The Jewelry Weblog: Craft or Graft?

Tammy Powley, who authors The Jewelry Weblog recently wrote an article on her blog entitled "Moissanite: Gem or Gyp?" Yes, the title is a negative and inflammatory statement rather than a legitimate question, but that was the writer’s true intention. Her article is bereft of any journalistic integrity or basic research about the subject of Moissanite, and it attempts to disguise her obvious disdain for Charles & Colvard Created Moissanite, and for the company itself. Her masquerade of “factual” statements, are really slanderous inferences and outright fallacious accusations about Charles & Colvard. Charles & Colvard is the sole worldwide supplier of this fabulous jewel.

As she describes on her blog, her background is limited to crafting costume jewelry (crystal and glass beads), and she’s written assorted chronicle pieces for various jewelry interests. Apparently this leads her to believe that her writings are somehow qualified to influence public opinion on this subject, despite the public’s increasing demand for Moissanite in the Fine Jewelry Department showcases of top National and International Jewelry Retailers.

Predictably, the mendacity doesn’t stop at the sarcastic title. She opens her article with the following false dichotomy:

"Moissanite is a new up and coming star in the world of gemstone jewelry, but actually, it is not a gem at all. It is a lab created crystal."

She’s only correct in that Moissanite is indeed a new, up and coming “star” in the world of gemstone jewelry. However her usage is intended to implant into her readers the false notion that that as a crystal, Moissanite is substandard to being a “gemstone”. In actuality, a crystal is merely an orderly arrangement of atoms and molecules, while a gemstone is a mineral or stone that can be faceted into jewelry. By these definitions, a diamond, cubic zirconia and moissanite are all crystals that qualify as being gems. Even the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) considers moissanite to be a laboratory-created gemstone.

Later in the article, Ms. Powley includes an irrelevant issue to support her disparagement of moissanite -- the decline of Charles & Colvard's (CTHR) stock price. This is a deliberate use of a “red herring” by Ms. Powley, to associate the stock price decline as a reflection of the quality of Charles & Colvard Created Moissanite. The fact is that the company's revenue growth declined this year resulting in a sell off after growing a whopping 82% in 2005.

Mrs. Barber and I posted rebuttals to Ms. Powley's article on her site. Her response to my rebuttal was cynical and dismissive. She writes:

Wilson - Wow! Time to take a little nap or something. Honestly, I did do a little more research and plan to follow up this initial article with some interesting stuff I found over at [Diamond Nexus Labs].

Apparently consumer awareness or vigilant research are not required traits to be appreciated by Ms. Powley who would prefer that no one expose her obviously biased and slanted reporting on moissanite.

Included in our rebuttals we named the major national retailers offering moissanite. With full knowledge that moissanite is marketed and sold directly to the public, from such top national retailers, Ms. Powley offers this absurd rejoinder:

Yes, I did see that [moissanite] is sold at lots of places [major national retailers], but so what? Are you suggesting that this gives [moissanite] some kind of legitimacy?

The legitimacy of moissanite jewelry being marketed and sold with the highest integrity and exactly as promised, by both its creator Charles and Colvard, and by a growing list of top retailers is not merely being “suggested” to readers by me or Mrs. Barber but by major players in the Jewelry Industry such as Ms. Beryl Raff, the Executive VP at J C Penney, who was instrumental introducing Charles and Colvard Created Moissanite to J C Penney as a breakthrough new category of fine jewelry, in 2004.

Then Ms. Powley admits that she has purchased lab-created gems for herself:

I actually personally own a number of lab created gems, and I enjoy wearing them.

Duplicitously, Ms. Powley wears a number of lab-created gems – just not moissanite. But wait it gets better...

However, I got them knowing that they were not naturally created, and I felt from the text on the site I quoted that this is not necessarily the case with this "jewel" as the manufacturers call it.

Ms. Powley, response implies that Charles & Colvard is deliberately deceiving their many buyers of Moissanite, by not disclosing or by hiding its manufacture and by extension accuses top national retailers, and multitudes of other independent jewelers worldwide of deceiving their customers.

Her response is pure deceit. As you see in her comments, Ms. Powley states that she has visited the Charles & Colvard website. For her blog article’s cover photo, she’s captured the Charles & Colvard web site’s image of their model wearing a fabulous moissanite necklace. However every page on the Charles & Colvard website features their logo which reads "Charles & Colvard Created Moissanite". Can you say BUSTED?

After reading Ms. Powley's bio you have to wonder why she chose to write about moissanite and Charles & Colvard having what appears to be little or no knowledge about fine jewelry. All she posses is a background in craft jewelry yet she has the audacity to patronize the business strategy of such successful companies like J C Penney, Macy's, Kohl's, Helzberg Diamonds, and Zale that offer moissanite as fine jewelry. In fact J C Penney named Charles & Colvard their 2005 Vendor of the Year.

Perhaps the rhetorical title of this article is not rhetorical at all but a very legitimate question to explore.

Thanks,
WB & Mrs. B

Moissanite: A Tale of Expanding Distribution

Since its breakthrough offering in 2004 by J C Penney, Charles & Colvard created Moissanite is now offered by an expanding number of major national retailers and jewelry chains. In 2005, J C Penney expanded its offering to all of their 700-plus stores.

Also in 2005, Finlay Fine Jewelry started to offer moissanite through their licensed outlets. If you are not familiar with Finlay, they operate licensed jewelry counters for major retailers. For most of their history, they operated licensed counters for the May Corporation chain of department stores. In 2005 Federated Department Stores, who owns Macy’s merged with May and decided to consolidate the May brands under the Macy’s moniker.

In the summer of 2005, Gordon’s Jewelers, a division of Zale Corporation started testing moissanite and late in 2005, Helzberg Diamonds, a division of Berkshire Hathaway began offering moissanite at 40 of its locations.

In 2006, Charles & Colvard continued to expanded moissanite distribution into all of Helzberg Diamonds 275 doors and in forth quarter of this year rolled out into 180 doors of the 800-door chain of Kohl’s department stores.

While progress at Zale appears modest, Charles & Colvard succeeded expanding moissanite availability at 20 Zales Outlet stores, 41 doors of Peoples (Zale Canada), and 3 Gordon’s Jewelry stores – the significance of which signals that the year long testing at Gordon’s appears to have been successful as rollout is commencing.

Having these major retailers and jewelry chains offer moissanite confirms its acceptance in the jewelry industry as a separate category based on its own unique qualities. I also don’t want to overlook the significance of the regional chain jewelers and the many online web-based jewelers offering moissanite. Clearly the word is spreading about this fabulous gemstone with unmatched and unsurpassed fire and brilliance.

Thanks,
WB

Welcome Moissanite Awareness

Greetings,

This is the inaugural post to kick off this blog that will offer my perspectives about the fabulous jewel Moissanite, created by Charles & Colvard, Ltd. It's been nearly a decade since its introduction with tremendous acceptance by top jewelers worldwide. Moissanite is now gaining in customer demand, with ever-growing awareness since its breakthrough offering by J C Penney in late 2004. Go to http://www.moissanite.com for much more information about where to find a huge variety of stunning moissanite fine jewelry designs now offered at retailers almost everywhere.

Moissanite exceeds all jewels using the criteria long established by the Fine Jewelry Industry, when evaluating a gemstone for purchase using the standard "4Cs". The 4Cs refers to the gradation rating of a gemstone's unique color, clarity, cut, and carat weight. Moissanite is always a near-colorless (H-I), ideal-cut (by hand), VS or VVS clarity jewel that has much more fire, brilliance, and sparkle than a diamond, but for a fraction of the cost. Because of these special traits and the value-proposition to the consumer, moissanite is causing a major disruption in the Jewelry Industry. Unlike mined diamonds, Moissanite has a history of origin from meteor particles which are truly rare, yet it is produced with the scientific technology that guarantees perfection that will last forever. It also as durable as a diamond and resists chipping or breakage.

Because of moissanite's recent designation as a new Category of Fine Jewelry within the Jewelry Industry, it is being subjected to a relentless campaign of misinformation and disparagement efforts. For the past several years, these efforts were primarily confined to the company's stock message boards. The reason the stocks' message boards were targeted, is that Charles & Colvard, Ltd. is a publicly traded company on the Nasdaq with the ticker symbol CTHR. As moissanite's popularity and awareness has increased, these misinformation campaigns are starting to spread through multiple channels on the Internet.

As a delighted owner of moissanite jewelry and an investor in Charles & Colvard, the purpose of this blog will be to provide corrections to the misinformation, and to share factual information about Charles & Colvard Created Moissanite and the company.

Thanks,
WB