How Diamond District Jewelers Are Modernizing With Social Media

By Shavonne Slater 5 months ago

Zev Weitman’s angular frame was hunched more than his sooty workbench in a cramped diamond-reducing shop numerous floors previously mentioned the excitement of Manhattan’s diamond district. But his head was roaming a crystalline chamber, tweaking sides to coax a fantastic symphony of gentle from the diamond he was doing work against a cutting wheel.

“I’m constantly improvising, generally seeking for the fantastic minimize,” claimed Mr. Weitman, 68, who began slicing in the district 4 a long time in the past, when hundreds of jewellery corporations studded a solitary block of 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Again then, there have been also 1000’s of cutters like Mr. Weitman, numerous of them shaping and perfecting diamonds from rough stones straight out of mines.

Now, Mr. Weitman says, only a several hundred continue to be in the district, focusing on repairs, rush employment and the kind of substantial-end get the job done he does. His dozen apprentices are gone, and he labors and obsesses above the stones by himself — performing at the wheel or solving troubles in mattress, in the shower or in stolen right away naps on his coat on the shop’s tile floor. None of his 4 little ones — nor, presumably, any of his 28 grandchildren — will observe him into his trade.

The dying of the diamond district has been foretold for years. Most diamond-slicing get the job done has been outsourced to factories abroad. On-line purchasing has minimize into showroom gross sales. The pandemic lockdown derailed offer and devastated foot traffic. Affordable lab-grown diamonds resembling authentic kinds have rattled a seemingly unshakable diamond economic system. A lot of longstanding family members shops have downsized or deficiency succession ideas. Booth vacancies in as soon as-bustling jewellery exchanges are a prevalent sight.

And now, the inescapable: A mega-developer has demolished more than a dozen structures in the district to make way for two huge constructions, a supertall tower and a luxurious resort. This, some previous-school jewelers anxiety, will improve the distinctive character of the diamond district.

But there is another facet to this gloomy prognosis.

Correct throughout the street from exactly where Mr. Weitman was perspiring out the fantastic reduce is a glittering storefront counter awash in rap star bling. The aura of the shop, TraxNYC, could not be additional different from the Previous Planet austerity of Mr. Weitman’s cutting studio.

Showcases are filled with jewel-encrusted pendants, and gold chains drip from graffitied jewellery stands tended by a younger, various product sales staff members that would not glance out of location at a Brooklyn dance club.

In the rear of the showroom is a staircase that prospects to the V.I.P. lounge, wherever the unmistakable fragrance of cannabis lingers and favored prospects peruse jewelry served up by employees together with complimentary diversions: high quality liquor, pre-rolled joints, a movie activity console.

Where past generations of diamond cutters may have hunkered down, TraxNYC has a team of 20-somethings sitting at a typical desk, noisily managing on-line and cellular phone income and getting tailor made orders begun on the place with structure application and 3-D printers.

“We’re reworking the market, and these are the youthful persons who will be using it around,” claimed the owner, Maksud Agadjani, 36, whose layouts are well known with shoppers like Cardi B and Busta Rhymes.

“People may want to observe the aged diamond district in films and on Tv set, but the fact is persons really don’t want to go to the diamond district anymore,” Mr. Agadjani claimed. “So the outdated techniques have to get ripped up.”

But the outdated means are not absent yet. As Midtown has been transformed by tourism, soaring commercial rents and proliferating chain outlets, the diamond district looks to stand out much more than ever as an anachronism.

When compared with the superior-conclusion flagship retailers on Fifth Avenue — Cartier, Harry Winston, Tiffany & Company — 47th Avenue feels like a time warp. Makeshift synagogues and kosher eateries are wedged among jewelry office suites. On the sidewalk, Hasidic diamond dealers haggle on flip phones even though groups of males smoke and banter in many languages and hawkers check out to lure passers-by into showrooms.

Mr. Agadjani sneers at all that. Who demands a hawker when his Instagram posts and TikTok videos carry in millions of views a day? “We do $20 million on the every day involving all of us,” he stated, referring to the quantity of the complete district. He has now been on the block for 18 years, and his shop does extra than $30 million in annual sales.

He started off the company with a large school graduation reward of $1,500 and offered jewellery on consignment on eBay. Now he focuses on popularizing his model through social media, publicity stunts and a YouTube fact exhibit termed “The District.”

He receives loads of mileage out of beefs with rappers and fact show stars. His feud with the Brooklyn-based rapper Tekashi69 became publicity shell out dust when 50 Cent arrived to Tekashi’s protection and referred to as Mr. Agadjani a “sucker.” It didn’t make a difference that Mr. Agadjani was ridiculed — the submit went viral.

“The earlier is the previous, and factors are evolving tremendous quickly,” he reported. “While one particular element of the district is dying, yet another portion is getting born.”

With all because of respect to Mr. Agadjani’s swagger, he did not invent the 47th Avenue hustle.

The jewellery district in New York emerged in the 1800s as a cluster of stores in Decrease Manhattan. Later on, Jewish diamond merchants fleeing Europe ahead of World War II started setting up on 47th Avenue.

A lot of the industry’s roots in Orthodox Jewish areas of Japanese Europe is mirrored in the block’s possess vocabulary, largely Yiddish. A “strop” is a next-rate stone that will not sell it’s “khazeray” or “shlok” — garbage. Merchants share a mystery code to freely explore a “gee,” or client. A “2-10” is a warning to preserve “two eyes on 10 fingers” when serving a potential thief.

This mystery planet is unveiled on the higher floors above the showrooms in a honeycomb of cramped workshops, retail stalls and anonymous workplace suites. Listed here, the polishers, sorters, appraisers, graders and bench jewelers toil guiding locked double-doorway vestibules (“man-traps”) that make it possible for website visitors to be checked right before entry and exit.

Even with all the challenges, jewelry, gems and important metals from the diamond district are continue to among the New York State’s most valuable exports, and the shops all over 47th Avenue make up the greatest diamond sector in the region, a conduit for an approximated 90 per cent of the diamonds imported into the United States. Large-conclude parts that finish up for sale at Tiffany and Harry Winston usually start their life right here as uncooked material.

“I imply, other than bagels, what else is made in New York any more?” stated Romy Schreiber, whose grandmother began Gumuchian Jewellery, just one of the only matrilineal businesses that have endured amid diamond dealers.

The district can be scary to outsiders not accustomed to the tough offer.

On a recent weekday, a woman holding a cardboard indication — “WE Buy Money LOAN” — tried out to flag down passers-by on the block. The female, Mirta Kuzmana, is potentially the only woman hawker there. She can communicate five languages, like her native Latvian, and can make $70 a working day luring shoppers into a pawnshop.

“I clearly show you the very best deals anyplace,” she mentioned to a relatives of tourists. They declined and sidestepped her, and she directed her sidewalk pitch to the up coming comers.

Across the street, Richie Winick leaned above the show case of his stall in a bustling trade.

“It’s not attractive like Madison Avenue, but if you know the individuals you’re dealing with, you will pay considerably fewer,” Mr. Winick mentioned. Now 62, he operates the jewelry organization his father started out virtually 70 several years ago. Compared with Mr. Weitman’s laborious craftsmanship or Mr. Agadjani’s social media savvy, his organization is more consultant of the district, although he has rolled with the periods by sharing business house with an Indian business that specializes in lab-developed diamonds.

Even now, the old-college barter economic system persists. Numerous discounts are finished on credit rating, with hundreds of thousands of bucks entrusted to a handwritten memo and a handshake and a blessing of “mazel und brucha” — Yiddish for “luck and blessing.”

“You can have a $10 million deal just by signing your identify,” Mr. Winick claimed. “Where else can you do that?”

A buyer appeared in his shop seeking for a diamond ring for his girlfriend, and Mr. Winick went into his spiel. “Here, look at this,” he started. “This is a $200,000 stone at Tiffany’s, but you help you save 50 cents on the dollar by shopping on 47th Street.” The client opted for a smaller sized diamond. A very good option, Mr. Winick advised him.

“You know the 11th Commandment, correct?” he added. “Thou shalt not pay back retail.”

It is unclear in which modernization will depart another person like Mr. Weitman, who regards his 40-yr vocation as an obsessive quest for the top minimize that tends to make a diamond dazzle with mild. He referred to as it a mystical pursuit that blends optical physics, the eye of an artist and the contact of a surgeon. 1 of his devoted subsequent of sellers referred to him as “the gentleman with the diamond eyes.”

In the reducing home, he resembled a painter at his canvas, pulling again periodically to assess his work by lifting the gem to an overhead lamp. He peered by a magnifying loupe into its little twinkling windows to examine cuts designed for optimum brilliance and scintillation essential to the stone’s attractiveness.

Suggestions for new models germinate with no warning and are fleshed out by trial and mistake. But they are executed in the shop, where by he can expend months on a one stone.

“When you are cutting, there is absolutely nothing else,” said Mr. Weitman, who has used all-nighters misplaced in his perform in the store. “It’s like watching Michael Jordan perform in opposition to the Knicks. It’s exhilaration beyond anything you could envision.”

Cutters perform under superior strain. They have to preserve beneficial carat fat when running the regular possibility of shattering the gem with a single misplaced slash. “If you strike a gletz” — an imperfection — “it can shatter,” Mr. Weitman explained. “Sometimes it simply cannot be prevented. It’s a terrible sensation.”

1 of Mr. Weitman’s sellers, Charles Paskesz, 53, started as a diamond cutter, but while he was functioning on a $15,000 stone, it quickly shattered. Plagued with nightmares, he stop cutting.

“I by no means place yet another stone on the wheel,” claimed Mr. Paskesz, now a diamond dealer with IGC Group, a big Belgian business with an workplace in the district.

The stakes are also significant for the new breed of diamond dealers. A showroom down the block from TraxNYC that also caters to a hip-hop clientele was held up by armed robbers many many years again and now has protection guards who glance like nightclub bouncers.

For Mr. Agadjani, who grew up in Rego Park, Queens, right after his mom and dad immigrated from Azerbaijan when he was 7, this is the tradition he appreciates. “My father instructed me, ‘This is a spot with genuine option,’” said Mr. Agadjani, who graduated from Forest Hills Large College. “I sized up The usa swift enough.”

At one particular position he dressed a person of his sales agents in a squirrel costume to make a further goofball put up goading a rival. Nothing at all like a excellent social media beef to flog the brand.

Mr. Agadjani’s recent social media dust-up with Scott Disick, an influencer and fact Television set star on “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” turned into marketing and advertising gold. Calling out Mr. Disick on Instagram was a boon for the jeweler’s model, as was the really general public way Mr. Agadjani sent a customized-made gremlin necklace to Kodak Black: He strolled onstage at a live performance in Miami and mounted it all-around his neck as a sea of smartphones captured the moment.

As considerably as Mr. Agadjani could length himself from the diamond district’s additional regular enterprise solutions, he will admit one particular matter: Site is critical.

“I’m not finding my jewellery from Walmart,” he claimed. “I have to manufacture it, and this block is a manufacturing facility. Everyone is vital. A person guy’s sharpening, a different guy’s casting, another’s soldering. This guy’s location gemstones, that guy’s an enameler.”

Despite the fact that Mr. Agadjani and Mr. Weitman seem to be like opposites, they are similar in their obsessional pursuit as jewelers, to the place of dropping rest.

“I’d like to meet him,” Mr. Agadjani stated as his group slapped some taunting graphics on the squirrel video and posted it. “Guys like him — that is why I’m in this article.”

Tags: , , , , ,