Undaunted by SARS, pearl trader hunts for Bargains in China. (Up Front).While the SARS virus has caused many jewelry importers to cancel their trips to Asia, 29-year-old Jeremy Shepherd is willing to take his chances. Shepherd, a former flight attendant who runs an online jewelry business called Pearl Paradise, is planning a weeklong trip to pearl farms, in Hong Kong Hong Kong (hŏng kŏng), Mandarin Xianggang, special administrative region of China, formerly a British crown colony (2005 est. pop. 6,899,000), land area 422 sq mi (1,092 sq km), adjacent to Guangdong prov. and Beijing this month Beijing This Month (BTM) is a free monthly English language magazine, published in Beijing by the Beijing Foreign Cultural Exchanges Centre in association with the Beijing City Government. History The magazine's first issue appeared in 1994. to take advantage of cut-rate prices offered by wholesalers who no longer have hordes Hordes may refer to:
Shepherd says he plans to pass on some of the savings for the necklaces, bracelets and earrings he sells via Pearl Paradise and five other sites he oversees in the U.S. and Europe. One example of how SARS has affected the pearl market: a 7.5-millimeter, 18-inch Akoya sea pearl necklace now retails for $380, down from the $410 he was paying wholesale before severe acute respiratory syndrome Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) Definition Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is the first emergent and highly transmissible viral disease to appear during the twenty-first century. began dominating the news. "I'm not going to say (SARS) doesn't bother me because there is always that fear," said Shepherd, who operates from a West Los Angeles
Exhibitors from China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam were banned from industry trade shows this spring in Switzerland and Italy. "It's got a lot of people scared," said Fred Michmershuizen, director of marking for the Jewelers of America, a New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of trade group. Shepherd said he that during the trip he would avoid public gatherings and meet with pearl farmers in sparsely populated pop·u·late tr.v. pop·u·lat·ed, pop·u·lat·ing, pop·u·lates 1. To supply with inhabitants, as by colonization; people. 2. areas. He says he generates a 20 percent margin on the various Asian pearls, some of which he has made into finished jewelry pieces in Asia. For health reasons, most jewelry importers have relied on purchasing agents who buy the raw product and resell to the importers after about a 5 percent markup (text) markup - In computerised document preparation, a method of adding information to the text indicating the logical components of a document, or instructions for layout of the text on the page or other information which can be interpreted by some automatic system. . "I told him it's not a good time (to travel)," said Sabina Altinis, manager of downtown L.A.-based Tieboli Jewelers, which makes Pearl Paradise's highest-end items. "I'm concerned about him. But he's a free person, you know?" Shepherd stumbled on the business in 1997, when working as a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines. In a Beijing market, he paid $25 for a strand of pearls and later found out they were worth $500. He started buying and selling them on an online auction board, and soon started his own Web site. Sales totaled $160,000 at Pearl Paradise last year and have already reached that mark this year. "Every time we drop prices, the orders just come in within minutes," he said. "We're almost at that (2002 sales) mark this year and we haven't had the big season yet, which of course is the holiday season." |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion