In celebration of International Women’s Day on Sunday, direct-to-consumer brand AUrate is inviting women to trade in their unwanted fine jewelry for credit toward an AUrate piece, either online or in-store.

Shoppers are invited to bring their pieces into AUrate’s SoHo flagship store in New York City on Saturday and Sunday, where they’ll sit down with a fine jewelry appraiser who will assess the value of the pieces they’ve brought in—and ultimately hand them a credit they can shop with.

Customers not based in NYC can do this online—by submitting a photograph and specs of jewelry pieces to AUrate via a three-question survey. The brand is aiming to turn around appraisals within two days, and it is offering limited quantities of prepaid shipping labels (customers need to send pieces by mail to the company).

AUrate was founded by Sophie Kahn and Bouchra Ezzahraoui in 2015 and is proudly a woman-owned and -designed brand that markets specifically to the self-purchasing female fine jewelry shopper—80% of its overall sales are self purchases. The company’s marketing has always been aligned with that mission—and includes a blog on its website populated by profiles of successful women entitled “Women Raising the Bar.”

“Fundamentally, we believe that every woman deserves jewelry that lives up to the high bar she sets, so we focus on what matters: durable materials built for everyday wear and tear, transparent pricing as friendly as your neighbor’s dog, sustainable production to offset our carbon footprint, and tangible giving for a sparkling conscience,” reads AUrate’s website.

The brand, which we’ve covered since its inception on JCKonline, closed $13 million in Series A funding in June 2019—the largest Series A round ever secured by a fine jewelry brand—and opened the two permanent NYC stores in October 2019.

Top: AUrate 14k gold Bridge ring (photo courtesy of AUrate)

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Emili Vesilind

JCK Senior Editor