Pearls people...PEARLS!!! Help.

[valeria101]

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On 5/18/2004 5:12:52 PM katbadness wrote:

I know it's not Friday, yet...

But I thought this is an interesting article.

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No way

" Through Iridesse, we hope to establish a position of authority and merchandising leadership in this fragmented, underdeveloped jewelry category," said Michael J. Kowalski, Tiffany's chairman and CEO "

No problem, only that I wrote those words so often I should have made them into automated text into my MsWord!

 

[fathom]

Just saw this thread in Google and a good read.

I notice that comments centered around nacre and while true (noting expensive or inexpensive pearls) I though I would add a few additional considerations.

Time to market is a huge consideration. The cultivation process taks 6 months to two years (the latter for larger size pearls or more Nacre). This means that the pearl farm must pay labor for that time and the longer the process the more expensive that process can become.

Pearl rarity - as color, overtone, lustre, size and shape are all factor to produce a single necklace and a 40 pearl necklace is usually the recipient of X10 that number of oysters/mussels, and as the quality increases in any of the forementioned paramaters the rarity increases thus the price.

Seawater pearls come from oysters and tend to process a single pearl per oyster - additionally the loss of cultivated oysters is unusually high which decreases the number of pearls per harvest and again affect price.

Freshwater pearls tend to be from mussels and usually a single mussel can produce 30 - 40 pearls giving the farm a vast more pearls per harvest to chose for jewelry.

Equally from China - where an average wage for cultivator/jewelry designer is unusally low ($300 US per month) is an exceptional wage overhead is extremely low thus the final product sent to market "could be of equal quality" yet significantly cheaper.

So while "nacre"is at the forefront of pricing the backend factors are equally important.

 

[katbadness]

Fathom,

Welcome to the board!

Thank you for the additional perspective. What you said is certainly true.

I'm curious though, how do you account for the price of South Sea pearls produced in the waters of Indonesia and the Phillipines?

The labor cost in those areas is cheaper than that in Australia, but the price of the pearls by the time they get to the market are comparable.

Is Australia considered the industry leader in this case (hence everybody's pricing structure follows closely)?

 

[fathom]

Sorry I didn't get back earlier.

While I'm not knowledgeable in South Sea an educated guess...

Export point probably has something to do with it but would believe the cultivation process is the major factor here.

Saltwater pearls tend to be from oysters that generate a single pearl. Harvest losses are quite large and given the fact that pearl shape, color, size, and luster are still quite random it takes far more harvest to reproduce say 100 jewelry pieces than their freshwater counterparts.

All of this would be factored into export prices.