Joe Menzie on How the Trade Can Inspire Consumers To Gift More Gems

By Victoria Gomelsky | January 08, 2025

Joe Menzie has been to at least 30, probably closer to 35, Tucson gem shows over the years, but who’s counting? “The first time I attended was when AGTA had their show in the Doubletree Hotel,” he tells JCK. “A lot of water under the bridge since those times.”

Even though Menzie, who lives in the Catskills region of New York, retired from gem dealing in 2022, after 48 years in the business, he’ll be at this year’s Tucson shows doing what he does best: hawking stones. A friend of his recently passed away, leaving behind an extensive collection of gems, and Menzie is assisting his family by selling them at the M. Bernardes Gems booth at GJX and Randy Polk’s booth at the 22nd Street Show.

“I’ve rented out a case in each of those booths and that’s where I’ll put the goods,” Menzie tells JCK.

That’s his ostensible reason for going to Tucson. Behind the scenes, however, Menzie has another goal on his agenda: He’s looking for partners to join him in his latest venture, an app, tentatively called “Gemstone Genius,” intended to help drive sales of colored stones.

“After over 48 years in this part of the industry, my mind was still very active with thoughts on how to raise the bar, facilitate, and improve colored gemstone sales,” Menzie wrote in an email describing his new company, Gemstone Promotional Services. “With that in mind, I assembled a team to look into what ‘services’ we could create that would resonate with consumers.”

The product of that effort, Gemstone Genius, is powered by a custom version of ChatGPT, Menzie says.

“It touches on every gemstone: the history, the lore, anything you can ask it using AI,” he says. “Sales associates are tasked to learn more about diamonds because that’s what they sell. Gemstones are confusing to them—there’s such a plethora of information.”

Beyond sharing the history and lore of each gemstone—using info that he and his team have personally vetted for accuracy—the app also provides a marketplace to buy loose gems on memo from American suppliers, and offers gifting suggestions based on verbal or written prompts.

“For example, I uploaded a picture of my granddaughter,” Menzie says. “And then I asked it, ‘What would be a nice gift for her? She was born in February.’ This beautiful message comes back. Everything from the AI has been filtered by us to be true. We’ve corrected a lot of things on it.

“It tells you what an appropriate gift for a person would be based on whatever you tell it,” he adds. “Let’s say you want to buy a gift for your sister. You’d say something like, ‘Julia is very outgoing, she likes to go to concerts. Her birthday is July 1. What would be a good gemstone for her?’ I could describe her verbally or give the app a picture. The app would come back with jewels that would complement her eyes, or pieces that make sense because of her love of science. The AI part ferrets out all those things and comes back with suggested ideas.”

But wait—there’s more. The app is also prepared to offer consumers custom design ideas. This is where retailers come in. Once users peruse the suggested designs, the app points them to retail stores where they can purchase the piece.

“We’ve taken the burden away from the associates, to make it easy for them to navigate creating jewelry with gemstones,” Menzie says.

Over the next few months, Menzie says he’ll look for special order manufacturing partners—such as JewelCraft or Overnight Mountings—to serve as the middlemen. “The app will develop a mounting design, the customer will show it to the retailer, and the retailer can go to the special order manufacturer to have it made,” he says.

The business model is based on selling subscriptions to retailers: For approximately $350 a year, stores will get access to monthly ads, YouTube videos, the marketplace, and more.

“Once I have a saturation of retailers, I want to go after the birth market,” Menzie says. “I want to try to dominate the push present market like De Beers dominated the engagement market. I’m giving retailers a tremendous amount of tools—blogs, ads, YouTube videos—to lift up their sales.

“I was shocked to learn that gemstones only account for 7% of fine jewelry sales,” Menzie adds, citing research from Edge Retail Academy. “Diamonds have love, diamonds have marriage, diamonds have forever. There hasn’t been any hook with color. We must create the demand.”

Top: loose Montana sapphires from Columbia Gem House