Jewelry business fading away
Goldstock, a Clark Building fixture for decades, prepares to close
Over the past 80 years, multitudes of young lovers have anxiously sweated over Goldstock Diamonds & Fine Jewelry’s glittering glass showcases in the Clark Building searching for the perfect diamond engagement ring.
Now, all that memory-making is about to end.
After nearly four decades in the fine jewelry business, the current owner of the Downtown institution, Michael Kurtz, is ready to hang up his gem tweezers and magnifying loupe.
His two grown children who have their own careers aren’t interested in taking over. And with the retail jewelry trade in decline amid fierce competition from online dealers, there’s no one willing to buy the business.
So Goldstock — which was originally opened by watchmaker Morris Goldstock in Lawrenceville in 1912 and has been a fixture in the Clark Building on Liberty Avenue since 1935 — is liquidating its inventory and closing its doors.
“I’ve been here for 37 years. I’m very grateful for the customers and success we’ve had, but the time is right for me,” Mr. Kurtz, 61, said one day last week from his tiny backroom office in the midst of the store’s “Going out of Business” sale.
He joined Goldstock as a young man shortly after his late father bought the business in 1981. His staff of 11 are all longtime employees, with tenures ranging from 19 to 36 years.
Some are happy to retire, he said, while others are looking forward to switching careers.
“No one is that upset [about losing their job] because the jewelry business has become so difficult,” he said.
At least one worker — Sharon McKillop, 51, who has been at Goldstock for 20 years and can’t afford to retire — said she’s plenty upset.
“If you’re not retiring, it’s pretty scary,” said Ms. McKillop, a single mom with her youngest still in college. “I’m fearful there won’t be a position out there for me.” She said she and a couple of other female employees are at an age where “a lot of companies don’t want us.”
Finding another job in the jewelry business could be difficult.
Besides the general brick-and-mortar malaise tied to shoppers moving to the internet, another factor hurting sales is that millennials aren’t as interested in fancy jewelry as older generations were, Mr. Kurtz said. Instead, they’re more focused on traveling and paying off their student loans, he said.
Jewelers operating Downtown also have been hurt by declining foot traffic due to the loss of Pittsburgh’s major department stores in recent years, including Macy’s, Lazarus and Lord & Taylor.
When Saks Fifth Avenue closed in 2012, it was an especially hard blow, Mr. Kurtz said. The store had attracted an upscale clientele from throughout the region.
“If you wanted to go to Saks, there was nowhere else to go” but Downtown, he said.
In Pittsburgh, the Clark Building remains the epicenter of the jewelry trade, but it has been losing its luster along with the industry.
In its heyday, the 23story building — which now houses mostly apartments — was home to about 70 jewelers. Today, roughly a dozen remain.
Across the industry, hundreds of jewelry stores have gone out of business in recent years, Mr. Kurtz said.
According to the Jewelers Board of Trade, 1,190 jewelry retailers closed in the U.S. and Canada in 2016, with another 706 shutting down in 2017 — many of them because they didn’t have succession plans.
Mr. Kurtz said he’s not having any second thoughts about retiring, but he will miss “dealing with the customers and creating happy occasions for people.”
Over his long career, he has watched tastes in engagement rings change along with his clientele.
In the 1980s, round or marquise-shaped diamonds were the standard, while the most popular size was 0.5 to .75 carats, he said.
Today, round diamonds still dominate, but on average they’re bigger at 1.0 to 1.5 carats. And marquise diamonds have been replaced in popularity by princess cut (square), cushion cut (square with rounded corners) and oval gems.
As for the setting, the preference has switched from nearly all yellow gold to nearly all white gold and platinum.
Mr. Kurtz expects to close his doors for good sometime after Christmas, when most of his merchandise is gone. Any leftover stock will be wholesaled out or sold for scrap.
Asked if his wife had any parting gifts picked out for herself, he smiled and shook his head.
“There’s already been a lot of picking over the years,” he said.