Grieve Diamond Jewellers – Robert Griffiths

Jim Newbigin: Good evening. It’s 12th November 2019, and this evening we’re at Landmark[s] … Robert Griffiths, Griffiths [Grieve] Jewellers of Hastings; fourth generation.

Joyce Barry: Evening, everyone, thanks for coming. It’s a pleasure tonight – diamonds are a girl’s best friend, and I suppose the men selling them is the next best thing. [Laughter] Robert is very, very home-grown; in fact, he’s still in the same house he grew up in. So that is a very, very rare story, and I’m not going to tell them anything about your business, ’cause it’s quite famous in Hastings for many reasons. And Robert, it’s over to you; we’re delighted to have you, just delighted, so over to you. Thank you.

Robert Griffiths: Thank you, Joyce. [Applause] No, you haven’t had many like me, because the leading jeweller in town is Grieve Diamond Jeweller. Folks, I look around this room and there is [are] an awful lot of faces I know, and they’ve stood on one side of the counter and I’ve been on the other, so let’s hope that continues.

Now H J Grieve Limited is my subject tonight; I know it relatively well, the last forty years, anyway. We trade nowadays as ’Grieve Diamond Jeweller, The Trusted Name in Quality Jewellery – Your Diamond Destination’. Now Joyce didn’t say I wasn’t allowed to throw in the odd line of advertising there, so …

Right – H J Grieve was Herbert James Grieve, and he was born on 8th August 1982 in Dunedin. [Audience corrects, speaking together] Oh, sorry, 1882; I got that wrong earlier on … 1882. His father was James Grieve, and he was a tinsmith; his age was twenty-seven, and he was from Melbourne in Australia, unfortunately, so there is an Aussie in the family. He [H J] was known as Bert; Bert’s mother was Sarah Ann Williamson. She was seventeen, and obviously she was from Dunedin as well.

I’ll just mention Bert’s family – he had six children; there was Bruce, who was a doctor in Auckland; Lorna, who lived in Napier, and when the Grieve Jewellers shop was in Napier she took that over, and that was many years later. Many of you would’ve known Doug Grieve – he ran the stock department at Hawke’s Bay Farmers; and there was Jocelyn – she married a banker, and they worked for the World Bank all round the world, very seldom in New Zealand; and then there was Bill, who was my father-in-law; and Brenda.

Now in the early 1900s – we’re not really sure when – Bert started the business in Gisborne. Some of the paperwork that I’ve got here has been provided by Michael Fowler [phone ringing] ’cause he did a bit of research for me, oh, about ten years ago when we were trying to find a bit of history about our building; a lot of this he came up with. Now we’ve got some newspaper clippings as I mentioned, and I’ve got one here, ’cause Bert was always good at advertising. And here I’ve got a note: ’An old Maori paid H J Grieve, the people’s jeweller, a visit today, and evidently was overjoyed with his purchase. Some months ago he had bought a 21st watch; and he came back he was so happy. He said, “Give me six more.”’ [Chuckles] So I don’t know what he was going to do with those, but ‘Grieve makes a specialty of watches and repairs’. Now that was in the Poverty Bay Herald on 19th July 1909, so it gives a wee bit of an indication of when he started.

Now here’s another story – I’m not sure when this was in the paper: ‘A sensational case of breaking and entering occurred at Gisborne in June 1914 when jewellery to the value of £2,000 was stolen from the premises of H J Grieve. Charles Henry Newton, alias Murray, was found guilty of the offence, sentenced to two years’ hard labour and declared a ‘habitual criminal’. Two men had seen him plant some of the stolen goods under an empty house and helped themselves to a portion.’ [Chuckles] ‘They were placed on probation for two years. The rest of the goods were found buried in a tin on Awapuni Golf Links.’ It’s a pity they didn’t [don’t] dish out some of those sentences today.

Now another ad [advertisement] was in The Poverty Bay Herald on 9th August 1918: ‘A boon to men who work dogs – Grieve Jewellers’ solid silver dog whistles, 3/6d [three shillings and sixpence] each, post free. H J Grieve, Watchmaker and Jeweller, Gisborne’. Those sterling silver shepherd’s whistles we still make today, and we make them in-store. And we don’t sell them for 3/6d, I can tell you; [chuckles] but we still sell quite a number of them.

‘Easter time, wedding time – Grieve Jeweller makes a specialty of wedding rings, bridesmaids’ presents and suchlike. Size cards free on application. H J Grieve Limited, Watchmaker and Jeweller’; 27th March 1915.

Now I mentioned their size cards – they were something they used to use. You’d get a card with a series of holes, so you could go along and you poke your finger through the hole so you knew what size your finger was. You’ll probably be able to see that. [Showing slides]

Now also in Gisborne – a friend of mine put me onto this – this little pocket watch was on TradeMe a number of years ago, and a mate of mine phoned me up and he said, “Hey, there’s a pocket watch on TradeMe and it’s got ‘H J Grieve Limited, Gisborne and Napier’. I think you should buy it.” And I thought, ‘Well as a little memento I would.’ I bought it from a guy … I think he was in Waipuk [Waipukurau] somewhere, and I think I paid about $40 for it. So it’s just a little memento.

Now, I’d just like to explain the ‘Gisborne and Napier’. At no stage did Bert have a store in Gisborne and in Napier at the same time. I’ve thought about why he had Napier and Gisborne on there, and I believe … actually, I’ll pass it round if you like and you can have a look at it. It’s in perfect working condition; I’ve had it overhauled. My answer to that is that being in Gisborne in the early 1900s, to place an order for a watch you wouldn’t have got on the phone; you certainly wouldn’t’ve sent an email or a fax. So I would presume he would’ve had to write out an order. It would’ve gone by coastal shipping through to Wellington; Wellington then would’ve probably grouped a number of orders from retailers around the country, and again written out an order which would’ve gone by boat through to Europe, to Switzerland. Thinking of the time frame of all that happening, it would’ve probably taken twelve or eighteen months or even longer for you to order something like that and get it delivered. So Bertie obviously had it in mind that while he was in Gisborne he was going to open a store in Napier, so I believe that is a rough story with that watch.

From Gisborne – and I don’t have any dates – Bert moved to Auckland. He had a store in Auckland; I don’t know where, or … no one in the family seems to know much about it; whereabouts in Auckland, or for how long, or what the circumstances were that made him move from Gisborne to Auckland. But then from Auckland he moved to Whanganui; again, there’s no explanation as to why he would do that. The store in Gisborne was in Gladstone Road, and up until about twenty-five years ago friends of ours actually owned and operated a jewellery store out of there before they moved through to Tauranga. I don’t think it’s a jewellery store any more. In Whanganui, again he had a jewellery store there; don’t really know a great deal about that, but while he was in Whanganui I believe that he ventured out and apparently may’ve purchased a farm, which put him under a bit of financial strain; and I believe he almost went broke.

So from Whanganui he came through to Hastings, which was in 1933. When he opened in Hastings – it’s not actually in the site we’re in now, it’s a wee bit further up the street towards where Blackmore’s were – and if you have a look on the building there, there is actually ‘H J Grieve’ written on the side of the building. But where we are now, we’ve been there for an awful long time. When Bert moved through to Hastings, he advertised for a watchmaker. Now there was a young man from Palmerston North called George Emo King, who applied for the position. One or two oldies in the crowd may recall George King; he had a bit of a following. He never married; he was always immaculately presented at work. When he bought a pair of shoes he would take them home and clean them; ‘cause everything was just so spotless. Now I’ve got a little printout here which was done by George’s niece, Alice Hunt, and I’ll just read you this; there’s a few nice little stories here …

‘In memory of a kindly, generous and cheerful member of the King family, George Emo King was born in Apia, Samoa, in 1910. He was still in Apia in 1980 [1918] at the time of influenza. The King family spoke in Samoan, except for their English father, Arthur, who came from London. George would have some schooling in English. He must’ve left for New Zealand about 1920, joining Florence, the eldest daughter, who was working in the Grand Hotel in Auckland. George went to school in Auckland, then when Florence married James Baxter Fleck, also from London, the three … James, Florence and George … moved to Palmerston North in 1924. The next school was College Street Primary School, not far from their home in Albert Street. In 1927 at the age of sixteen, George began an apprenticeship in watchmaking in Palmerston North. The Goldfinch & Cousins Menswear occupied the main part of the ground floor, and the jeweller and watchmaker had the premises facing the Square. After the 1931 earthquake the top floor was demolished, and the hotel closed. In 1975 it was replaced by the new CML [Colonial Mutual Life] six-storey building, later converted to accommodation known as ‘The Hub’. In 1933 George applied for the position at H J Grieve Limited, Heretaunga Street, Hastings, and was asked to attend an interview. He cycled to Hastings for this on a very ordinary bicycle; and when he was accepted he put all his belongings on the train and once again, cycled to his new position.’

This became a legend with the Grieve staff; you can appreciate, back in those days, in 1933, the Takapau Plains would’ve still been shingle; the Manawatu Gorge would’ve been a bit rough; [chuckles] and yeah, George biked all that way. He boarded with a Samoan family relation that’d [who’d] set up his own flat in Hastings.

Grieve Diamond Jeweller – no, it wasn’t Grieve Diamond Jeweller at that stage – was started in 1934 by Herbert James Grieve, and then carried on by his son, William Noel [Grieve]. Barbara Grieve, daughter of William, and her husband, Robert [Griffiths], were the next and present owners of the firm. Their son, James, is working with them. The family business is well-known and respected in Hawke’s Bay. In 1973, to mark forty years’ service, George was presented with a gold Omega watch with the inscription: ‘From H J Grieve Ltd, G E King, 40 Years’ Service’. Now Alice returned that watch to me last year, and I actually have that in my office – his gold Omega watch. Actually, there’s a photo of it in the box, still with the guarantee; the guarantee’s written out there, the Omega guarantee.

Now, just back to George’s birth and upbringing – Florence King, a seventeen year old, was working for a German family in Apia, Samoa, when they gave hospitality to officers of a German ship which was visiting Samoa. After a meal the party went for a walk, but the captain excused himself and returned to the house. There he took advantage of the shy young Florence, and after he sailed away she found that she was pregnant. No surprises there. That was a terrible disgrace in those days and when George was born his grandparents, Arthur and Susannah, legally adopted the child and managed to get some money from the captain. Florence went to Auckland in 1917, and some years later George joined her. Everyone in New Zealand thought that he was Florence’s younger brother, which he was by adoption; so his mother was also his sister by adoption … doesn’t happen very often. Florence told her daughter, Alice, the true story when she was in her late teens. That’s all there is really about George, but it was quite an interesting story, and as I say, George became a legend at H J Grieve Limited repairing watches all those years. And he had a lot of mates who used to pop up and see him, and he used to enjoy his lunch at the local pub just down at the corner.

Now, H J Grieve Limited, 1933, I can say that we would be the longest serving retailer in Hastings, which is a pretty good effort. Here I’ve got a photocopy of some accounts that show the profit and loss, 1935, 1936, 1937 and 1938. I believe there are a couple of earlier sets of accounts which I’m sure I’ve seen, but I couldn’t find them. So there in 1935 the profit was £54/19/3d. [Fifty-four pounds nineteen shillings and three pence] That would hardly take you out for dinner these days; however he improved – by ‘38 the profit had got to £359, so those are quite interesting. I’m not really sure when Bill Grieve took over the business, and as I mentioned earlier on, Bill was the youngest son of Bertie. And then I appeared on the scene somewhere along the line there; as I mentioned, Bill was my father-in-law, and I married Barbara who is the middle daughter. Bill and Pattie had two other daughters; Di, the eldest one, is also here tonight. They both married farmers, so Bill really didn’t have anyone to follow on in his footsteps. So one night I was passing through the shop on a Friday night, and Bill was out the back frantically sizing a ring, and as I walked past he made a comment about me joining him in the business. I just brushed it off and said, “Oh”, you know, “I’m not really interested.” I’d never worked basically like that, inside; I’d never stood behind a counter. I’d never had a paper run or anything like that. It must’ve been August or September, I daresay, ‘cause I was about to start my busy wool classing season; ‘cause I had studied to be a wool classer and used to travel around Hawke’s Bay to the wool sheds, classing wool. And in those days I was usually employed on a contract basis, and if you got into a reasonable size shed you could make pretty good money. One of those sheds I wool-classed in was Matapiro Station which had twelve shearers, and we could pump out on lambs, five thousand a day, and when you’re on a contract basis that was very, very good money. So needless to say, I wasn’t at that point very interested. However, that particular season I had a stint where I worked for five weeks in a row, every day. And you’d know – five o’clock starts, and sometimes if I was working at Porangahau or somewhere like that I would drive to the site each day, which meant an hour, an hour ten, through to the job, which meant I was on the road by quarter to four in the morning, up at quarter past three. So after doing five weeks, seven days a week, I started to think about this job which could be eight o’clock start, knock off at five, home by quarter past, five days a week, and also the possibility there was going to be a business go begging at some stage. So I went back to Bill in the early part of ‘73 and we sat down and discussed it. I felt that my mind was in the right place to actually give it a go, ‘cause I’d made up my mind that when I got to fifty I didn’t really want to be chasing shearing gangs around Hawke’s Bay.

So in April ‘73 I started with the firm; I don’t know what they called me – whether I was the junior or whatever – but I started, and learned the ropes from Barb’s father, and he was a good coach. Unfortunately, four years later Bill passed away, and so I was really thrown in the deep end, dealing with all the reps, [representatives] and had to deal with bank managers and all those sorts of things. And then a couple of years after that the Family Trust which owned the business was getting close to being wound up; [had] run its course. So our accountant, Callum Kirkpatrick who many of you would know, came along to see me, and he said, “Right – well, I’m a trustee and the Trust is winding up. Do you want to work for the family, or would you like to be doing it on your own?” Didn’t take me too long to think that I didn’t want to work for somebody else for the rest of my life, so I said, “Well let’s have a go. But I’ve got no money.” He said, “I can arrange that; the business is in pretty good shape so the business will borrow the money, loan it to you, and away we go.” In those early years … I’m not quite sure when that would’ve been, round about the early eighties … interest rates were, on today’s standards, horrendous. The average overdraft rate was round about twenty percent … twenty, twenty-two percent. And I was desperately trying to get all the books and everything in line, and occasionally would go over my overdraft limit into naughty boys’ territory, and I can remember paying twenty-seven percent interest. But we made it.

In the early eighties I was approached by some other retailers, and I was a founding director when the Gemtime buying group – we set that up. It was a buying and marketing group, and we had directors; one was in that store in Gisborne that I mentioned earlier; myself in Hastings, one in Palmerston, one in the Hutt, and another one from New Plymouth; and our accountant/secretary – we hired a guy by the name of Peter Wilson, which [who] a number of you will’ve known. He was in Napier at the time and later became the chairman of TrustBank, and has also gone on to be a director of Westpac Australasia, which he gave away only recently. After … oh, a number of years, probably twenty-odd years … I decided to pull out of the buying group. What was happening, the directorships used to roll over, and these retailers from smaller stores were becoming the driving force of Gemtime, and it was bringing the group down to their level which was not where I wanted to be. I wanted to continue growing our business and getting into higher volume, higher quality products. So I bailed out and became an independent retailer again. I found it a little lonely on the outside, ‘cause you didn’t have too many people you could ring up and have a chat, and discuss things, but one of the other directors had pulled out a couple of years before me and he had set himself up as a diamond jeweller. So I spoke to him, and he was quite happy for me to tag on with the diamond jeweller, and that’s when we became Grieve Diamond Jeweller.

Now back in those days there was a lot of sales tax – everything had sales tax. You’d buy something for $100, and then there’d be sales tax. Now with jewellery, it used to carry forty percent sales tax. Watches carried thirty percent; cigarette lighters and binoculars that we used to sell carried fifty percent; tableware – that’s cutlery, salvers, teasets – carried twenty percent. So you can appreciate back in those days, people when they were travelling off to Fiji used to come back with watches and binoculars, and they could buy them probably cheaper than we could buy them. So after a while the government cut the sales tax [coughing] and brought in the GST. [Goods & services tax] It was a great windfall for us, ‘cause I think I got back over $200,000 in sales tax; and they kept on coming and checking on me, and every time they came I got a wee bit more [chuckles] and they’d find a few things I’d missed. [Chuckles]

Back in that era as I mentioned, tableware, cutlery, salvers and things were great gift lines. I can remember looking on the shelves one day, and there were twelve silver teasets on the shelves – three-piece, four-piece teasets. You’ve probably all seen them; some of you’ve probably all got them tucked away in the cupboard and haven’t used them for years. Silver salvers – they were great for twenty-firsts, presentations, trophies – all those sorts of things. Back in those days there was a company in Auckland who made Hepworth silver salvers. Probably a number of you on [in] the room have got one or two of them. They were a really good product – brass blank with silver plating on them, and they wore very well. There was always a short supply, and so I got in tow with the rep from the company who had the sole distribution for Hepworth salvers, and we worked out a little scheme that I would put an order in; for every tray that came into their warehouse I had a standing order of four trays. They always filled the back orders first, and so people who didn’t have a back order didn’t get any trays. I can remember at one stage I was carrying eighty silver trays in the stock. [Chuckles] But … the upside was I’d get a phone call from the Gisborne A & P [Agricultural & Pastoral (Society)] – “Have you got six or eight silver trays?” “No problem, sir – when do you want them delivered?” Then I’d get another call from Masterton or Palmerston; and for presentations I always had a good supply, and so it always went very, very well until the Hepworth factory in Gisborne [Auckland] closed.

In 1982 Barb and I hadn’t owned the business for that long, but I decided it was time for an upgrade of the store. There’s just some photos of the old shop round about the earthquake time, and I’ll perhaps cover that shortly. So 1982 I spoke with Craig Morgan … many of you would know Craig, of S E Morgan & Sons … that was Craig and his brother, Mark; they’d always done any work that we needed. Morgan Flynn – remember Morgan? He’s just arrived back in the country; the mad Irishman. Morgan did the plans for me; did a great job, and that’s when we put the marble on the front of the store. We discussed the materials we were going to use and couldn’t decide, so Morgan and I went to Auckland to have a look around. And we walked into Quay Tower, I think it is called, in [at] the bottom of Queen Street; and Morgan said, “That’s what we want – marble.” So we tracked down the architect through to the builders, and we found that there was still product left down at Drury, that was left over from that building, and so we were able to get that cut for our store, ‘cause it all had to be specially cut and shaped. So there we have the application to the Hastings City Council – $46,000. We sell rings worth more than that these days. [Chuckles]

We did the shopfront, and then about two years later we did the interior; couldn’t really afford to do the whole thing in one go. So while the second lot of renovations for the interior of the store was being done, we moved [the] store into the Roach’s Arcade. Now you will recall after Roach’s closed they built an arcade in there, and there was an empty shop so we moved into there for two or three weeks … might’ve been a month … and we used to wheel most of our products back down the street every night, and put them away in the safe. However, the very last night that we were going to be in that temporary premises, we got knocked off. [Burgled] They came in through the front door of the arcade, into the arcade and then smashed through the windows into the shop we were in. Fortunately all our diamond rings and precious product was tucked away in the safe further up the street, but they took a lot of watches, and made a hell of a mess. So someone [coughing] must’ve known what was going on; that the next day we were moving out.

Now round about that time I started voicing my own radio ads. [Advertisements] Now that came about ‘cause Michael Hill [retail jewellery store] came to Hastings, and that was his second ever store that he ever opened, and he bought Garland’s Jewellery across the road. Some of you may remember Keith Garland. Michael Hill’s first manager was a guy called Andy Rout. Andy had a magic voice on radio; he used to voice all his ads, but when he moved off to Australia to help Michael Hill with his Australian venture, I thought that’s the time – ‘I’m going to have that spot on radio”, so I started doing my radio ads myself. Back in those days you had to record your ads, and they were done on a reel to reel, just like a film. I used to write the ads myself, thirty seconds, and I had to have them exactly right, because you couldn’t cut and paste or do anything like that, so you can appreciate the amount of time I spent getting my ads right. Today I can go down, voice an ad, and if I’ve got a hrrmp in the middle of it, they just cut it out. If I’m two seconds over, they just close up all the words so that it fits into the timeframe.

In 2005 I took my company out of Gemtime, and that was for probably a period of about ten years. And as I mentioned earlier, it’s a wee bit lonely on the outside when you’re not part of a buying group or a marketing group, getting a lot of things done for you; your catalogues are all done; a lot of bulk buying is done for you. So in 2012 I joined the Showcase buying and marketing group. Now that was an Australian group. I joined them, and then about six months later, the Showcase group took over Gemtime. They were starting to struggle, losing numbers as some of the stores started to close.

Now when you look around the country, in all trades it is very difficult to sell a retail store, whether it’s a jewellery retail, a book shop or a pharmacy, and so often the best option is to run a sale for twelve months, cash up and walk away. And that’s what’s been happening in our industry; and even in the Showcase group in the last twelve months I think there’s four stores [which] have closed. No one to take over; that’s why a lot of people [are] getting the strength and joining Showcase in Australia.

With our store we’ve always been chasing along, and promoting; striving to be better, and in 2015 our store won the ‘Best Jewellery & Gifts’ in the New Zealand Retailers’ competition. Our area for that was the East Coast, Taranaki and Wellington. We were pretty chuffed to win; so we were the best in that field. 2017 we entered again, and we won the ‘Best Media’, which covered Facebook, website, and that sort of marketing, so we won that for the East Coast, Wellington, Taranaki area again. And then once that is all decided, all those names go back into the competition again to find the top shop for the whole of New Zealand, and in 2017 we won. New Zealand top shop, for the whole of New Zealand. Now that was pretty cool [applause] for a little old store in Hastings.

Currently we have four sales staff; we have two jewellers working on the premises; there’s myself; Barb works Saturday mornings, and our son has joined us six or seven years ago, so we’ve got a pretty good team, and we’ve got the continuity going on there. I haven’t retired as yet; perhaps just starting to slow up and taking the odd day off.

[Showing items and slides] A couple of ads which I’ll show and perhaps pass around … just a bit of history there. And also while I’m passing things around, some of these little trinkets I’ve got here: there’s our jewellers’ eyeglass; and I daresay that this was Bert’s eyeglass because it’s actually made out of a bit of cow horn, ‘cause back in those days they wouldn’t have had plastic. But it’s pretty cool. Some of the products we used to sell – that’s a sterling silver matchbox holder. You just slip your matchbox inside there, and when you went to light someone’s [coughing] cigarette you had a sterling silver matchbox holder. Some of these pieces here people have brought in to sell as scrap because they’re not worth anything else these days: sterling silver cigarette case … bit defunct these days. Here I’ve got this beautiful little clock; it’s ticking away beautifully. I do not know where it came from; it has been sitting on my desk for probably forty years. I just love looking at it. I don’t normally wind it up very often; I’ve had many a rep who’s come into my office want to buy it, but I’d never ever let it go. But on the back – and I was showing Joyce earlier on – it’s got the inscription: ‘Miss Turtle, A memento on leaving for New Zealand, 1907-1911, Herbert Ewart’. Now, I don’t know what was going on [chuckles] between Miss Turtle and Herbert, [chuckles] but he obviously thought quite a bit of her to buy a nice little sterling silver clock like that and give it to her back in 1911. Yeah, it’s just a very nice little clock – I’ll perhaps pass that around.

Now that’s probably about all about the business, so perhaps just a little bit about me. As Joyce mentioned, I live in Twyford; I was raised in Twyford, and Barb and I raised our kids out there in Twyford and we still live there. I inherited a quarter share of a thirty-two acre block, which I suppose in my spare time, if I had any, I proceeded to plant that up into apples, and as time has gone on, even through the tough times of growing apples, we’ve added another three blocks to that, so we now have a hundred and fifteen acres of apples. The future looks pretty good for apples, doesn’t it, Johnny? [Chuckles]

Johnny: Today.

Robert: Today? We don’t know about tomorrow.

As I mentioned earlier on, I trained to be a wool classer in my early days, and I worked for W Tucker Limited at Clive. Many of you will know that company; that was an icon company that [which] was around for a long, long time. As I say, I trained as a wool classer; I worked out there on the wool scours and on the presses, and then finally got to what they call the top floor, where you sorted the wool, tipped it down the hole for the boys on the wool scour. Now W Tucker Limited used to provide wool classers to go out into the sheds to class the wool, and the deal was that Tuckers got the wool scouring that came from those wool clips. Of the pieces, bellies and some of the lower grade wool, they would send it into Tuckers to be scoured. I was at Tuckers for nine years before I joined Bill in the store. I used to class all over Hawke’s Bay; I had a very good shed over in Taihape – Otupae Station. That was a dream run, that one; used to start there on Boxing Day and we’d go straight through; work for a month. Times have changed a wee bit – they split their shearing up nowadays; they do their hoggets in November and then into the ewes and lambs usually after Christmas.

Really I think, that’s probably about it, so has anyone got any questions they’d like to fire at me?

Question: Robert, you go, I think, to buy your diamonds in Europe; has it changed any from the day back then? Could you tell us a little bit about that, because … diamonds ..?

Robert: Yeah, that’s right. I quite often introduce myself, and I say, “Look, I’m a girl’s best friend.” [Chuckles] “I sell diamonds.” Yes, that’s something I haven’t covered. I started going to Hong Kong probably thirty-five years ago. As I mentioned, I was on the board of Gemtime, and one of my fellow directors came up with this bright idea that we should be bringing in our own watches. We had a buying meeting in Auckland, and then we had a directors’ meeting after the buying meeting at the local trade fair, and they said, “Right – we need to do this.” And so I flew home from Auckland to tell my wife that I was packing my bag and I was off to Hong Kong. Never been there before; didn’t know what the hell I was in for. So there was [were] two of us went – a mate of mine from Nelson – and we went to the Watch Fair. They have a Watch and Clock Fair every year and it’s early September, and then there’s about four days in between and they have a Jewellery Fair. So we went up to that, and selected thirty or forty watches which we brought back to New Zealand as samples, and we picked the range from there. We branded it … well actually, what had happened before that, we went on a trip with one of our suppliers through to Switzerland, to Basel, and this guy that [who] was from Nelson said, “Hey, we need to get into this act of printing our own watches”, so we did a small range of watches while we were in Basel. And the girl that [who] we were dealing with – she was an Asian girl, ‘cause you know, most of those bottom-end watches, or even a lot of top-end watches, come out of Asia. So she quite happily wrote the order up, and then she said, “Oh, what name brand d’you want?” We think, ‘Oh, yes … yeah, we need a brand, don’t we?’ So we said, “Right, we’ll be back to you”, so we went outside and my friend had a little notebook, and he ripped out a page … gave us a page each. “Right, get into the phone box, go through the telephone book and come up with a name.” [Chuckles] So five minutes later we’re all outside, standing round, and no one had really come up with much; and we were leaning against this statue and someone [said], “Oh look – who’s this?” His name was Philippe Monet. “Done – there’s our brand.” [Chuckles] So that’s what we branded them – [cough] Philippe Monet. And after about three years Gemtime took over the watches, and they paid us … bugger all for all the hard work that we’d done; and that’s when we [coughing] used to go up to Hong Kong buying watches.

That carried on for quite a number of years, and then one year this mate of mine, Bill, were going up to the Trade Fair to do the watch stint, and he said, “Let’s pool our costs” – ‘cause they used to put us up in a room each – so we said, “Right, let’s bunk together, and we’ll use those funds to stay on for the next week for the Jewellery Fair.” So that was fine, and he was on the internet checking things out; and he rang me up and he said, “Between the Watch Fair and the Jewellery Fair in Hong Kong, there’s a Jewellery Fair in Taipei. Let’s go.” So we did. In that four day period we whipped over to Taiwan [coughing] to the Jewellery Fair there. Actually, we started bringing in some pearls from a company over there, and then we came back and visited the Jewellery Fair on our own bat, looking for our own product.

From that point I’ve continued to go up to the Jewellery Fair, usually twice a year. There’s [there’re] four trade fairs a year; they are massive – the biggest Jewellery Trade Fair in the world. I go up in March [coughing] and again in September; we buy pearls; we buy jewellery findings – that’s the parts that we use for building rings and jewellery. But nowadays my focus is more on buying gemstones – diamonds, sapphires, emeralds … you name it. [Cough] A number of people will come in, and they say, “Oh, look, this is what I want.” And I know very well that I can’t source it in New Zealand, and so we just hold that off and when I go to Hong Kong I source those stones and those products. So we are buying a number of diamonds now from companies while up in Hong Kong.

The diamond industry is controlled pretty much by Indians; in Hong Kong there are literally dozens of companies that are run by Indians out of Mumbai, who are dealing, cutting and selling diamonds. Last year Barb and I actually did a trip through to India with the buying group. Out of the seven days we were there I did three days of business buying stones. It was very interesting. India provides roughly about ninety percent of the diamonds supplied in the world, but they’re dealing with more the bottom end. Your better end of diamonds are cut and sold out of Antwerp.

Question: You mentioned the earthquake ..?

Robert: The earthquake – I wasn’t around then. [Chuckles] Way before my time. Right – the earthquake; Michael Fowler, as I mentioned, did a huge amount of work for me that [which] obviously was about 2012, because I was trying to establish some history about our building. At that time they were bringing in all this earthquake-proofing, and my insurance was going through the roof … literally through the roof. I got a quote, and it was just on $1,000 a week to insure our building. So I took on a company from Palmerston [North], ‘cause I couldn’t get a local one to do it; I’d waited two and a half years and they were all so busy. So I got this company from Palmerston to do a survey on my building; cost me $22,000 to do the survey, but it cut my insurance in half. We came out with a sixty-seven [earthquake] percentage which was just brilliant, and I didn’t have to spend any money on strengthening it. So we’re very lucky. Our building handled the earthquake very well; I believe the facade on the front of the building fell off. And I’ve got paperwork for the building, it was owned by somebody Ritchie, and he applied to the government to get funding to restore the building and repair it. But the actual internal frame of the whole building and that withstood it very well, there was no damage basically at all, although there was some fire came through from … Roach’s I believe caught on fire, and we were only two stores away from Roach’s and it came through into our store.

Question: Any of the diamonds come from South Africa?

Robert: I’m not really sure where they source them from but they do come through the proper channels – they’re not blood diamonds. [Chuckles] There’re a number of countries that mine diamonds: South Africa mine an awful lot of diamonds; Russia, Canada, Australia. Pink diamonds are … well, they’re not that fashionable ‘cause they’re too expensive … but pink diamonds are mined by the Argyle mine in Australia; now that mine is due to close – I believe it might be next year, ‘cause they’re just running out of product. And of course, pink diamonds, when they first came on the market eight or ten years ago – if I’d put every dollar I had into pink diamonds I’d be a very happy man today, ‘cause the prices have just literally … you know, for a top-grade, one carat pink diamond … they’re worth $1million. And people round the world do buy them.

Joyce: Robert, fantastic. It’s filled a lot of holes that I was interested in jewellery. I loved your 1982 renovation; the kids and I used to go down and watch this classy thing happen, and it was the classiest thing in the main street for many, many years. And it still stands, as handsome today; so your windows always take your eye.

Robert: Thank you. It was a bit of a concern, that; when Morgan and I were looking at a product to put on the front, I wanted something that was going to last. You know, we looked at timber, which was natural, but I said you know, given a couple of months of the window cleaner dribbling his cleaning products down, timber’s going to look rubbish. And I would say that I think at that time I overstepped the mark; I think it looked a wee bit too flash, and I think there was possibly a wee bit of resistance for a little while before people got used to it. But as you say, it still looks as good today …

Joyce: It’s classy.

Robert: … as when we put it up. I’ll also just mention that you’ll note that our windows are set back off the street about half a metre. When we did that we still had nine o’clock closing on a Friday, and people used to be up town wheeling push bikes, wheeling prams and things like that, and the reason I set it back like that was that people could step up to the window and not get knocked in the back of the legs with a push bike or a pram. So that was the theory behind that.

Joyce: He deserves a clap, doesn’t he? [Applause]