Wednesday, Nov. 5th:  Akira pearl earrings and Amara shell pearls coming soon!:  We are pleased to note that while we had some delays with the Amara shell pearl manufacturing, the first shipment is under way and we expect to have some finished items available for sale within 2 weeks.  Additionally, we've had very good feedback on our Akira Freshwater pearls, and we will have stud and dangle earrings arriving shortly as well, in pink, white and *natural* gold (champagne).

*Contemporary Channel set ring with H&A Asha now in auction:  We have another jewelry model item now in auction.  This is our contemporary channel set ring in 14k white, with natural side diamonds and a center H&A, E color Asha.  Details are at our auction page here!

*Asha's have been restocked:  We completed a number of cuts that were sold out last Friday, including various E color Princess, E color rounds, and replenished the Asscher Asha supply as well.  Inventories on their respective pages have been updated accordingly.

*Price hike coming for Cartier Reproduction ring:  Our diamond cutters informed us that they will be passing along a price hike for the 1.7mm diamonds that we have been using in our best selling ring, the Cartier reproduction, starting with our next parcel purchase.  We purchased another 3+ carats of 1.7mm's last week to maximize the current price (we bought all they had) so the price will not change until we use this parcel up.  We expect our current inventory of diamonds for this ring should last until Christmas time, but after that we will have a price rise to account for the increased cost of these diamonds.  Our Cartier reproduction ring is located here!

---

Friday, Oct. 24th:  Trellis ring with H&A Asha now in auction:  We are auctioning another discontinued photo model starting today.  This is a 14k white gold "Trellis" ring with a center 1ct, E color, H&A round Asha.  Details are at our new Auction page here!

---

Wednesday, Oct. 22nd:  Akira Freshwater pearls now available!:  We received all of our 18" pearl necklaces back from Elliott Gem Lab this morning, each with their own appraisal card....and they are now available for immediate shipping (except for the intense pink, which sold out about 20 minutes after being shown on the website...more are coming).

We think you'll be very pleased with both the beauty and the pricing of our pearl necklaces.  All of them ship with an independent appraisal card, and feature 14k gold ball safety clasp.  

More details, photos and pricing is at our Akira Pearl page here, or you may go directly to the individual colors below!

	Premiere Round White
	Near Round White
	Intense Pink
	Pink

---

Friday, Oct. 17th:  Move to new office completed:  We were able to move to our much larger office space on Thursday, with the good news being that since this is a remodel, the building owner simply transferred our current suite number to the new office space...meaning there is no change to our mailing address!  More importantly, we have much more space available and will make our expansion into our upcoming pearls that much easier to manage.

*Nice Asha customer feedback!  We received a very nice feedback email today from a customer, and received permission to repost their sentiments.  Thanks again to this customer for taking the time to write as well as to let us repost from their email!

"I received my 2 ct. princess cut ring last Friday and all I have to say to those people thinking of purchasing a better than diamond ring is "Do It!!!!! You'll never regret it!"  It's absolutely beautiful.  The platium setting is worth the extra money.  I'm not kidding.....you'll absolutely unconditionally love it!!!!!!!!!!!!"

---

Wednesday, Oct. 15th:  Gemcare cleaning products now in stock, ready for immediate shipment:  We are pleased to announce that we have both the Gemcare Diamond and Pearl cleaner, as well as the Radiance 2000 metal polish in stock and ready for shipment.  These products will ship via Fedex Ground when ordered alone, or may ship for free with any jewelry or ring orders over $150, as we will simply place them all in one box for Fedex 2nd Day delivery.  Both products are available under our Care section on the left menu, or you may click here!

 

Akira Freshwater pearls should be available late next week:  Our freshwater pearls should be ready for sale late next week.  They are currently being strung, and we will be having them appraised after that.  Our Amara shell pearls are nearly completed as far as manufacturing, but will take another week to ship from Asia to our offices, after which we will begin stringing and making them available on our website!

---

 

Thursday, Oct. 9th:  BTD moving to a larger office suite:  We are moving again to a larger office suite to handle our growth and our upcoming freshwater and shell pearls.  This time, its a very short move - just one floor down to newly constructed set of offices.  We won't know our new suite number until construction is fully done, but we expect to have little downtime as a result of the move.  This move should be completed within the next two weeks.

*Sold out of 2ct E color Asha H&A rounds:  We've sold out on this cut, we have more in manufacturing and should have more in stock at the beginning of November.

*Two new Phoenix diamonds completed....possibly the last ones as well:  We received our two Phoenix diamonds back from GIA yesterday...they did not do as well as we had expected in the grading report (H color for both, VS1 and VS2 clarity).  We've priced them accordingly - details are on our www.PhoenixIce.com website. 

Of more importance, since Brazil has not signed onto the Kimberly Diamond Act yet, we are not able to bring in anymore rough diamonds from Brazil....this effectively kills our rough supply, and because of that and the poor color/yield results from our recent diamonds (we'll lose money on both of these diamonds), we do not expect to do anymore HPHT Phoenix diamonds after these two are sold.

Friday, Oct. 3rd:  Amara and Akira are the winning names for our pearl brand names!:
Thanks to your votes on our user poll, Amara (Latin meaning "eternal beauty") will be our brand name for our South Sea Shell pearls, and Akira has been chosen as our brand name for our freshwater cultured pearls.  Thanks to everyone who voted as well as provided excellent feedback on our message boards.  We'll begin filing the Trademarks next week.

*First strands of Akira freshwater cultured pearls have arrived!: 
We're happy to announce that our first strands of 'perfect round' and 'round' Akira freshwater cultured pearls have arrived - they are stunning.  We will offer white perfect rounds and white rounds, as well as light pink rounds and pink rounds.  We are currently waiting for our pearl clasps to finish manufacturing, we'll then string them and submit them for appraisal with Elliot Gem Labs....so we hope to have them photo'ed and available for sale by October 15th!  Please note that our Amara South Sea Shell pearls are in manufacturing, we hope to make those available for sale around Oct. 31st.

*US Patent office provides first feedback on the Asha patent application!:
Our lawyers received the first feedback we've gotten since filing a patent application for our Asha diamond simulant.  The US patent examiner feels the Asha patent application really contains two patents, and not one....so we will have to split our patent application into two.  Our lawyers are already working on this, but we were happy to get our first feedback on our application (we filed this nearly two years ago).

Wednesday, Oct. 1st:  Welcome to our new and improved BTD website!
You may have thought you typed in the wrong URL when viewing our site today, but its simply our new website!  We hope you find the new website to be easier to navigate and browse.  There are still a large number of miscellaneous items to be polished/refined on the website, and so we will continue to tweak the new website over the next week.  Overall, we hope you find the new website to be a more enjoyable viewing experience!

*Newest care products!  Based on your feedback on our message boards, we'll be adding Gemcare's jewelry care products to our care section!  Gemcare offers a unique plant-based liquid cleaner that is suitable for all gemstones and simulants, from diamonds to Asha's to pearls, as well as a metal polish to keep your platinum, gold, and silver clean.  We expect to have these available on our site within the next two weeks, about the same time as we begin offering our first strands of freshwater pearls!

Friday, Sept. 26th:  Cast your vote for the best brand name for our
upcoming pearls!:  We're currently in the middle of manufacturing our shell-pearls, and have finalized a list of five possible names for their brand name....and we'd like your feedback on which one you like best! You can cast your vote at our online poll here!  

*Shell pearls mentioned in Gems and Gemology magazine earlier: We also found this interesting quote regarding shell pearls being ranked as the best simulated pearl in a previous edition of Gems and Gemology magazine:

"The least expensive manufacturing process for imitation pearls uses plastic bead centers formed by injection molding. Because of their low cast, such imitations are responsible for as much as 80 per cent of the imitation pearl market. Their low specific gravity, however, makes them less desirable than those imitations with heavier centers. This is particularly obvious when plastic imitations are used in strands, since these bead strands do not lay evenly or move �naturally�. 

The most expensive imitation pearls manufactured in Japan use central beads formed from shell. They can be quite convincing in both appearance and heft, and have been variously called �shell pearls�, �imitation cultured pearls�, and �man-made pearls.�"

Tuesday, Sept. 2nd:  Sold out of E color, 1.5ct Asha Princess!: We've sold out of another Asha cut, this time it is the E color, 6.5mm princess.  We are producing more, but do not expect to complete them until early October.

*Congrats to our August Ultrasonic giveaway winner, Jem0920!  We've got a winner for our ultrasonic giveaway to celebrate our record sales in August - Jem0920 on our message boards was the winner!  We'll be shipping their ultrasonic cleaner to them tomorrow - congrats to this message board member!

*BTD auctions for various jewelry used as photo models:  Whenever we add a new jewelry items to our website, we normally produce one of that item that is used as a photo model so that we can take the photos to show what this new item looks like.  With many of our jewelry items discontinued, we no longer have a need to keep these models around for future photos, and hence have decided we should auction them off.  Some of these models have already been purchased by our employees for their own wear, but for those that we still have, we are going to start auctioning them off.  The auctions will be held on our message boards under the "Buy, Sell, Trade, Auction" forum.  Only registered message board users are allowed to bid, and you can bid by simply posting the amount you want to pay as a post on the auction thread...obviously, you must post an amount higher than the previous poster.  Highest bidder will win at the close of the auction period, and we'll email you a private link to allow you to purchase that item at the designated price.  Note that for auction items, ALL SALES ARE FINAL.  For items with an Asha, the standard Asha warranty does apply since they are new.

That said, our first item for auction is the photo model for our .25ctw natural diamond heart pendant.  Normally sold at $350, we'll start the bidding for the photo model at $185, and the auction will close this Friday, Sept. 5th at 12PM PST.  Details of this item are at our heart pendant page here, and our auction thread is here!

3.25ctw natural diamond heart pendant - this very one (the photo model) now in auction.

Friday, August 29th:  Sold out of H color, 2ct Flanders!: We've sold out of another size of the H color Asha, and it may be a bit before we can get this cut restocked.  Please note that the H color intro pricing will end today at 5PM PST.

*Expected shortage of Asha's over the next 2 - 3 months:  We have greatly expanded our wholesale business (i.e. where we supply the Asha to other jewelry chains) and while we have not completed the tentative business deal with the US chain, we are currently now selling 50% of our stones to other jewelry resellers (vs. wholesale being less than 10% of our business at the beginning of this year).  As a result we expect that we may end up sold out of a number of different Asha cuts over the next few months as these jewelers get ready for the Christmas season, and there will be longer lag times between selling out and having them restocked.  This is in part because we can only produce a certain amount of Asha's per month, and the wholesale orders tend to be in much larger quantity.  So, we are currently slowly falling behind between production and keeping our stones in stock.  We are working to increase production with our cutters, however, this takes time and we won't sacrifice our quality standards regardless of the amount of orders waiting.  With the Christmas season approaching, we just wanted to give fair warning that we may not have all the Asha's available that we would like over the next few months.  For items that are sold out, you may wish to check our message boards where we have our "Buy, Sell, Trade and Auction" forums as people are sometimes looking to sell their Asha and you may be able to buy a sold out cut there.

Tuesday, August 26th:  H color 3 stone Asha rings!: Based on a number of email requests, we have added the H color stone options for our 3 stone round and 3 stone princess Asha rings to those pages, allowing easy price comparison and purchase.  The intro pricing on the H color Ashas will end August 29th, after which the prices for these rings will be the same as E color rings.

Ultrasonic give-away to celebrate record sales for August!  We are on track to possibly record our biggest single month of gross sales in the history of BTD this month, and as such, we thought it was time to offer another Ultrasonic give-away to celebrate.  The rules for this give-away are the same as before: You must be a registered member of our BTD message boards and have at least one valid post during the month of August under any forum (Asha, Phoenix, Takara, etc).  By valid post, we mean a post that adds to the knowledge, opinions or to an ongoing discussion on the boards.  Thus, "count me in for the giveaway"-type posts won't be considered a valid posting since that contributes nothing to any discussions.  The drawing will be held on Sept. 2nd, and a valid posting must have been made during August, 2003.  We'll announce the winner on Tuesday, Sept. 2nd.  Our ultrasonic page, if you want to see what we are giving away, is here!

3 Phoenix immediately after HPHT de-stressing.  The outer layer has a frosty appearance, which will be removed in polishing to reveal the colorless diamond inside!

Saturday, August 22nd:  VicciLeather news!: While we haven't had much news for our VicciLeather subsidiary, its not because there hasn't been a lot of activity.  We've hired a new designer with over 32 years experienced (a well respected veteran) to take charge of our handbag designs, and have sampled leather from all over the world to find the very best leather for our handbags.  The winner of that selection was one that many industry professionals told us was the best - its the premiere Scandinavian leather made in Norway! 

We're currently underway with our first prototypes for our upcoming Tote handbag.  We had a lot of feedback that our customers wanted a bigger bag, one that would hold everything they needed during the day, and hence we prioritized a Tote style bag as the first one for Ben to design.  We have two body styles, both done in *felt*, not leather (much like first designing a ring in wax, then metal) and would like your feedback as to which you prefer.  We have setup an online poll to let you cast your vote for the winner - details, photos and the poll are at our VicciLeather.com website - just click here to jump to that page!

Our Tote prototypes (very basic prototypes - zippers, pockets, etc. omitted) - help us pick the body style you prefer!

Thursday, August 21st:  Emerald cut Asha's & .35ct Princess Asha back in stock: We're pleased to finally have both Emerald cut Asha's, and our .35ct Princess Asha's back in stock.  The .35cts proved to be very popular for stud earrings (.70ctw) so we've doubled our previous inventory of this size.  

Phoenix news:  We've completed the blocking phase of our first set of diamonds, and now move to the HPHT de-stress phase.  We took a few photos of the diamonds in the blocked phase, as we thought it would be interesting to record via photos their transition from brown rough to finished white diamond.  We'll continue to have more in-depth updates at http://www.PhoenixIce.com

Left: 5.65ct rough, as mined from Brazil, Right: After blocking, on its way to becoming a 2.20+ct H&A round. Next step: HPHT de-stressing to remove the strain that is causing the brownish color!

Thursday, August 14th:  1.18ct H&A round G/SI2 natural diamond for sale: We have finally gotten around to posting our one remaining Tiana diamond for sale.  As you may recall, last year we started cutting natural diamonds as well under our Tiana brand, however, we decided our real focus should be on technologically enhanced or created diamonds instead.  We had kept one around for use as a comparison diamond while testing new Ashas, but its time to offer this beauty for sale.  Appraised at $9200, we are offering it for $5549 - it is a 1.18ct, G/SI2, no fluorescence and comes with Sarin report, appraisal and diamond grading report.  More details on our Tiana diamond page here!  

*Introductory pricing on Asha H colors will end August 29th: We had kept the introductory pricing for longer than originally anticipated but we've gotten caught up and with the first batch of H colors sold out, it's time to end the introductory pricing period.  Thus, after August 29th, H pricing will rise to be the same as the E color Asha pricing.

*Timeless Eternity ring, Timeless Wedding Band, Regalia ring and Men's channel set wedding band will all be discontinued August 29th: We're also streamlining our ring offerings, and based on slow sales of these styles, the above rings and bands will be discontinued after August 29th.

Friday, August 8th:  4 new Takara Synthetic diamonds completed!: We have completed cutting on four new Takara synthetic diamonds.  They have been posted for sale on the www.TakaraDiamonds.com website, and are currently being graded and laser engraved.  
The four completed Takara's are:

Friday, August 1st:  PhoenixIce.com now up and running!: We're pleased to announce that the new home for our Phoenix Diamonds is up and running, and can be viewed at http://PhoenixIce.com.  We're currently awaiting arrival of our first shipment of type IIa rough from Brazil to begin cutting and enhancing, but expect them to be here next week.  Please take a look at the site and any feedback is always appreciated via our message boards!

Platinum prices going up, up and away....:  We noted a few months ago in our latest news that the price of raw platinum had been climbing steadily, and therefore we may have to begin raising prices on our platinum rings.  Since then, Platinum has continued to trend even higher in price.  As a result, the prices on all our platinum rings will have to be correspondingly raised, typically by about $50 - $100 per ring to account for the increased cost of raw material.  Platinum trades in raw form very much like a stock, and as such, we have no idea whether it will continue to climb higher in the future, or drop back down - what we do know is that we pay for the cost of platinum to make our rings based on the open market price for that given day, and that we are now paying significantly more for each gram of platinum than we had to at the beginning of the year.  Platinum spot pricing has gone up over 50% in price over the past 1.5 years. 

For reference (from the NY Mercantile Exchange):  "Platinum is among the world's scarcest metals; new mine production totals approximately only 5 million troy ounces a year. In contrast, gold mine production runs approximately 82 million ounces a year, and silver production is approximately 547 million ounces."

Asha Asscher's, 1.5ct E color's out of stock:  We sold out of Asscher Asha in the 1.5ct size, E color this week.  We'll have more in production, and hope to be able to restock these before the end of August.

Thursday, July 24th:  Takara Synthetic Diamonds have moved to their own website!: We are pleased to announce that the Takara diamonds have grown to the point where they needed their own website - http://www.TakaraDiamonds.com.  We will be doing the same thing with the Phoenix enhanced natural diamonds program, which will move next month to PhoenixIce.com.  Both websites will continue to use the BTD shopping cart engine, which will allow you to buy a stone from one site, and a ring from BTD's site to purchase a completed ring, but this should allow each of these products to have more visibility and information than if they were to stay on the BTD website.  

Speaking of Takara - two new crystals being cut this week! We are currently cutting two new pieces of rough, one of which we expect will make a 1.5ct Premiere (modified Asscher) cut, the other a 1.10ct H&A round - both will probably be Fancy Vivid Yellow in color.  The Premiere and H&A cut have been our best-sellers in our Takara yellows, and so those are the cuts we will be focusing on going forward.   

Phoenix news! We will have our first batch of new IIa diamond rough arriving next week from Brazil, and will begin the cutting and treatment of these diamonds once they arrive.  Based on our buyers observations, we expect to complete a 2-2.5ct H&A round, a 1.5ct H&A round, a 1.0ct H&A round, and a .5ct H&A round as a result of the rough that we have purchased.  We'll have more photos and information coming shortly!

Friday, July 18th:  Branson Ultrasonics now back in stock!: We received our shipment of ultrasonics this afternoon, and are pleased to announce that Branson Ultrasonics are now available for immediate shipping.  Our ultrasonic page is here!

*More Takara Fancy Intense Yellows coming!:  There has been a resurgence in popularity of our Takara synthetic yellows (esp. fancy intense yellows) and since we have now sold all our rounds and Asschers that were over 1ct in size, we are working on cutting a number of new Takara yellows starting on Monday.  We expect to have more 1ct+ size yellows completing over the next few weeks.  The Takara's will be moving to their own website in the near future as well, in order to give them their own home in cyberspace.  More updates to come!

Thursday, July 17th, PM update:  Correction: Emerald cut Ashas are *not* back in stock!: We're sorry to announce that our QA has found a problem with the Asha Emeralds this afternoon, so our announcement about them being available was premature.  We've encountered the same problem that ruined our production two months ago, so we will have to remake the emerald cuts.  We are going to make the emeralds top priority, and hope to have them in stock within the next two weeks.

Thursday, July 17th, PM update:  Emerald cut Ashas back in stock!: We're pleased to announce that we have restocked all of our Asha emerald cuts, which have proven to be very popular.  They are available at our Asha Emerald page here!

*Phoenix diamonds update!  Our diamond buyer has confirmed that he has purchased two more pieces of rough suitable for the Phoenix program, one is 5.36ct and the other is a 3ct.  The other rough (3.49ct) is expected to be cut into a 1.5ct round, its not clear yet what these new pieces will make out to.  We are currently developing a completely new website for the Phoenix Diamonds, as they are currently a bit lost inside the BTD website....we will announce the new site when it is ready, which will be in about 2-3 weeks!

Tuesday, July 15th:  E Colored Ashas back in stock!: We've also completed a number of E colored Ashas today, such as new E color H&A rounds, 6.5mm Flanders and some princess cuts.  Later this week, we will complete a number of new emerald cuts, so that by the end of the week we will have generally restocked most of our sold out Asha cuts.  

*Natural pink and natural blue diamonds coming:  We also have some 2.8-3mm pinks (both fancy pink, and fancy intense pink) and fancy intense blue diamonds coming in later this week.  We are planning on combining these with some beautiful 3mm whites to form some 3 stone natural earrings (white, pink, white) that will allow you the chance to own some true natural pink diamond jewelry.  We'll have photos of the diamonds later this week, completed earrings available for sale early next week!

Monday, July 14th:  H Colored Asha's back in stock!: We've completed a number of H colored Asha's on Friday, including almost all sizes of H&A rounds, as well as 6.5mm Flanders and 8mm Princess.  We'll be completing more E colored Asha's later this week.  For now, our Asha H&A loose inventory page is here!

Friday, July 11th:  Phoenix Enhanced Natural (HPHT) Diamonds update!We received an update from our diamond buyer in Brazil today - he has been logging some incredible miles driving all over Brazil in search of the cleanest, most perfect type IIa rough available.  So far, we have completed a purchase for a 3.49ct piece of rough, which appears will cut to a finished 1.5ct H&A round, and we have made offers on some 8ct, 6ct, and 4ct pieces of rough as well.  We will know whether we have purchased those additional pieces in the next few days.  At that point, our buyer will be returning to Seattle so we can begin processing our first runs of Phoenix diamonds using our newly acquired info from our technology buyout, after which he will be returning to Brazil to continue scouring up the ideal rough this program requires. 

We are tentatively planning on moving our Takara synthetics and Phoenix Enhanced Naturals to their own website in the next few months, in order to provide these excellent diamonds with their own cyberspace home rather than being a bit buried within the BTD website itself.  

Also, please note that until we complete our first runs of Phoenix diamonds, we won't even know our own cost to produce these, and hence are not able to offer pricing information on the finished diamonds until August, when we expect to complete them.  We are planning to photo the rough as it transforms from brown rough to clear white finished diamonds, so stay tuned for more updates and photos!

3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 4