Over 75 years ago, jewelry salespeople traveling through the South came together to create a place where they could buy, sell, network, and keep the industry healthy. This was in 1950, before the development of the Interstate Highway System, a time when salespeople tossed their jewelry trunks and briefcases into the backs of their Buick Roadmasters and drove all night on lonely, tree-lined two-lane backroads to make a sale.
Today, we’re more likely to get on the internet than the highway in search of a sale. Those endless hours of driving have been replaced by endless hours in front of a computer filling out forms. As a result, we’ve gained a lot in convenience, but what have we lost?
When we stop getting out of the office and meeting people from all over the world, in every corner of our industry, we start to stagnate. We lose passion and excitement. We lose the sense of surprise, the joy of discovery that comes with exploring and coming across things you didn’t know you needed, whether it’s a new product, a new contact, or a new skill. Our old skills start to deteriorate, and we stop picking up those bits of experience and nuggets of wisdom that lead to new innovations, the kinds of innovations that keep our industry vibrant and resilient.
As more shoppers come to depend on ecommerce, and more B2B buyers come to depend on self-service, trade shows don’t lose their importance. On the contrary, they become more important than ever. The Atlanta Jewelry Show gives the jewelry industry a place to build resilient networks and supply chains, renew our messaging, refresh our skills, and simply talk to each other to get a better understanding of what our customers want and need from us in these rapidly changing, uncertain times.
At the same time that technology is changing the way we do business and connect with each other, our industry finds itself exposed to economic uncertainty. That’s something new: in the past, the luxury sector has been more or less immune to recessions and low consumer confidence. We have to work harder than ever to grow our businesses, and we can only do that if we come together as an industry.
Because this is such a crucial time for the future of our industry, we’re building a show that’s not just for jewelry buyers and sellers (though that remains our central focus), but for students, as well. The Atlanta Jewelry Show is where the industry comes to buy and sell, learn and grow, to build more resilient businesses today and keep our industry thriving long into the future. We’re bringing you presentations, panels, and workshops you won’t find anywhere else, events like BenchFusion, the only gathering in the United States made specifically for bench jewelers. We’re also dedicated to passing on our knowledge to the next generation with our FutureFusion program.
So come on down to Atlanta. Explore, connect, learn, have fun, and let yourself be surprised again.
