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FIRE IN THE EARTH
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ment
store which can conduct a jewelry department to rival any jewelry store
is the great Kaufmann's Department Store of Pittsburgh. Another is
Woodward & Lothrop, Inc., in Washington, D.C.
Chain
stores also have sprung up with eminent success in the retail diamond
field. Syracuse, N. Y., for instance, is the headquarters of Rudolph
Brothers, which conducts twenty-three jewelry stores in New York and
New Jersey— probably one of the largest, typical of large chains of
jewelry stores in the United States. In the south, Duval Jewelry
Company of Jacksonville conducts twelve stores successfully. There is
not necessarily a trend in the chain-store direction, since the jewelry
shop is pretty much an individual thing, but the few instances in which
the experiment has been tried have proved successful.
Tremendously
important are the credit installment houses. Some of the more
conservative cash stores are inclined to take a patronizing attitude
toward the credit stores. They shouldn't. Credit kept the trade going
during a period in which it faced its greatest crisis; but for it the
retail trade hardly would have kept alive. The jewelry business, like
every other luxury business, reeled and staggered under the impact of
The Great Blow of 1929. To the rescue of the trade came the
manufacturers who, by extending credit to the retail credit installment
houses, were able to develop the diamond business even when it was
floundering, and at the same time made it possible for the aided stores
to extend generous credit terms to customers. This kept the goods
moving.
At
times criticism is leveled against certain credit houses that
exaggerate diamond values in their advertising. They recklessly offer
"pure blue-white perfect diamonds" at amazingly low prices and for
that reason a special chapter will be
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