The Atlanta Jewelry Show is more than your typical trade show. From RetailFusion and BenchFusion to our FutureFusion youth program and our GIA diamond grading classes, AJS puts education at the forefront of everything we do. Education and professional development is how we strengthen the technical, creative, and business sides of our industry to ensure a prosperous future for us all.

Jewelers of America, the nation’s most trusted trade association of fine jewelry professionals, shares this belief in the power of education. JA is now accepting applications for the Seymour & Evelyn Holtzman Bench Scholarship and the Jewelers of America Scholarship Program.

The Seymour & Evelyn Holtzman Bench Scholarship provides tuition assistance to students enrolled in accredited bench jeweler or metalsmith programs. Applications are open now through June 30, 2026, and recipients will be selected within the next month.

The Jewelers of America Scholarship Program offers funds that may be applied toward programs and certifications offered by the American Gem Society (AGS), American Society of Appraisers (ASA), Diamond Council of America (DCA), Gemological Institute of America (GIA), and National Association of Jewelry Appraisers (NAJA). Applications are open through September 30, 2026, or until funds are fully distributed.

To receive one of these scholarships, applicants must be at least 18 years of age who are currently employed by a JA member store and have at least one year of experience at that store. For more details, follow this link or contact JA Member Services at (800) 223-0673.

Previously, we looked at what high precious metals prices meant for marketing. In this post, we’ll talk about maintaining your margins while you’re spending more for gold and other precious metals. Is this something to worry about? Should we start raising prices? While we’ve never seen precious metals prices rise this high this quickly, how the jewelry industry handled rising prices in the past can guide how we react to the current surge.

The last time we saw such a surge in precious metals prices was 2009, in the wake of the global financial crisis. By 2011 the price of gold climbed to nearly $2000/oz before falling and stabilizing between 2013 and the beginning of the pandemic. That is perhaps the first lesson we should take from the past: this won’t last forever. The war in Iran, as Barron’s reports, has driven the price of oil up, and since oil is traded in USD, central banks are selling their gold reserves to buy dollars, driving the dollar up and gold down. It is possible that gold prices have already peaked for now and might find some balance in the near future.

We’re not making any predictions, though. The market that led to the 2008 crash was irrational, but the 2026 market makes the runup to the last economic crisis look sober and sensible. The market suddenly becoming rational and stable is not something you can plan business strategy around.

Over the long term, however, the value of gold only increases. So even if prices have peaked for now, they will rise again in the future (perhaps—hopefully—not as dramatically), and gold will continue to be a safe bet for those who buy jewelry as an investment.

That’s where the economics of gold are right now. Given the unpredictability and instability of the current global economy, what does this mean for your business? The unsatisfying answer is, unfortunately, it depends on your business and your customers. It’s hard to provide the right answers. What we can do instead is list a few things to consider.

Know your customers. Are they price-conscious? At the lower end of luxury they might be, but the saying “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it” still applies to prices at the higher end of luxury. If you’re the kind of luxury retailer who doesn’t display prices, your customers probably won’t experience sticker shock.

Choose the right pricing strategy. While “cost plus” is a common pricing scheme, your work is worth more than cost of materials plus labor. Your pricing strategy should reflect that. The value of your jewelry comes from its aesthetic beauty and the meaning it holds for customers. This is why we wrote a separate article about precious metals prices and marketing. If you connect with customers on a deep, personal level and clearly communicate the value your products add to their lives, they won’t ask how much it costs.

Consider your inventory order cycle. With the price of precious metals in flux, you might be better off placing smaller orders more often rather than larger orders spread out over a longer period of time.

Transparency. If your customers are price-conscious, be open about how rising costs will affect them. Communicate price changes before they happen to allow your customers to buy jewelry at current prices.

Higher prices might be a good thing. Lower prices, sales, and discounts tend to send the wrong message to luxury consumers: this brand isn’t exclusive, it isn’t high-quality, and it isn’t appealing to people like me because no one is buying it (why else would you put it on sale?).

What if I can’t raise prices? If you’re a jewelry designer, the answer might be to incorporate more silver and platinum into your designs or do more with less. Create the illusion of larger pieces while using less gold or really go all-in on your personal style and what makes you unique as a designer.

Keep the Focus on Your Customers

When the focus turns to cutting costs to maintain margins, it’s easy to lose sight of what really keeps you in business: your customers. That’s why it’s so important for your pricing strategy, your sales strategy, and your marketing strategy to be rooted in the needs of your customers and the way in which you help them fulfill their needs and solve their problems. If you create a clear value proposition and a strong rapport with the people who love your products the most, they’ll be willing to stick with you even as prices rise.

The price of precious metals has been skyrocketing over the past year. While a small reprieve came in mid-March with a slight dip in the price of gold, it resumed its rise through the rest of March and April, with no end to the climb in sight. What’s behind these historic highs? Well…everything. Uncertainty tends to drive precious metals prices up, and one thing we’re certainly lacking right now is certainty. Amid this uncertainty, price consciousness is hitting even luxury consumers. Our challenge now is to demonstrate the value we bring to our customers.

The Luxury Purchase Thought Process

Price hikes hitting standard consumer goods, groceries, and gas are cause for outrage. When times are tough, consumers cut back where they can. It’s hard to cut back on necessities like food and gas. Luxury consumers, on the other hand, aren’t looking to cut their spending on luxury goods but make sure their dollars are well spent. The luxury purchase thought process, especially for younger consumers, is more about value than price. If a product brings real value to someone’s life, they won’t think twice about the price. That’s the job of marketing in this time of ever-increasing prices: communicating your value, making sure customers know that you’re delivering something that is definitely worth it.

Communicating Price Changes

Communicating price changes to customers takes both tact and transparency. First, ask yourself if talking about price is necessary at all. Many high luxury brands don’t even list prices on their website. Talking about price or seeming overly concerned with price is not something many luxury customers are interested in. You have to know your business and know what your customers value before deciding how important talking about price is.

Know Your Value Proposition

When value, not price, is the consumer’s driving concern, jewelry businesses must develop a clear value proposition. Where does the value in your products come from? It’s not just from the metals and gemstones, though purer precious metals and mined gemstones are naturally more valuable. Your value proposition describes the need you are fulfilling for your customers. To create a compelling one, you first have to understand why your customers choose your jewelry.

For legacy luxury brands, the ones that are struggling right now, the value proposition is aspirational: our products will usher you into our kind of lifestyle. That message is no longer resonating with consumers. Where aspirational marketing once felt hopeful, it now comes across as inauthentic. Authenticity is what luxury consumers value. Luxury is less about becoming someone else than it is about being the best version of yourself.  

That’s how luxury brands and retailers can continue to thrive even as legacy brands struggle and all but the highest net worth consumers think a little longer before making a discretionary purchase. Luxury consumers are looking for pieces with something to say, pieces that help them express the inexpressible within themselves. They want to express themselves, not someone else’s vision of what they should be.

The only way to connect with customers looking for that kind of authentic self-expression is to create an authentic brand with authentic values. That means doing what your business does best, and doing it with honesty and conviction. Naturally, this approach won’t appeal to everybody, but when you find the people that your approach does appeal to, they will fall in love and won’t be able to imagine themselves wearing anything else.

Resilient Businesses Build Relationships

Ultimately, maintaining margins as precious metal prices soar and consumers tighten their belts is ultimately a question of business resilience. When your business doesn’t have a clear identity, customers don’t have a clear reason to stick with you. But when you provide a clear value and build honest, authentic relationships, your business becomes a part of your customers’ lives, and they’ll stay with you through anything.

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.