ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

 

 

For six years, I have believed the best response was to shut up and just do it right.
Seriously.
People say something about Ryze that isn’t true? Keep working.
Someone questions our integrity? Keep working.
Another company does something I completely disagree with? Mind our business and keep working.
I have told myself over and over again that we don’t need to be the loudest company in the room because eventually our actions will speak for us.
And I’m proud of that.
I’m proud that we haven’t built Ryze by tearing down other companies. I’m proud that there have been a thousand moments when I wanted to say something and chose not to.

But I’m starting to question whether I got that part wrong.
Because sometimes while you’re sitting quietly, focused on your business and letting your actions speak for themselves, somebody else is defining the narrative for you.
And I don’t know that I’m okay with that anymore.

This is not tea.
I want to make that very clear.
There is a huge difference between gossiping about another company and talking about something happening within our industry that affects consumers, the people building businesses in it, and the companies operating alongside it.
Right now, there are serious conversations happening about how products have been represented and labeled within the jewelry reveal industry.
And I keep seeing comments like:
“It’s not that serious.”
“Nobody actually thought it was real.”
“Who cares?”
“It’s just jewelry.”
Well, I care.
And honestly, I think everyone in this industry should care.
Not because I want to watch another company fail.
Not because I think Ryze is perfect.
And not because I suddenly want to spend my days talking about somebody else’s business.

I care because their business has affected OUR business.
Their decisions have affected OUR field.
And the way their products have been represented has affected the way consumers look at OUR products.
When trust gets destroyed in an industry, consumers don’t neatly contain that distrust to one company.
They start questioning everyone.
Is your jewelry actually what you say it is?
Are your stones actually what you say they are?
Is the metal actually what you say it is?
Why should I believe you?

And guess who gets to answer those questions first?
My field.
People who had absolutely nothing to do with creating the problem.
That pisses me off.

The field should be able to trust corporate.
This is where I become incredibly protective.
People representing a jewelry company should not have to become gemologists before they can confidently describe the products they’re selling.
They shouldn’t have to own testing equipment.
They shouldn’t have to independently research every product description they’re given.
They shouldn’t have to Google everything corporate tells them before they’re comfortable repeating it to a customer.
The corporate team should be doing that work.
And I want to be really careful here because I’m not putting this on the consultants who trusted the company they represent.
I’ve been that consultant.
I’ve believed what a company told me.
I’ve repeated that information to other people.
And I’ve had to navigate what happens when you start questioning whether what you were told was actually true.
It sucks.
And it isn’t always as simple as people on the outside want to make it sound.
These are people’s businesses.
Their income.
Their teams.
Their friendships.
Their communities.
For some of them, this may be something they have spent years building.
So no, I’m not going to sit over here and tell those people what they should do next or how quickly they should do it.
They’re navigating something I understand more than I wish I did.

But here’s what I WILL say:
They should have never been put in that position in the first place.
Due diligence should happen before the information reaches the field.
A corporate team’s responsibility to its field is to do the due diligence so the field doesn’t have to.
When a company gives its field information about a product and asks those people to put their names and reputations behind that information, the field should be able to trust that the company has done the work necessary to make sure the information is accurate.
That’s part of what makes this issue so important to me.
The person representing the company may not have access to the manufacturer.
They may not have access to specifications, testing, sourcing information, invoices, communications with vendors, or any of the other information available upstream.
They have what the company gives them.
And then they go LIVE.
They talk to customers.
They answer questions.
They make claims about the product based on the information they were given.
And they put THEIR name behind those claims.
That is a tremendous amount of trust.
Companies should treat it that way.

Companies are going to get things wrong.
Ryze will get things wrong.
I will get things wrong.
Our vendors will get things wrong.
Humans are involved in all of this, and perfection isn’t a reasonable standard.
But what happens AFTER you discover something is wrong matters tremendously.
When a company gets something wrong, it owes it to its field and its consumers to own it.
Correct it.
Explain what happened.
Correct the information that was previously provided.
Take responsibility for the people who relied on that information.
And take accountability for the consequences.
What a company should NOT do is leave the people in its field holding the bag for information corporate gave them.
Because those people trusted you.
Their customers trusted them.
And that chain of trust matters.

Words mean something.
This might be the part of this entire conversation that frustrates me the most.
Words mean something.
Vermeil means something.
Sterling silver means something.
Gold plated means something.
Natural means something.
Lab-created means something.
Simulated means something.
These aren’t creative writing prompts.
Companies don’t get to decide what sounds best, use that language to sell a product, and then redefine what those words meant later when somebody starts asking questions.
The jewelry industry has established terminology for a reason.
The FTC’s Jewelry Guides specifically address truthful representation of characteristics such as the type, quality, metallic content, treatment, substance, and other material aspects of jewelry products. The FTC also tells jewelry marketers to scrutinize their product descriptions to make sure they aren’t misleading.
This matters because consumers often CAN’T independently determine those things.
Most customers cannot look at a piece of jewelry and determine its exact metal composition.
They can’t necessarily look at a stone and determine whether it’s natural, lab-created, simulated, treated, or something else.
They rely on the description.
In fact, that reliance is one of the reasons accurate jewelry terminology matters in the first place. The FTC has specifically warned jewelry marketers not to assume consumers will simply understand unclear or proprietary terminology.
Which brings me to an argument I keep seeing:
“Nobody actually thought it was real.”
Then why call it that?
Seriously.
If the defense of inaccurate labeling is that customers should have known better than to believe the company selling it to them, we have a MUCH bigger problem.
Consumers should not be blamed for believing the words a company used to sell them something.
And the people in the field shouldn’t be blamed for repeating product information they reasonably believed they could trust.

Accountability isn’t perfection.
I want to keep coming back to this because I think it’s incredibly important.
Accountability isn’t perfection.
Accountability is what you do AFTER you discover you weren’t perfect.
There is a massive difference between:
“We got this wrong. This is what happened. This is the correct information. This is what we’re doing about it.”
and minimizing what happened, explaining it away, shifting responsibility somewhere else, or expecting everyone affected by it to simply move on.
And when your actions hurt other people, you don’t get to decide when those people should be over it.
That includes consumers.
That includes the people in your field.
And yes, that can include other businesses operating in the same industry.

So why am I talking now?
Honestly?
Because I’m pissed.
But I also know enough about myself to know that being pissed isn’t a good enough reason for me to make decisions for an entire company.
So I’ve been sitting with this.
Talking to people I trust.
Questioning myself.
Trying to figure out whether speaking up is the right thing for Ryze or whether my anger is just making me want to fight.
And I keep coming back to the same thing.
This isn’t about fighting another company.
It’s about fighting for an industry where words still mean something.
Where consumers can trust what they’re being told.
Where people building businesses aren’t unknowingly repeating inaccurate information corporate handed them.
Where people in the field aren’t left trying to figure out what’s true after they’ve already put their own name and reputation behind it.
And where companies doing the work correctly aren’t forced to carry the consequences created by companies that didn’t.
For six years, I believed staying quiet was the high road.
Maybe sometimes it was.
But I’m starting to believe there are moments when silence isn’t the high road at all.
Sometimes the responsible thing is to speak.
So that’s what we’re going to do.
Over the next several weeks, we’re going to keep having this conversation.
We’re going to talk about why accurate labeling matters.
We’re going to share facts.
We’re going to show the work.
We’re going to talk about accountability, responsibility, and what people in this industry should be able to expect from the companies they trust.
And through all of it, we’re going to keep doing what we’ve always done.
We’re going to let the facts define us.
We’re going to let our actions define us.
But we’re no longer going to assume that silence will do the talking for us.
That part ends now.