Countdown to BASELWORLD Part I
Each spring the luxury watch and fine jewelry worlds migrate to Basel, Switzerland, known for its many theaters and historic museums. Since 1917, the city has played host to the largest international watch and jewelry show now known as BASELWORLD.
William Goldberg made its official debut at Basel over 25 years ago. It is one of my favorite times of year both personally and professionally to be amongst so many esteemed brands like Bvlgari, Chopard, Patek Philippe and Rolex. A little known fact that many of our industry friends may be unaware of is that the birthplace of William Goldberg diamond jewelry was in fact at the Basel Fair.
William Goldberg BASELWORLD invitation circa 2003.
In the early days, we were known in the industry as loose diamond dealers with the slogan “THE MAGIC IS IN THE MAKE”, referring to our beautifully cut diamonds. Eventually, we started to do some wax layouts with bigger stones in the shape of necklaces, usually just simple rivière styles with oval diamonds or other fancy shapes.
No matter how many layouts we did, our clients would immediately buy them and take them back and do the setting themselves. One day a good client said to my brother, Saul, “why not just continue to design finished pieces all the time in every category to make our lives easier”!
From that day on we have continued to not only cut beautiful stones, but design and manufacture our magnificent diamond jewelry. It made our clients happier and increased our sales significantly at Basel.
Naturally, my father’s presence has been truly missed at the show each year. It gave him such pride to show our beautiful, finished diamond jewelry to both old friends and new, but between us I think his favorite part was dealing with the Saudi sheiks and princesses who would visit our booth!
We are looking forward to another great year at BASELWORLD next week. Hope to see all of you there!
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