In this episode, presented by Red Beryl Studios, we break down how craftsmanship shows up across jewelry, watches, furniture, fashion, and even food, and why buying fewer, better things is becoming a rational response to mass production.
Listeners will walk away with a clearer framework for evaluating value beyond price, understanding quiet luxury, and recognizing the difference between marketing language and real build quality.
Presented by Red Beryl Studios
Explore more at RedBerylUSA.com
Key Takeaways
• Craftsmanship is proven over time, not claimed in marketing language
• Real value comes from durability, repairability, and longevity
• Mass production optimizes for volume, not permanence
• Quiet luxury prioritizes function, restraint, and substance
• Education and transparency are harder to fake than slogans
• Experience design is the true differentiator when products sound the same
• Brands that care deeply about how things are made create lasting trustCraftsmanship vs. Consumption, craftsmanship vs consumption podcast, why well made things matter, value vs price, quiet luxury, luxury craftsmanship, authentic luxury brands, experience driven brands, Red Beryl Consulting, Red Beryl Studios, RedBerylUSA.com, Red Beryl strategy, Red Beryl creative, Red Beryl media#Craftsmanship
#QuietLuxury
#ValueOverPrice
#LuxuryPerspective
#BrandExperience
#RedBeryl
#RedBerylStudios
#RedBerylUSA
Welcome to the legacy of luxury, Nick Constantino and Jaron Salomon here in the Salomon Brothers Studios. Jaron, how we doing, bud?
I'm doing great today. I got good energy. I'm excited for a good episode. Let's see what the best moderator in the world has to offer.
You know what you are? You are high energy today. It is. It's about two o'clock and you've been, you've been humming. Usually by about 10:30, we get that slow decline down. You're rocking today.
Hey, you know what? I'm six weeks into the baby. We're sleeping four or five hours straight. I'm feeling good.
Okay, so that That being said, I'm gonna catch you completely off guard. It is opening day of Major League Baseball today. So do we have any predictions about the Major League Baseball season?
Oh, absolutely not, because I'm such a homer for my Atlanta Braves. We signed on again as the preferred jeweler because I'm a sucker for just my hometown team. And I love the Atlanta Braves, Nick. It is, I was talking with someone the other day from Charlotte. And then they were like, I'm pumped for opening. I'm like, and then I'm like, yeah, Charlotte, Braves country, Birmingham, Braves country.
The Tampa Bay Rays don't even exist down there. They're brave fans. I love it. It is so omnipresent in this area. I think it's amazing.
So we're going to win the World Series. That's my freaking prediction.
Well, here's my prediction. The Dodgers will not. And I know that that's crazy, but the odds actually are with them again. And they went out and they're just loading it. And because we're legacy of luxury, let's talk about the luxury tax. The Dodgers are spending more money. And that being said, do you know that Year one, after paying Shohei Ohtani almost 80, 70, 80 million a year, he actually provided a 10% return on investment. And just the tourism from Japan to California alone, alone was about $900 billion.
Oh, that's awesome. Because they're the only ones going to LA.
That's without Jersey is. That is just the Japanese tourists alone going into LA.
I get it. Listen, that guy comes into town. I will say he is a specimen.
But it sucks, though, because you know what happens? He probably hits the ball one out of three times because baseball is all about regressing to that game. You can go in now.
But it pops off at bat.
The only thing that's different for anyone that cares, and we're talking about luxury, is sitting in front row seats and watching a good pitcher pitch because two things happen. One, you've never seen 100 mile an hour move the way Jacob deGrom's ball moved, and two, how loud it is when it hits that catcher's mitt is an otherworldly experience. The thought of just being able to hit a fastball, moving at 102 miles an hour with wiggle and being able to hit it is just one of the most fascinating things. Making a three-pointer, I've done it my whole life. Even with a hand in my face, I'll make one every once in a while. There's no chance in Christ's Earth I'm ever hitting 103 miles. Unless I put my chin out with a shin guard on, there's no chance I'm ever hitting. The best we're going to do. I was asked the other day about like a word that sums up what we do and what I like about the industry. For a quick recap, really it's been a year and a couple of months. This is very new to me. But the word that I settled on, you know what, before we do that, do you have a word? Do you have a word just kind of that sums up everything about this industry or anything that's just like kind of that, you know what, it kind of keeps me going, like, is there anything that stands out?
Yeah, I would just say value. I mean, I love good value in this business, and that comes with trust and all the underlying words. If I just had to pick one word, I love good value. I love to be able to provide a diamond at the best price. I love to be able to provide the tennis bracelet. Just did it today. I sold a five-carat tennis bracelet for $4,500. It was like... where is he? He's not going to go anywhere and find that. And he walked out so happy. I love it. So value for me.
And I think this is what happens when you do a show for a long time, because that was completely unscripted, but you actually set me up perfectly for mine. So would you say that because jewelry is... is something that lasts so long, 30 years, 40 years for engagement ring, that helps justify the value proposition pretty easily when you think of it compared to other things.
So easy.
So the word I've chosen is craftsmanship. And the reason that I have is because when you think about the craftsmen that were able to realize gold can serve these purposes, or how a diamond can be, if you go all the way back, it is this history of crafting things that have come together to be an industry that realistically, you're Your iPad that you're looking at right now has a self-destruct button, and I don't care what anyone says. It will go down. Remember when Apple actually, they were degrading the batteries remotely to try to speed the process up? Like, they were sending spaceships to outer space, but a Cadillac's bumper fell off in the first three minutes of driving. Thank you, Chris Rock. But we are in a consumption-based, you've said this, a consumption-based economy, a consumption-based world. Somehow, A Rolex watch being taken care of will last for a very long time. They're talking about Patex from 1890 that they're still operating like it's nothing. You talk about a good diamond, you talk about good gold, platinum, even silver. You're talking about these materials and metals that have had so much time, effort, and love put into them that I think that craftsmanship is what makes this industry very unique.
There's no question. And listen, you're also not losing anything ever, right? So the diamonds don't break, the metal doesn't go away. So when, when we talk about value, it's like there's value throughout the entire process, especially right now, you know, especially right now with, with the pricing. But, but even so, when somebody looks back and they bought something in the late nineties or the early two thousands or whatever it is, up, down, right, left, there is no other product out there that exists. You can restore a car, you know, but you can't take the miles off the engine, right? You can't, you just can't do that here. You actually can, like I can. polish that ring. I can re-tip prongs. I can make it back to absolutely brand new from what you have in your hand. You don't need a new anything. You don't need to replace anything. And I think that that's just super cool. And I don't know, when I buy something and I know it's going to hold its value and have value, I love that. My favorite thing.
Yeah. And I think there's so many parts to what craftsmanship is. And look, there's a lot of things that are well-crafted. If you think about it, when you talk about old cities, talk about the pyramids, talk about the Coliseum, you'd imagine those were pretty well-crafted. But saying that it's like 2000 years later and we're walking into these places. Even infrastructure. One of the things, if you know about Washington, DC, the way the city sprawl is set up was a spoken wheel pattern because they didn't want to be attacked at any time because we were centralized power. So Lonfont set it up, it looked like a wheel spoke so it It wouldn't be easy enough for a direct line for any attackers to come in, right? Yeah, it sucks when you're in traffic and trying to navigate around a city that's not perpendicular, but that is a crafted city. That is crazy when you think about how that's set up. So I do love, and I think the test for craftsmanship is pretty simple to me, right? Number one is, will it hold up? Okay, and that's relative, right? everyone had a pair of Abercrombie and Fitch khakis that last for like 15 years while everything else was destroyed in like 10 minutes. Jeans, Levi's jeans. Yes, they rip every once in a while, but man, what you could put those through to a pair of other things, it's why jeans are so omnipresent and always going to be around. So can it hold up? Can it be repaired? Believe it or not, jeans can be repaired. A good well-made sport coat can be repaired. And then third, will it still look right decades from now? I think if those things fall into play, I think you could say this is a piece of well-crafted material. Now, we are in a world of mass production. When was the last time, take yourself out of jewelry, please, or watches, that you looked at something and see like, wow, this was really well-crafted.
Gosh, yeah, no, I mean, Other than shopping for furniture at times, and it's just outrageous, which so I passed on it and I got the crappy furniture that isn't well crafted, but I think that was probably the last time I looked at something. I was like, Wow, I'm not buying it, but... Boy, it's well done.
My wife is a hoarder, and we fight about it because I have to get the dumpster to throw it out. But whenever she sees a piece of really made furniture, like hand-carved, welded, done the right way, she always gets it. Now, of course, I have to carry the 70-pound freaking coffee table into the house, but my goodness, a good piece of wood-crafted furniture, that is why it is called crafted. And it's crazy because when you think about it, They are shipped. We can make it here with trees that are here, crafted and put on a table, but we are sending wood to China to put to another country, to send on a ship back to us to put in our house. And somehow it's a thousand times cheaper than doing
- When Allie and I were moving into our apartment off Kingsborough here in Buckhead, I remember shopping for furniture. And at that time we were 23 or 24 years old.
It
was, but I remember shopping and I remember my mom saying to me, 'cause again, your parents went through homeownership and made all the mistakes. And I remember my mom telling me about these chairs and I still have these chairs today. And they were like... I don't know, call it instead of $700, they were $1,100. Let's just say, I can't exactly remember, but it was something like that spread. And to this day, this is 13 years ago, these chairs are sitting in my living room. I have a scotch on them every single week. I love these chairs. And it's because it's well-made leather. It's well-crafted, actual arms and legs and everything. And it will last as long as I want it to. Until I throw these things out, they're not going anywhere.
Well, you bring up a good point. They've been making wooden furniture for thousands of years. They've been making Chinese fabricated furniture for 30 years. Think about what goes into it. Now, that being said, if I was a betting man, 50 years from now, fabricated furniture will probably have its little quirks. For what it's worth, IKEA does good job man as far as it's basic like those bookshelves those things will last 20 years for for 25 bucks like there's there's value in it they're more they're better crafted than some things um but
I also think you're you said something earlier maybe it was an earlier episode I can't remember but you know where do you not want it to break no one wants their stuff to break but uh Oh, we were talking about Apple. Yeah. We were talking about the battery life and stuff like that. And so it's almost like there's stuff out there that the margins are thin, they wanna move volume, it's mass produced, and you don't want it to last forever, 'cause if it lasts forever, you'll never come back for more. Yeah. So there's even a part of that that sometimes when you pay more, you really are getting more for it. And sometimes the better value, sometimes people say it's a better value to buy something for $6, you know, versus $7. Right. Because $7 is more expensive. That's not true. Right. If it will last twice as long and it's $1 more, it's far more value.
Value versus price.
Yeah.
You're talking about value versus.
And I think that's what that's what we do. And I say we in the luxury market, right? I would expect a luxury vehicle, you know, or a luxury piece of furniture to last longer and to be better. and to have better service on top of all of it. All those things play into it, in my opinion.
Yeah, for sure. And I think that it's almost quiet luxury, that right pair of jeans, it's not meant to be fancy or flashy, function over form. But all of a sudden now, if you look, those are the things that are coming back into style, that quiet luxury. We had our period, God, remember the freaking Ed Hardy days where every idiot was wearing a neon tiger on their shirt to show how much money they had? I think we're out of those phases, and now it's a very It's so much a quiet luxury thing. I think that's why there's this resurgence of these watch brands. Like it doesn't have to be a Rolex. There's a lot of these brands, if you, like a H Moser is literally an enamel dial. It doesn't even say Moser, most of them don't say, but if you know, And I think that there's this quiet luxury coming back. And I think it aligns pretty well with our customer service episode from the previous, just about like, We are so overindulged in so much spending in all this stuff that I think people are kind of taking a step back and be like, maybe I don't need 13 of those. Maybe I need one of those things that does the job. Maybe one's enough. And if I invest in that one thing, I'd be a little less reliant. I mean, shoot, there are kids that are looking using flip phones again. Man, do you remember how often you used to flip a Nokia would last you for 10 years. It'd be the exact same thing. Nothing changes at all.
Could still be playing snake today.
Drug lord and snake. You could be, drug wars and snake. But again, it's good to see that coming back. And I think it fits the ebbs and flows of the economic cycle that we will kind of see that coming back. So just talk about our store as a whole, the industry as a whole. One of the problems with the concept of craftsmanship is that most of the jewelry brands, and I would even say us to a certain extent, are all saying the same freaking thing. They're all saying well-crafted, they're all saying with love, they're all telling this similar story, which I think has actually been a problem in this industry because while it's not commoditizing in the sense, well, price is the only sensitivity, if everybody's saying the exact same things, how do you differentiate yourself?
It's such a great question and honestly something that we, me and you, the marketing team will work on Because it's, it's in the details, the devil are in the details for our craftsmanship. Because what I'll give a very easy example, um, into the weeds, but an easy example inside of a ring where you set either the center diamond or even the small diamonds, you can either go into that head that's holding the ring and scoop out and polish and make it beautiful, or you can save yourself the time and the money, quote unquote, and just put the diamond over it. And you'll never know unless you take, I'm actually wearing my loop today, anyone who's watching, and you could see it, but no one even knows to loop a ring. And honestly, it's on us too, because I think I would look at somebody looping a ring. I can be honest with myself. I'd be like, what is that guy doing or gal doing looping a ring? That seems insane. But you know what? Now that I'm sitting here saying it today, It's not insane. And it's actually what needs to be done because that is the quality of the piece. Did somebody handcraft this piece in one, two, or three different ways? Because every piece is handcrafted. You know, we had an old jeweler here, shout out to my boy, John. John, the jeweler, I used to say, are you making it by hand? He's like, no, by foot. It's like, yeah, everything is handcrafted, but did you take four hours polishing it or did you take 30 minutes?
All right, all right. Okay, so hold on a second. Let me get on one soapbox for this episode. Okay. How do you hand, Tito's says on it handcrafted? How do you hand barrel 65 million barrels? That is a lie. You are allowed to trademark things. So Tito's trademarked the way they said handcrafted vodka and instead of actually handcrafting it because they bought the trademark to it, they were allowed to put it on every bottle. There's no way you're handcrafting 60 million bottles. So this is not on with the nuance of it, but you can't say handcrafted because there's another great word. If I hear someone, if we're at someone like, oh, it's an artisan, I will walk out, I will hopefully throw my shoe at that person. What does it even mean? You can't just take fake words and pretend, did someone come in and bake this from scratch with dough that they picked out of, what does it mean? What do these words mean? So I think that's another problem with marketing and something that we try to stay away from to an extent.
So what do you do? I know you ask questions on this show, but I put myself in your shoes, you're a real foodie, you love all this stuff, so we can stay with that example if you want. The word artisan, the word handcrafted, it actually did mean something back in the day. So how, from a marketing perspective, are we going to flip people's viewpoint on, hey, no, actually, you're going to meet the team from Zyda. This stuff, they're taking each and every element, and they truly are handcrafting each and every piece. But I agree with you. That word is like, it's stupid. It means nothing anymore.
Yeah, so the answer is, that you can only do so much to get them in the door. You have to play the games. The experience that they have when they get here and the authenticity that comes with it is actually more important, to be honest with you. I have not spent enough time, you and I have not spent enough time on the authenticity of the experience. And that means everything from, is the store laid out correctly? Is it easy to browse? Are we laying out our best foot forward? Are they experiencing it? What's the follow up? I think you can fake the front end of it, but it is very hard to fake the back end of it. But I also think there's a certain amount of vulnerability that is required today, that like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, look. That's why this ring is not Tiffany pricing. If you want Tiffany pricing, if you want that Tiffany experience, go to Tiffany. That's why they're charging six times more for this ring. So I think what the hard part is, is there's a way to do it, but it's also valuing the cost of running a business that makes it hard. And I think we're good at it, but I think there's always reasons to improve. But I would say that that authenticity is very, very, very hard to fake.
Yeah, and I think that's probably where education needs to come into play as much as humanly possible, and I think in the day of We can stream stuff onto a screen, throw the microscope on and show people. I probably think, as we sit here today and I really kind of a light bulb moment of... What does education actually mean? And is it just as important to educate on the four Cs of a diamond as it is the steps of making a ring? And I actually think the answer is yes, it is.
Yeah, I'll give you an example. And you kind of mocked me when I did it, but when I had that guy come in and make the video game interpretation of the back room of the jeweler's bench, and they did a walkthrough where you can actually walk through the place. And why is that important? Saying that you can craft a ring in custom-made jewelry is different than having a freaking lab from the dark ages. and being able to use fire to make stuff. Very different story. So when everybody else says they craft, it's like, show me yours. Show me your lab with the equipment because we have it. That room, I would argue, is bigger than probably 60% of the jewelers in America. Just those three rooms that come together. How do you say that? Well, now all of a sudden you have a virtual walkthrough. You can walk and you can zoom in and see the nuance of how zoomed in you can be to that stuff. That kind of stuff. I did laugh at you. 0.01% of the population is going to do it. But my bet is that will overcome some people being like, that's a big box jeweler.
Yeah.
Because that's real deal stuff that we talked about in our previous episode about corporate America. What do you think the first thing corporate America is cutting from places from square footage? Those are the things.
That can be so luxurious back there for the jewelers.
I don't think so. I think we are in a world of buying fewer things. I think that's really nice. I think for me personally, you ask what I do about restaurants. I learned to cook it myself. And I've gotten good at just trying to figure it out myself using ingredients that I have. But what? When I do go out for that meal every once in a while, when we get to go to Arizona and have a Delmonico steak and have those meals, they mean that much more because I'm not doing them all the time. I'm a huge bourbon. I'm a huge wine guy. I love that stuff. But in my house, I'm drinking a $20 bottle of bourbon. What's the point? When I go out, that's when it's like, oh my God, that's why I taste the difference. So shout out to our boys at Amden for the $1,000 bottles of wine they're at Delmonico's. But that's why that bottle is worth as much as it is, because someone's willing to pay for it. That's right. And that I actually enjoy. I like older things. I like old world. I like Italian and French things. I don't particularly care for the French very much, but let's be honest, French onion soup with a really insane bottle of red wine is pretty much it. It's pretty much it.
I agree.
Talk a little bit about, we've talked briefly about the old country, but talk a little bit about your dad and how important it was to him to go cut the diamonds and look and handpick and the rough. I know it's a a lost art, but we've cut our teeth on that. So I think I want to end the episode with just kind of, as you were being raised, and unfortunately the industry has changed so much, let's acknowledge it, what it is. But our pedigree is still one of so much craftsmanship. Talk about how that kind of shaped you into what we've built today.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, listen, everything revolves around the quality of the rough that you buy, how you're going to cut it, who's going to cut it, what methods are they going to use? Did their father do it before them and their father before them? And how skilled are they? And so my dad, what he was so good at was going Looking at rough, there was no machines back then to tell you, hey, here's the optimal way to cut it. The whole skill set was, let me look at the rough and see what I'm going to get from it. Some of them, for people that don't know, right, the rough diamond out there, you can't see through it. you'd have to polish what they call a window and think about it exactly like a window. A window that's murky and you kind of take your hand and so you can see it. But yeah, I'm sure.
There's even an art to that.
So there's an art to that, but it's actually going to cost you more to do it, right? Because if you want to see through the window, and because now when you can see through the window, so can everyone else. So it was an art of, hey, do I look at it? Do I know this piece of rough? Have I seen this shape before? And do you take the risk? And he got so good at taking incredibly educated, incredibly calculated risks. And that was the finer points of our business. And that is why it is a true craft.
It is a true craft. When we talk about designing and blueprinting, I am sure that CADs are very helpful. I don't care what anyone says, man. There's no craft in using a CAD program. The craft was hand designing. The craft was the mold. And now if you cut your teeth on that, then it's amazing. We've been joking about this. I got so ****** so I'm trying to teach myself how to code. I don't feel like I'm a craftsman. I feel like I just know how to Right. I'm not crafting it. It feels good that I can do it, but I don't feel like, I'm not like, wait, that a boy, Nick, good for you for doing it because I'm manipulating something to get an outcome.
No, the guy at Anthropic is feeling good about himself when he creates it to make it easier for you. But no, you hear the word lost art, right? You hear that kind of stuff. And I think that's apropos to this particular episode of like, and I would say that rough buying it is totally a lost art. And I think for you, probably along the lines of cooking and things of that nature, but there are, some of the lost arts out there. What's one of your, that lost art that just, who knows if it's ever gonna come back?
Yeah, oh, I have to give it some thought, but I would say, here's a great example, right? If you've ever been to Kentucky, to the whiskey distillers, right? The good ones to this day don't even have a warehouse system. It's literally permanent marker that they write on barrels to make whiskey. There was a point about 10, 12 years ago where the demand got so high that they abandoned a lot of those systems and they took ages off of things and the products just completely changed. The story, how it was made, it was more chemical, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That is a lost art. Can we go back to it? Maybe, but my guess is the barrier to entry is too high. That's one of the problems with capitalism. As we become more efficient, the barriers to entry grow for all of these industries that make it too hard to go back to those old world ways. Wouldn't it be cool to go to a restaurant where they really had a farm and they picked all the stuff and they came out and cooked it for you? Yeah, but do I really want to spend $700 on roasted chicken? Not particularly. But I think whiskey, I think it's all those things, right? I mean, I think that cars are one of the few things that to this day are really crafted and engineered the right way. When you look at a Ferrari and what goes into making a Ferrari, it's just built to be something different. So I think they still exist, but I think it's getting harder and harder, my man.
Yeah, I agree. I agree.
I think it's getting harder. I think clothes suck. I joke about it, but a good old Italian suit did not cost. Now it costs 10 times more than anything. And they're making it the same way.
There's just not enough out there. I mean, do you talk about a lost art? I mean, that would be tailoring and doing that kind of stuff.
It's more expensive to tailor the suit out than it has to buy it.
Yeah, no, it's not worth it. You go, there's a third quarter of the people. I talked to the guys downstairs at Guffy's and I hear about when Mr. Guffy started, how many tailors there were and how many people he used to go see in Italy. Now it's three people instead of 50. So again, as the supply goes down, the price just goes up.
You know, it's funny. I think there's a good word here too. You know what's dead? Nuance. There's nothing that's really nuanced anymore. It's either black or white. I love the guys from Zyto, actually, when we met them, because there's so much little nuance that goes into what they do in the stories. They're not saying the same thing as everyone else. They're like, Oh, this was crafted because this happened at this time, and we had this feeling, and we made this, and we handmade this. It's like, oh. Okay, yeah, that's cool. Most of the brands we get are, we made this because of this, but I saw that same thing on last year's style from this person. So you may have built that story and that's another thing. AI can make a story pretty easily. You can make it a picture and give it two prompts and I'll be like, let me tell you this story. Whiskey is a great example, right? Everyone has to have a story now. It's like, did you know that Pappy Van Winkle's third cousin's stepchild had a Black slave that came from Africa and taught him how to make whiskey? This is it. It's like, what? How did we get there? The web wasn't even that big. So anyway, somehow we're back on craftsmanship. I think that every couple of episodes, we're going to do one of these where we just kind of pick a word and we kind of go for it because I didn't know where this was going to go, but I think this is a good episode and I think it's a perfect follow-up to our customer service episode. I don't think you could have one without the other. Because I think the only way to be good at customer service is to believe in what you're selling. And it's very hard to sell a bad product. And I know everyone out here has had a sales job in their life where you have sold a product that you absolutely hated. And at some point, the value proposition for you changed to be like, I don't really want to sell this anymore. So I think those two things go hand in hand. So anything to close us out on craftsmanship, my man.
No, I'm very proud of what we're doing here. We will do a better job educating and making sure that people understand that there are the right ways to make things and there are the wrong ways to make things. And you can get by with both, but you will see the difference when something is well made. and the care has been put into it and you've taken the time because that's what our industry's all about. If you take the time, the product's gonna come out better. If you cut corners and you don't polish and you don't do everything right, then you're gonna lose out. And that's a shame for anyone that buys that type of stuff. They're losing out on easy sparkle and beauty and compliments and showing it off.
And I think I'll just leave with this, you cannot fake care. There's a lot of things in this world you can fake right now, but you can't fake care.
No.
You've been listening to Legacy of Luxury, and we will catch you next week.
All right, all right.
BOOK APPOINTMENT 
