In Part One, I said something that I want to spend a little more time on:
Words mean something.
That sounds ridiculously obvious.
Apparently, it isn’t.
Because one of the things I keep seeing in conversations happening within our industry is this idea that the terminology used to describe jewelry somehow isn’t that important.
“It’s just jewelry.”
“Nobody really thought it was real.”
“You knew what you were buying.”
Okay.
Then why call it that?
I’m serious.
If a word doesn’t matter, why use them?
If the actual identity of a stone doesn’t matter, why give it a specific identity?
If the composition of a metal doesn’t matter, why advertise the metal?
If a particular term helps make a product sound more valuable, desirable, rare, or luxurious, then we cannot turn around later and pretend that consumers were stupid for believing the term meant what it means.
That’s not how this works.
Jewelry terminology isn’t just marketing language.
Natural.
Lab-created.
Simulated.
Sterling silver.
Gold plated.
Vermeil.
These words communicate information about what someone is buying.
And there are meaningful differences between them.
A simulated stone is not the same thing as a lab-created or natural version of that gemstone.
Gold-plated jewelry is not automatically vermeil.
Sterling silver refers to a specific standard of silver content.
These aren’t cute descriptions somebody came up with because they sounded good on a product card.
They tell consumers something about the product.
And if you’re going to use those words to help sell something, you have a responsibility to use them accurately.
“Nobody thought it was real” is not the defense people think it is.
This argument might bother me more than almost anything else I’ve seen.
Because think about what you’re actually saying.
You’re saying the consumer should have known not to believe the company selling them the product.
How exactly were they supposed to know which words they could believe?
Were they supposed to know that THIS description was accurate, but THAT one was marketing?
That this stone name meant exactly what it said, but another one required some secret understanding that everybody supposedly had?
That this metal description should be taken literally, but another shouldn’t?
That’s an impossible standard.
And it’s backwards.
The burden shouldn’t be on the consumer to figure out which statements a company actually means.
The burden should be on the company to accurately describe what it’s selling.
And there’s another side of this argument that matters deeply to me as someone who actually owns a jewelry company.
When people say, “Who cares what it’s made of?” or “It’s just jewelry,” they’re not only dismissing the consumer.
They’re dismissing the work of companies that intentionally make those choices.
At Ryze, we make decisions about what materials we want in our products.
We make decisions about stones.
We make decisions about metals, plating, design, quality, and what we’re willing to pay to produce something.
Those choices affect the product.
They affect the cost.
They affect the price. The affect the customers experience.
And they matter to us.
So when another company can describe something as having a particular material, stone, or quality without that description being accurate, and the response becomes, “Well, none of that really matters anyway,” you’re essentially saying the companies that invested in actually providing those things did all of that for nothing.
No.
It DOES matter.
If two products are being compared based on what consumers have been told they are, those descriptions have to mean something.
Otherwise, the company accurately describing its product is no longer competing against another product.
It’s competing against a description.
And you cannot have a fair marketplace when one company bears the cost of delivering what it says it’s selling while another can receive the perceived value of the same claim without having to meet the same standard.
That’s bigger than Ryze.
That affects every company trying to operate honestly in this industry.
Materials matter.
Quality matters.
Accuracy matters.
The work matters.
And the truth about what you’re selling absolutely matters.
And this matters beyond one purchase.
When someone buys a piece of jewelry believing it is one thing and later learns it may be something else, the damage isn’t limited to that item.
Now they start questioning everything.
What else did I misunderstand?
What else wasn’t what I thought it was?
Can I trust the next description?
Can I trust another company in this industry?
That’s how an individual product issue becomes an industry trust issue.
And that’s why companies doing this correctly end up answering questions they didn’t create.
Because trust doesn’t stay neatly contained.
Neither does distrust.
So show the work.
This is something you’re going to hear me say a lot throughout this conversation.
Show the work.
If you’re making an objective claim about a product, there should be something behind that claim.
Documentation.
Specifications.
Testing where appropriate.
Vendor information.
Industry standards.
Something more than, “That’s what we were told.”
And if new information comes in that contradicts what you were previously told?
Investigate it.
Correct it.
Learn from it.
Then make sure the people who trusted the original information hear the correction just as clearly as they heard the original claim.
That’s not an unreasonable expectation.
That’s due diligence.
And yes, that standard applies to Ryze.
I don’t want anyone reading this series and walking away thinking my argument is that Ryze knows everything and everybody else should get their shit together.
Absolutely not.
We rely on vendors.
We rely on documentation.
We rely on people.
And people can be wrong.
So can we.
The standard I’m talking about isn’t omniscience.
It’s diligence.
It’s being willing to ask another question.
It’s being willing to verify.
It’s being willing to say, “We don’t know yet,” instead of filling the gap with whatever answer sounds best.
And when the answer changes, it’s having enough integrity to say:
We told you this.
We have since learned this.
Here is the correct information.
Because credibility is built one claim at a time.
Every time a company describes a product, it is asking somebody to trust it.
Every time someone in the field repeats that description, they’re lending some of their own credibility to the company behind them.
Every time a customer makes a purchase based on that information, they’re trusting both.
That relationship only works when the words being used actually mean something.
So yes.
I’m going to keep talking about terminology.
I’m going to keep asking questions.
I’m going to keep looking at data, documentation, definitions, testing, and facts.
Not because I think jewelry needs to be complicated.
Exactly the opposite.
Buying jewelry shouldn’t require decoding corporate language.
If you call something a thing, it should be that thing.
And if you discover it isn’t?
Say so.
Correct it.
Own it.
Words have meanings.
We shouldn’t need an asterisk after that.
