Snowed - but open!

Boy did we get snowed this week! As soon as we had gotten ourselves out from under the first blast, Tuesday comes and hits us again. We even had to close on Wednesday and last Saturday! The Baltimore Business Journal was not above noticing the adverse effect this may have on businesses, including ourselves:

Ron Samuelson, owner of Samuelson’s Diamonds in Baltimore, said shoppers are maxed out after Christmas shopping already, and doesn’t expect to gain a lot of Valentine’s Day business. Samuelson recalled the weekend in December before Christmas Day, when snow hurt retailers looking to gain from the last-minute shopper.

“Now it’s a double whammy, and downtown is pretty bad,” Samuelson said. His West Baltimore Street store was closed Wednesday.

Last Saturday was the first day Samuelson had ever closed the store, he said.

Undaunted, though, we’re back! And our Fans on Facebook may have heard:

we’re open for business. the main roads are fine so come on down and say hi, free beer and MAJOR discounts if you do!

We’re just sayin’ – if you’re in the ‘hood, don’t be shy. And if you’re not in the neighborhood, there’s really not much else to do once you’re done digging out.

Facebook is free. Additionally, as a part of web 2.0, it is in a real sense ‘permanently broken’ or incomplete. Nobody really knows what we’re doing, and so things change and adapt quickly. However, a real question arises  – if it is true that for instance Facebook will be launching a gmail clone – will people begin to actually rely on it for vital communications? If this is so, what will a fairly moderate interface change mean? Given that people on the web are about as vocal every day as strikers are on the day of the ‘general strike’, can a service like Facebook ignore comments? What are they to do if a change removes key functionality (such as in this case, viewing updates from a specific application or status updates alone)?

It can easily be argued that Facebook is free, and therefore, you pay for what you get. But Facebook itself does not have that attitude; that’s a ’screw you’ attitude that they’d never be caught uttering. Therefore we can assume that despite being free (on the front end, anyhow) Facebook wants to give its users the best experience possible, as though they were being paid for all of this. (They are, but not directly by us.)

What is interesting in all of this is that when I spoke to Ron, he mentioned that his iPhone app still had the same functionality. In other words, the same Facebook ‘data’ is sitting there, there is just a new ‘terminal’ we who are using the Web need to use. It makes me think that going forward we will see Facebook clients, much the way we see clients for Twitter. The difference is of course that Facebook is many times more complex! Imagine though, if you could get a Facebook client for 1.99 – Facebook gets a cut of that – over a possible group of 400 million folks?

And what about how widely used (and despised?) it is… I am reminded of everyone carping about Microsoft whenever they try to change something. Difference is, we have to accept the change on Facebook. With Microsoft at least there is a few years for us to adapt. And yet we keep using it!

Free, rich communication is valuable; just like a very generic & flexible operating system is. Maybe Facebook will give up trying to play nice and annoy us until we pay to stop the annoyance. I’ll bet they won’t lose people – where else will they go? Twitter?

Or maybe the value is like that of a huge fan page – everyone is there! How can you take credit for that?

I guess we learned our lesson! For the most entertainment-per-minute you’ll ever get in a weather report, check this local forecast out (you won’t be disappointed.)

And remember not to buy *absolutely* every carton of milk and loaf of bread in the store, people – we’re going to be under for a max of 2, 3 days (if that) and really, we both know you go to the store only maybe twice a week. Just buy the normal amount.

Then again, if some people really are going to hibernate we’re not here to judge.

All of this is to let you know that our own Ron Samuelson will be speaking at the Monday Pre-Show Conference in an exciting session called “Social Media – Myth or Miracle?“.  Smart Jewelry Show is scheduled for four days from the 23rd of April to the 26th, and Ron will be speaking the morning of the 26th.

More details to come!

But beneath it all there was a deeper issue; we have been trained on the internet to search for news, and search algorithms rely on spiders, or automated or robotic browsers, to follow links and search content. Paid content may sit behind a wall, disallowing both robots and humans from finding it. The converse is that which is searchable is accessible.

Then there is the issue of what the subscribers do with the information. In traditional print, there was some limited oversight in reprinting and republishing and redistribution, mostly because of the cost and effort required of such things. On the internet, you can go to the public library, log in, and start a blog on blogger and publish to the world. Even before this, it was fairly inexpensive to get your name out there, with a bit of know-how.

This all adds up to the concept that if you do not offer the news that you may have paid to compile or write for free, someone else will. Indeed, early on some savvy writers such as Drudge took advantage of free distribution to gain immense popularity while newspapers were still struggling to figure out what the internet was, much less how to maintain their current business through the changes it would impose.

The New York Times has suffered no less than any from this unwelcome disruption, and their recent actions show that they are still trying to figure things out:

The news that The New York Times will start charging for access to its website broke over the weekend, but now it’s officially confirmed. As anticipated, one of the world’s most recognizable newspapers will be introducing a metered model, meaning they will “offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number.”

There are various comments, both by the author and by his commenters regarding the situation. It is always a touchy subject. Some like to get their news for free, and would never pay for it. Others see the ebook tablet – Kindle and so forth – as a possible route for rescue of the newspapers.

Either way, the internet offers no help; the information on the internet is in practice not free to produce or distribute (there used to be time and rate limits on internet, if you can remember back that far…!) but the scale of the internet combined with the ubiquity of computers distributes that cost. If it had come around 50 years ago out of the blue, the $500-$1000 for a computer alone would be enough prevent illusions of it being free of cost. Those of us who grew up with computers had our first use for ‘free’ as it were; with our parents or guardians paying for both computer and internet access.

The way I see it, if we set up a system to reliably pay for journalism, we prevent two things: The first is invasive and pervasive advertising, and the second is outright begging. It’s a cultural thing. Will my generation adapt?

We Love Big Diamonds!

We want to give a special shout out to all of our Washington DC customers from here in Ravensland. We went down there last week and bought some great jewelry.

People were also selling a lot of gold coins (like Krugerrands), silver flatware (Gorham, Steiff, and my favorite silver pattern Kirk Old Maryland Engraved.)

And diamonds…yeah we bought some big ones! Rounds, cushion cuts, princess cuts and everything in between.

Now it’s time to get those diamonds re-cut to “Samuelson’s Diamonds Proportions” and make them the brightest and best diamonds on earth! If you are in Baltimore or Washington DC and want to sell your diamonds, silver or gold, give us a holler and we will be happy to take a look at your jewelry!

The deed was done on a one horse open sleigh ride in Stowe, Vermont. It was snowing and beautiful. Thanks so much. She LOVES the ring.

And then Megan sent over these great pictures with a note:

Ron – I just wanted to say thank you for helping Jon put together such a beautiful engagement ring for me! He proposed to me yesterday on a horse-drawn snowy sleigh ride through the Vermont forest.

This is why I love my job. Congrats to my good friends Jon and Megan! Wishing you many years of health and happiness!

Guys in Baltimore have it made. Stop by Samuelson’s Diamonds, and you don’t even have to miss a moment of the big game–if the Ravens are playing, rest assured the game will be on. Owner Ron Samuelson is a third-generation jeweler running his family’s business, first established in 1922. With the business in his blood and decades of experience, he knows that guys don’t need any additional pressure making their purchase decision. Samuelson believes that a buyer should “deal with real people they’re confident in” and “buy from an established jeweler.” If for some reason you need to buy online, he suggests that you “buy from an outlet that also has a brick-and-mortar presence. Work with a company that will still be around in five years.” If you’re nowhere near Baltimore, Samuelson can help you remotely; visit his website to contact him: www.samuelsonsdiamonds.com [now www.baltimorediamonds.com.]

Samuelson’s Diamonds continues its commitment to be Baltimore’s best, most straightforward diamond dealer and maintain a low-pressure environment for people looking to get engaged.

The original article is from Engagement 101 Magazine 2010 (no. 5) and is entitled “Guy’s Guide” A pdf excerpt is available here.

Ron Samuelson may be the most unromantic jeweler in America.

“We don’t sell strictly on romance,” he says. “[Samuelson's Diamonds] gives you good values. We’re real guys and we talk and educate people about diamonds.”

For Samuelson, buying a rock is a sensible decision. “Diamonds are a commodity, and that’s what [consumers] should be taught. Getting engaged is a special time in someone’s life, but diamonds are also a product and have value in the marketplace, and that’s what we should be telling people. Consumers are getting over fancy-schmancy brands; people are over the blue box and want to get a good deal. I think that most guys who are buying a diamond engagement ring are not as concerned with romance as they are with getting an honest deal.”

Check out these unromantic videos if you want some ideas…

Even the French don’t buy into that romance stuff!

If you have done these things with your wife or girlfriend, give us a call – you’ll need to get her some diamonds to get you out of the doghouse!