I put $5 into the slot machine, pushed the button and the machine’s screen told me I was a winner – with a lucky spin coming! I pushed another button and the machine said I’d won $129. My wife said, “You’re so lucky!”; and as we were on our way to our room after a long day, I prudently cashed out, basking in her admiration of my presumed virtue. As we had just spent a ton of money, I could only hope that she is prescient. No, we had not just placed a whopper bet on the Cubs to win the 2008 World Series, we were in Las Vegas for our annual visit to four jewelry shows and one gem show, the first beginning on the Tuesday following Memorial Day and all concentrated within a little more than a week’s time. In a word, we were out shopping for our fall line. In a spotty economy, we thought it wise to stick with firms we regularly (and successfully) do business with; so our first stop was at the Couture show (by invitation only) and Hearts On Fire. They’re so smart and fashion conscious! Among their new offerings are some clever pendants, some killer earrings and a couple of new men’s rings that even a conservative stick-in-the-mud like me might wear.Naturally, we also bought into a few of their more outrageous pieces as well; but after five hours and somewhat shocked at how much we had added to our inventory, that was it for our buying on Tuesday. We went back to our room, analyzed our purchases (and our remaining budget!) and decided that the balance of our purchases had to be strategic buys; that is buys of goods that either complimented our Jewelry by Hearts On Fire or continued our over-all fine jewelry presence. That was easier to say than it was to accomplish. The next day we began our shopping at Luxury and Premier (two more “˜by invitation only’ shows) with good optimism only to find ourselves quickly bewildered. Everything we saw started to look either uninspired or so far out that we couldn’t picture the person who might want it. That called for another pow-wow, after which we visited Bobby Jain and his brother Vik – Bobby designs, Vik is the money man. They’re very nice, hardly deserving of the angst and frustration we dumped on them; but when it comes to jewelry, we’re hard to satisfy. Vik asked what we were looking for and I replied, “I want to be struck by lightening!”, a comment that left the brilliant young man sitting opposite me somewhat nonplused – and it got worse. “No, Vik. That’s all pav diamonds and we don’t sell pav. Your rubies and sapphires are gorgeous, but the jewelry is too conservative . . . ” and so on. It was late in the day and our obscurant desires left all unhappy. Bobby offered some white wine, the conversation switched to politics and we left with a promise to return on Thursday. That evening Kathy and I tried to further hammer out our buying strategy; and finally it started to come down to the question of who we are, back to our corporate mission statement “to provide original design and quality manufacture”. The next morning we divided our tasks. Kathy went to a lecture on marketing and I massaged our sales figures into a form that would more readily identify the clients who make our business possible. On her return Kathy reminded me of Saul – later Paul – on the road to Damascus. She had been struck by a “great light”; but it didn’t blind her, it vastly simplified our job. The question that would guide the rest of our shopping was that of whether or not our purchases gave voice to our mission statement. That made us take a different look at our present manufacturers; rather than seek the holy grail we’d look at how their strengths fit with our vision. We bought rubies, sapphires and emeralds from Vik and Bobby – their gems are great. We like Pratima and her dad because they’re just plain nice, but we bought to their strength – romantic jewelry and natural colored diamonds. We looked at Varna, a family business to whom we entrust our tricky special designs (tricky means custom cut diamonds and almost impossible to do jewelry work) and bought a fresh look in bridal. We’ve got our pals at Magick (led by juried artist Falcher Fusager) making some gorgeous cloisonne enamel pieces for us and we bought into the work of a South Carolina sculptor in a way that many of you will love – which bring me back to my hope that Kathy is prescient. If she’s right about my luck, you’ll love our new offerings when they start to arrive (between the beginning of July and the end of October); but yours are the votes that count – so make sure you come see us!

Of course, we had to start our big buying trip with Hearts On Fire and Jewelry by Hearts On Fire. How could a business committed to quality and originality look elsewhere? Neither Hearts On Fire nor ourselves are about price; we’re “old school”, we’re about “doing it right”. Every Hearts On Fire diamond is cut with a perfect polish (less than 1% of all of the diamonds ever found will yield a perfect polish), perfect optical symmetry and optimum proportions for brilliance and contrast. Read that sentence over. “Every” is the operant word for us. Put simply, it means that every Hearts On Fire diamond, regardless of size, is a blazingly beautiful gem – just what we want to offer you. Check us out on line at hurstsberwynjewelers.com; then phone us at 708.788.0880 for an appointment to buy the only diamond that can tell her you love her perfectly – Hearts On Fire, the world’s most perfectly cut diamond. We’re Hursts’ Berwyn Jewelers and our job is realizing your dreams.