgotten, to now being a real player in the color game. Its popularity recently surged due to a rise in online presence and should carry over into storefronts.

The most popular color spectrums of spinel consisted of blue-green, lavender, red wine and grey. We noticed an increase in pricing of the blue-green material, but it still remained affordable in comparison to sapphire. The lavender, red wine and grey colors have grown considerably in demand and are an affordable, unique color.

Spinel is a great option for most color stone settings in part because of its hardness (8 on the Mohs scale), top cutting, and being untreated. It does come in a variety of colors, but these three were the most popular.

While we can thank the internet for helping spinel gain some respect, it also keeps pushing traditionally uncommon colors of sapphire. Blue-green sapphires, also called “teal” or “peacock” sapphires, are coming along strong. There is still a decent amount of material available, but given it’s a bi-color stone it will be interesting to see how long this trend is able to be maintained. For now, its extremely popular and worth the look.

Konrad teal

The other color in sapphire still popular is “peach.” It is becoming accepted in the industry that customer requests for this color are referring to pastel pink, yellow-orange, or pale “champagne” yellow sapphires, instead of the rarer, more expensive lab-certified padparadscha sapphire, which is a true peach. Due to this wide range of color in “peach”, there are many options available, but they tend to most consistently be in the .50 ct to 1.5 ct range in ovals and rounds.

As far as sapphire pricing goes, these are affordable but tend to be the lighter shades of color. The “peach” sapphire has grown in popularity alongside morganite and as long as morganite popularity continues, so will “peach” sapphires.

In regards to morganite, its popularity remains firmly entrenched. It’s still consistently moving on the internet and remains a popular stone amongst buyers. This has been quite a journey for a stone that few had knowledge of five years ago.

Finally, Ethiopian opals remain on the rise. I personally am a fan of its vibrant play of color. While still relatively new to the market, pricing remains competitive to the material coming out of Australia. If you’re in the market for thicker material with great color and affordable pricing, this is an excellent option in opals.

As we all know, there are bountiful options in color gemstones customers can choose. Many are mainstays that will always have a place, such as blue sapphire, ruby, emerald, aqua, et al., but these are some newer looks from Tucson picking up steam. You should follow these trends for the rest of the year (and hopefully for many more after!) as popularity in color continues to rise.

Konrad Darling is the sales and marketing director for Darling Imports, a color gemstone wholesaler offering genuine and synthetics as well as lapidary services and stone identification. For more information contact Darling Imports at 800-282-8436 or www.darlingimports.com.

 

Konrad Darling

Konrad Darling

Konrad Darling is the sales and marketing director for Darling Imports, a color gemstone wholesaler offering genuine and synthetics as well as lapidary services and stone identification. For more information contact Darling Imports at 800-282-8436 or www.darlingimports.com

Related Posts

The Story Behind the Stone: Diamonds on Pins and Needles

March 20, 2023

Jewelry Marketing Survival Guide

March 15, 2023

The Story Behind the Stone: Out of the Blue

March 15, 2023

What’s Hot Now!: Latest Designer Trends 2023

March 13, 2023

Latest News

Columnists

The Story Behind the Stone: Diamonds on Pins and Needles

March 20, 2023
Other News

Mystery shopping results reveal opportunity for proactive consumer natural diamond education

March 20, 2023
Industry Events

Jewelers of America announces 2023 GEM Awards winners

March 20, 2023

Other News

ASA partners with BrankoGems Academy to offer testing loose and mounted diamonds and gems training

KIL N.Y.C. introduces the Cranium Ring

Jewelry Marketing Survival Guide

JCK Industry Fund announces 2023 grant recipients

How to drive more sales and referrals through social media

IGI moves to expanded New York offices and gem laboratory

Southern Jewelry News

© 2022 Southern Jewelry News.

Additional Information

  • About
  • 2023 Jewelry Trade Shows & Events
  • Media Kit
  • Contact
  • Sitemap
  • Newsletter Signup

Get Social with Us

No Result
View All Result
  • Featured Articles
    • Featured
    • Featured Retailers
    • Retailer Roundtable
    • Supplier Spotlight
    • Sponsored Content
  • Latest News
    • What’s New
    • Industry Events
    • Tradeshow News
    • On The Move
    • Other News
    • Furry Friends
  • Podcast
  • Columnists
  • Classifieds
  • Subscriptions
    • Newsletter Signup
    • Print Subscription

© 2022 Southern Jewelry News.