Welcome to our spectacular JCK June “at-show” issue! Whether you’re ­reading one of the 7,000 copies distributed at JCK Las Vegas, or receiving one of our 25,000 subscriber copies in your office, we hope you find this issue as informative, inspiring, and entertaining as always.

Although we run the business of JCK magazine and JCKonline on a calendar fiscal year, in many ways, the real cycle of our business rotates around the JCK Las Vegas show. As I write this letter, we’ve entered our annual pre-madness lull, with our issues written and sent to the printer. It’s actually a great time for reflection.

Editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and I were inspired by a TED Talk on the topic that we were shown last fall at a Stuller Bridge event in Lafayette, La. The basic premise of the TED exercise is to seek an understanding of why your ­business does what it does, which then leads to a discussion of how it does it and what it ultimately produces. In the case of Apple, for example, everything comes back to a why—but the why doesn’t have anything to do with “we want to be profitable” or “we want to build great computers.” Rather, the why behind Apple’s business strategy is: “We want everything we do to challenge the status quo.” This gives Apple the room to create any product (computer, phone, or TV streaming device) that does that.

During our “why, how, and what” exercise, we came to a simple conclusion: We do what we do at JCK because “we are family.”

In JCK’s New York City office, we whiteboarded our thoughts on why we do what we do at the magazine. As the words and phrases filled the board, I began to understand the passion that inspires our team. Phrases like “we love helping retailers,” “we love this industry,” “we believe in small American businesses,” and “we want to move the industry dialogue forward” were ultimately summed up by one simple phrase: “We are family.”

Why do we do what we do at JCK? Because we believe that this industry is a family. And as with family, we’ll always have your back, even if we’re being ­critical. As with family, we’re all in it together. As with family, we’ve been with you for generations and will be with you for generations to come.

I came away from that meeting loving my job, our team, and the jewelry industry even more than ever. 

Please enjoy this edit-packed issue of JCK. You’ll see the way our love of the industry is reflected in the stories here, as it is in the pages of the JCK Show Daily at the show, and every day online.

See you at Mandalay Bay!