Game of Stones
By Joe Lovinger
The pandemic rattled New York’s diamond mecca, and in the process opened the long-stagnant district to radical change.
Nothing arouses a jewelry salesman quite like the sight of naked fingers. To walk down West 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, the Diamond District, is to be constantly flagged down and cajoled by such salespeople. All it takes is one slip-up — spending a few too many seconds looking at a ring in a window, walking at too uncertain a pace, glancing down at an unadorned wrist or digit — and a roving salesperson appears. Some of them work just for one store, while others are independent. These scouts can rifle through mental inventories of the estimated 2,600 jewelers on the block, guiding each buyer to the right seller with the right stone.
It’s a time-honored process that has worked well for the Diamond District since the 1920s, when diamond dealers, who had been priced out of the city’s downtown jewelry bazaar on Maiden Lane by growing financial institutions, fled for more manageable rents. The Diamond District continued to grow, and, in the 1930s and 40s, Orthodox Jewish diamond merchants in Europe fleeing the Nazis packed their wares and set up shop on 47th Street as well. By the end of the war, the Diamond District was the strange, bustling bazaar it is today. But lately, the system has been put to the test, as has the rest of the global diamond business. The trade was already off balance before the coronavirus came along to all but topple it, possibly taking the District along with it.
The Diamond District is designed incredibly poorly for a pandemic. Its thousands of offices and booths wind through labyrinthine hallways without natural light, let alone fresh air. Inside these cramped quarters, highly tactile negotiations take place. Jewelers and buyers pass diamonds back and forth, lean close to each other to examine gems through magnifying loups, and, if all goes well, shake hands and say mazel und broche, Yiddish for “good luck and blessing.” These conversations involve mostly elderly shop owners and, often, the mediation of a buyer’s older relative, who has purchased gems from the dealer before. It’s an emotional trade, one in which the seller needs to read the facial cues of the buyer, which can be hard to see when hidden behind a mask. And this same process needs to repeat with hundreds and thousands of customers every day. During the pandemic, foot traffic has nosedived while some landlords refuse to budge on rent. The small family shops that used to fill the Diamond District’s exchanges and windows are starting to vanish — some for smaller offices upstairs as they focus exclusively on repeat customers and no longer need walk-ins, the less fortunate gone for good. Meanwhile, larger retailers and online upstarts continue to chip away at what few customers remain, and a luxury real estate baron quietly buys up land at a rapid pace, with plans only he knows in full. As these forces carve up the old Diamond District, what will remain of the original when the dust settles?
A diamond does not become a $15,000 heirloom representing eternal love and commitment overnight. Before that, it’s just a prehistoric rock in the ground in Siberia or Botswana. The journey between those two points is even longer than it sounds. Before a diamond so much as reaches 47th Street, it will have already been to as many as three countries on as many continents. After being mined in Asia or Africa or Australia, it moves through the bourses of Tel Aviv, Mumbai, or Antwerp. After a cut and polish, it finally makes its way to New York, where the sale can begin.
While there are some smaller operations across the world, the majority of diamonds come from Russia, Canada, and Botswana, according to data collected by Bain & Company, global consulting firm that produces annual reports on the diamond industry. This top end of the diamond chain is made up of a handful of major mining companies, namely Alrosa, De Beers, and Rio Tinto. By extracting so-called “rough diamonds,” meaning the uncut and unpolished rocks, these companies enjoy the highest profit margins of anyone in the diamond business. But they also play a dangerous game.
Take Rio Tinto: despite a market cap of more than $80 billion, the company’s entire diamond production depends on just two mines — one in Australia, another in Canada — and, this autumn, as extraction costs rose and diamonds became less plentiful at the Australian mine, the company was forced to close it altogether. While Rio Tinto extracts other valuable metals, the sudden decline of a once-lucrative mine shows just how thin a line producers walk. They live and die by their ability to perform incredibly costly extraction processes of a finite resource. When one pit dries up, they need to find a new one. By 2019, most producers had serious cause for concern. Some, like Alrosa, which controls most diamond production in Russia, experienced an uptick in production. Those that do not enjoy a near-monopoly on an entire diamond-rich region, as Alrosa does in the Russian tundra, performed markedly worse. After a total freeze of production at the onset of the pandemic, mid-stream buyers, who normally take just about any price producers offer, have remained sheepish. Meanwhile, supply woes have remained as existing mines are depleted. Global rough diamond production dropped seven percent year over year in 2019, while imports of rough diamonds plummeted 23 percent.
Adding to concerns for those at the top of the diamond production chain was a growth in consumer demand for lab-grown diamonds. These stones, which can retail for less than half the price of an equivalent natural diamond, also satisfy consumers unhappy with the environmental and political consequences of natural diamond production. Diamond producers faced dwindling supply, soft demand, and the costly specter of finding new sources for gems, all while new competitors with a scientific and environmental edge threatened the predominance of natural diamonds. And that was before the word “pandemic” entered the everyday lexicon.
Producers’ problems rippled down the supply chain, severely curtailing opportunities for the next link, diamond polishers. The problem with rough diamonds is that they look like ice cubes rolled in dirt — to fix this, most rough diamonds take a trip to the polishing centers of Surat, India, where roughly nine in ten diamonds are polished and whittled down into the shapes most buyers expect from diamond jewelry. Chinese polishing centers are gaining ground, picking up some business from Surat, while Israeli polishers specialize in more technically challenging cuts. Of all the players in the diamond trade, these mid-level businesses had the toughest outlook coming into 2020. Many cutters and polishers failed to break even in 2018, with even worse outlooks for the future, as sales of polished diamonds fell and were projected to continue falling. Funding from specialized banks that normally provide funding to mid-level buyers and middlemen began to dry up in 2018.
And then, of course, there were the retailers, many of whom operate out of 47th Street. The United States remains the world’s largest market for diamond jewelry, and more than 90% of country’s diamonds move through the District. In 2019, demand for diamond jewelry was soft in the United States and China, the world’s two largest markets. Continued geopolitical turmoil and international trade hijinks between these world superpowers lowered consumer confidence, decreasing luxury spending and holding revenue for luxury sellers roughly level since 2015. Meanwhile, online jewelry retailers like Blue Nile and James Allen made modest but meaningful inroads as e-commerce jumped from around 5 percent to as much as 13 percent of diamond jewelry sales in the United States. While legacy operations stagnated, online upstarts grew.
For the thousands of miles that separate each link of the diamond production chain, they are intimately connected, each dependent on and sensitive to economic changes in the other. A drop in the yield in a diamond mine in rural Australia can alter the bottom line of a jewelry dealer in Manhattan. So when a pandemic upended life, work, and transportation in every nation in the world, the chain was already under immense strain. Then it broke.
“We’re coming back, baby. The world is not over,” Martin Rapaport said on September 24, 2020, after laying out a pretty convincing case that the world, at least as it pertains to diamond dealers, was indeed coming to an end.
Rapaport is the founder of the Rapaport Diamond Network, a sort of Moody’s-for-diamonds that provides a gem price index. A former jeweler on 47th Street himself, Rapaport drew scorn from the industry when he founded the network, which introduced a shred of transparency to an intentionally opaque trade. Nevertheless, the group now employs 200 employees in nine offices across six countries, as Rapaport was happy to remind the virtual audience at the start of his presentation to diamond buyers and dealers across the world.
Rapaport, sporting his signature red bow tie and circular, tortoiseshell glasses, looked professorial in front of his floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. While he tried to remain positive, Rapaport did not mince words. “Shortages are keeping the market up today” he said, meaning the only thing keeping prices out of the gutter was that so few were available.
At the start of the pandemic, Rapaport said, ninety-three percent of the world’s diamond mines and cutting centers completely shut down. This year, rough diamond sales are down $4 billion. In June, Alrosa, the Russian diamond producer that accounts for roughly 95% of rough diamonds extracted from the country, was forced to shut down mining operations in Siberia after a string of COVID cases among workers. Similar production troubles afflicted De Beers operations in Botswana and Namibia, lowering the company’s production year over year by over 50% in the second quarter of 2020. In March, Petra Diamonds, another top producer, closed mines in South Africa and halted its 2020 production target. In November, Debswana, a mining company owned in equal parts by De Beers and the Botswana government, announced it would close one of its mines for three years due to a lack of demand for rough diamonds.
The rest of the links shook in response. Surat, the city in India that dominates diamond cutting and polishing, was forced to shutter operations in the spring as the pandemic spread throughout the country and workers returned home to avoid contamination. So far, the country has exported 61% fewer diamonds this year than last.
In August, De Beers lowered its diamond prices by almost 10% after sales by De Beers and Alrosa fell from $2.1 billion to $130 million in just a year. Rapaport lowered its estimated prices on the RapNet index as well, unleashing anger from stressed diamond dealers who were confident demand would return, even though it has fallen by $6 billion from this time last year. Now, as the pandemic spreads yet again across the United States and Europe, and people focus more on securing essentials than luxuries, dealers are left wondering when, if ever, things will return to normal.
Alex Aivadyan had no intentions of joining the family business. She attended the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, and has dabbled in jobs across industries, including marketing and fashion. But, like many young adults during the pandemic, she has found herself spending more time with her parents than she expected. Her father started Raffi Fine Jewelry in the Diamond District 47 years ago, and for decades provided both standard and custom pieces to customers on 47th Street. Like many longtime jewelers, Aivadyan has developed a Rolodex of frequent customers who have come back to him for decades.
Alex talks about the diamond trade like an unfortunate cousin with whom she had been forced to sit at family functions. And while her focus veers from one subject to the next without warning, her understanding of the industry is apparent, as if she had absorbed the information by simply living with her father as a child. When the pandemic forced her father to halt operations at his storefront in the Diamond District, she felt compelled to help. Her father asked that she help develop a web presence for the company so that it could continue some form of operations, despite the loss of the salesroom it had used for decades.
Raffi Fine Jewelry was not the only store to shutter. While some landlords on 47th Street worked with their tenants to either freeze or lower rents, many held firm as they feared dried revenue streams of their own. Suddenly, display windows swapped priceless jewels for “For Rent” signs. There was a waiting list for booths before the pandemic, said one member of the 47th Street Business Improvement District who preferred to remain unnamed. Now, though, up and down the Diamond District, windows still lay barren.
Businesses that had remained largely the same for half a century suddenly scrambled to cobble together websites where they could attempt to sell what inventory they did have. Aivadyan helped her father build a rudimentary website and Instagram page for Raffi Fine Jewelry, where she posts a small amount of their inventory. Most sales come from repeat customers whose wealth has actually grown during the pandemic. Such customers contact a favorite shop by phone or by email, and jewelers like Aivadyan who have an intimate understanding of longtime customers’ tastes can send a few pieces to the buyer, who then selects what he or she likes and returns the rest. These arrangements only work if there is an extensive history of trust and mutual cooperation between the buyer and seller. “People that haven’t lost a lot, that have actually increased their wealth, that were wealthy to begin with, they’re buying fancy diamonds,” said Aivadyan. “They’re buying $125,000 diamonds. We’ve sold a few of those crazy pieces.”
But many retailers who are newer to the Diamond District have not had the chance to build a base of wealthy repeat customers. They rely more on tourists, walk-ins, and theatergoers from nearby Broadway. These customers generally purchase smaller pieces, requiring a higher volume of sales to meet rent payments, which can reach as high as $30,000 a month for prime street-level storefronts. “Anyone who opened in the last five years is in big trouble,” said the member of the BID. He estimated that the Diamond District has lost 200 to 300 businesses over the last six months, although neither the city nor the BID has collected comprehensive data on store closures. There is a similar lack of data on foot traffic in the District, but conversations with multiple street level salesmen suggest that far fewer people walk down the block on a given day. Of particular concern is Broadway, where shows have been cancelled since March 12 and will stay dark through at least May 30, 2021. Strict travel restrictions from foreign governments and the United States have restricted a second core base of street-level customers: Chinese tourists. As the critical holiday season approaches, 2020 has proven to be a bad year for the diamond industry — the only question is just how catastrophically bad it will be. Despite jewelers hopes for a turnaround holiday season, there is no magic rebound just around the corner. As the Diamond District sits in wait, newcomers are busy changing the game from the outside.
Wing Yau is not like other jewelers. She would be the first to tell you that. Born in South America, Yau grew up around the copper and zinc mines where her father worked. She carries this personal experience, and the natural skepticism towards extractive businesses it engendered in her, into her business philosophy. Where 47th Street is largely white, male, and Jewish, Yau is none of these things. While traditional dealers’ first, second, and third concerns are making a profit, Yau came into the jewelry world with a background in sculpture, not business. “I had to admit to myself that I was selling stuff,” said Yau. The most significant difference between Yau and her old-school competitors, though, isn’t biographical: Yau’s jewelry business, WWAKE, doesn’t have a storefront. It never has, and likely won’t, at least for the foreseeable future.
Yau graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design straight into the Great Recession. She studied sculpture in school, and bounced around between unpaid internships in the art world with little success in climbing the ladder. As she describes it, she “fell into” WWAKE after experimenting with necklaces as a way of reassessing her relationship with art. Yau started WWAKE in 2012 as a plainly different kind of jewelry business.
Yau keeps 47th Street at an arm’s length. She acknowledges that her business requires some level of collaboration with the Diamond District, particularly when it comes to the manufacturing processes and equipment centered there. “I personally love those connections, but I also have resisted falling into it because it’s like a really old, cis, white, male industry. I wasn’t even welcomed when I first started. So why join it now?”
Much of what makes WWAKE unique is centered on the fresh perspective Yau brings to the business. As a digitally native brand, WWAKE has had a clean, functional website for years, while traditional diamond dealers are just now filling in Squarespace templates. WWAKE’s Instagram account, which is the company’s primary way of reaching customers, looks, reads, and posts like a friend, not a business. The account’s bio makes no reference to jewelry — instead, it reads “otherworldly, intimate — the connection between you & the earth.” In one recent Instagram story, the text “PEARL CLOUDBURSTS JUST FINISHED♥️” floats over a grainy, zoomed-in video of a pair of completed necklaces. The posts favor amateur videos of finished pieces and shots from the studio, breaking down the often-opaque barrier between buyer and seller on 47th Street. “WWAKE has always had this approach where we’re trying as much as possible to give a human voice to the brand. I’ve seen a lot of brands struggle in trying to find that voice for the first time this year,” Yau said.
These very qualities that set it apart from the competition are also what allowed WWAKE to survive the pandemic largely unchanged. “We never had to shut down because I have a really flexible team and we moved everyone home right away,” said Yau. With the online sales infrastructure already live and polished, the only potential operational issue was on the production side, given the expensive machinery required to cut and set gems. But, given WWAKE’s strong connection to the art world, many of WWAKE’s in-house jewelers had home studios where they continue their work to this day.
While WWAKE’s business structure is different from 47th Street, so too is their typical consumer. “Our core customer is between 25 and 35, and they’re a little bit more fashion conscious. So they’re buying jewelry usually as a future heirloom, but it’s usually smaller, like under $1,000, as a way of adding to their collection. And those customers usually grow into bridal customers and come back to us for an engagement or a wedding ring.” While they are building relationships that will potentially blossom into long-term interactions like Aivadyan’s, they are not reliant on those customers to stay alive.
Since quarantine took effect, WWAKE has shifted largely to a made-to-order model. With no overhead cost from retail locations, WWAKE has been able to avoid much of the headaches of jewelers in the Diamond District.
The digital diamond dealers are not just stretching the conventional approaches to designing and selling jewelry — some don’t even sell jewelry at all. Rare Carat, founded by Ajay Anand in 2016, has not sold a single diamond in its five years. Instead, Anand founded Rare Carat to address the discomfort he felt while shopping for his wife’s engagement ring. He went into the buying process like many men buying their first piece of diamond jewelry, knowing little about diamond jewelry. “I remember Googling things like ‘Kayak for diamonds,’ ‘diamond price estimator tool,’ stuff that is so common when you’re buying a car, a home, or other stuff that is going to cost a lot of money,” he said. His searches came up empty.
For decades, the diamond wedding ring was a benchmark in American life, an assertion of consuming power and the mark of full adulthood. However, since 1948, when De Beers entered the marketing slogan “A Diamond is Forever” into the mind of the American consumer, marriage is no longer the stepping stone it once was. Only around half of American adults get married, down from nearly three in four in 1960. Those Americans who still do choose to tie the knot are doing so later in life. Such a couple may already rent an apartment or share a home. They could own pets or be raising children. A ring is no longer the indispensable entry ticket into adulthood. Today’s diamond buyers are older, more experienced consumers. They shop online and hunt for deals. The Diamond District simply is not built for them. Rare Carat aims to change that.
Rare Carat is built around its AI-assisted price report. The company’s algorithm reads in a diamond’s GIA report card, which grades the stone in a number of categories, including the famous four c’s — color, clarity, cut, and carat. Using the metrics assigned to the stone by the GIA’s gemologists, Rare Carat’s algorithm generates what it deems a fair price for the diamond. Rare Carat also offers a service where it connects buyers with small retailers, some of whom own shops on 47th Street. Rare Carat reports are free, and the company collects a fee from retailers every time a user clicks on a diamond.
Recently, Rare Carat has implemented several offerings to mitigate the unease many customers feel about purchasing a diamond without ever seeing it in person. For one, it puts up the money for a money-back guarantee, removing risk from both buyer and seller. “We make that connection that never would have happened, and then we stand in the middle as a third party with a money-back guarantee, creating the trust and safety that it takes for somebody to fork over five or ten thousand dollars over the internet,” said Anand. And if the buyer still wants to see the diamond before taking the plunge? Rare Carat now has a number of local showrooms where buyers and sellers can meet to examine the diamond before completing the purchase.
Tom Moses, the Executive Vice President and Chief Research & Laboratory Officer of the GIA, has doubts about whether services like Rare Carat will ever fully convert diamond buying into an online-first business. “Digital engagement is growing, but still, a lot of people, especially with something that’s a little more expensive, want to go and touch it and see it and feel it and talk to someone,” said Moses. Even as companies implement more advanced technologies to simulate the in-store buying experience, like AR and VR simulators, Moses believes that diamond rings are uniquely fickle. “When one thinks of bridal purchases or special occasion purchases, I think brick and mortar will still have a place.”
And Anand himself does not necessarily disagree. “Diamond jewelry is very laggy in terms of online penetration as far as categories go. And I still think that’ll be the case for quite some time,” he said.
Prior to the pandemic, Olya Linde, the author of Bain’s Global Diamond Report, expected online purchases to account for roughly 10–15% of all retail diamond jewelry purchases. Now that the world has been pushed inside and is shopping increasingly from behind screens, however, Linde posits that number could jump as high as 30% by the end of the year. For an industry that has relied for centuries on close personal relationships and intimate dealings, diamond jewelry is leaning into less personal practices in the wake of COVID.
Others take issue with the very mission of Rare Carat and other price estimation tools. In Yau’s opinion, employees of WWAKE spend all their time thinking about jewelry. They deserve to make a living on their work, even if it means that the consumer has to pay a bit more than the stone is inherently worth according to an algorithm.
Yau also thinks price estimators like Rare Carat fail to factor in intangibles, like the fair-trade practices and ethical mining agreements that WWAKE incorporates in all of its gem sourcing. “There’s always going to be room for someone who is going to give you bang for your buck, but we need to change our approach to consumerism in the first place, and not always be looking for the cheapest, the best deal out there, because that’s not what fine jewelry means to people in the first place.”
As the Diamond District recovers from COVID, jewelers will need to incorporate the facets of digital sales that have made WWAKE and Rare Carat so successful during the pandemic. They may reclaim their storefronts, but their businesses can no longer exist entirely offline. “I don’t think it will ever go back to just brick and mortar. The companies that can offer a seamless experience — that’s the future,” said Linde, the diamond report author from Bain. The Diamond District will not disappear, but part of it will become digital. Those who can merge their in-person and online shopping experiences will come away from the pandemic stronger than before. But many jewelers are struggling to adapt.
The Diamond District is shrinking. As unprepared shops fall by the wayside during the pandemic, those that survive will want to consolidate their presence, refining the network of tunnels and storefronts into something less expansive. The shops might all move to the Sixth Avenue side of West 47th Street, said the member of the BID. Linde agrees that once stores make the transition to digital sales, many will probably never return. Mom and pop shops may cede their storefronts, as did Raffi Fine Jewelry, and focus on custom pieces for longtime customers. The block’s anachronistic strangeness, the uncontainable energy that animates its every square foot, will feel less enveloping.
While it may feel different, the Diamond District will not fall into disrepair. Instead, one real estate developer, who used to work in the diamond trade himself, intends to give it a new cut and polish. According to public real estate records, Gary Barnett’s Extell Development Corporation has acquired more than one million square feet of space in the Diamond District, giving him enormous sway over a neighborhood that is just one city block long. Through a combination of direct purchases, purchases by affiliated LLCs, and easement agreements that grant construction rights, Extell now has control over at least three major plots of land in the District.
Extell has only actually developed one such plot so far, but the development shows the company’s priorities for the Diamond District. The International Gem Tower, completed in 2013, is a stark departure from the prevailing architectural motif of the block. Located directly in the middle of the Dimond District at 50 West 47th Street, the IGT’s 34-story, angular glass facade looms high above the squat brick buildings around it. The IGT’s website declares “The Future is Here” in modern typeface over a shot of the tower’s sharp exterior. Further down on the site, Extell prominently features a quote from an article in the New York Post that says the tower is “making the dusty block precious again.” The tower is designated a foreign-trade zone by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, easing tax on sales to international entities, thus shifting the focus of the Diamond District from its immediate block to the world at large.
Extell’s portfolio is full of similar jewels. The company has two skyscrapers on Billionaire’s Row, arguably the most exclusive stretch of residential buildings in Manhattan. One of the towers, One57, has more than 130 luxury residences. The other, Central Park Tower, extends the length of five football fields into the sky and will contain “the most exclusive homes in the world,” according to Extell’s website.
Directly facing the IGT, Extell owns another stretch of buildings, including 25 West 47th Street and 32 West 48th Street. On this plot, which connects 47th Street to 48th Street, the company plans to build a hotel. On Extell’s virtual portfolio, the majority of the company’s current hotel portfolio listings mention the properties’ luxury and exclusivity. The holdings include two Four Seasons resorts and three hotels across New York City. The Diamond District is many things — luxurious is not one of them. While the block’s shops sell luxury goods, the buildings themselves are often old, unimpressive. By all available evidence, Extell plans to change that.
What is the least clear is what Extell plans to do with its third plot of land in the Diamond District. The company received approval from the city to demolish four properties in the District: 2 West 47th, 10 West 47th, 572 Fifth Avenue, and 574 Fifth Avenue. Two of the properties — 2 and 10 West 47th — currently sit in disrepair, with brown paper covering their windows and graffiti on the doorways.
While these permits were approved more than one year ago, they still have not been executed. Anthony Mannarino and David Rothstein, both executive vice presidents at Extell, are signed onto the demolition permits. Mr. Rothstein chose not to comment when contacted. If the company follows through on the demolitions, they would amount to a major remodeling of the Fifth Avenue side of the Diamond District. Additionally, they would also open up the corner of West 47th and Fifth Avenue to West 46th, expanding the Diamond District to the neighboring block. According to a source with knowledge of the company’s deliberations, Extell is considering “demolishing them to incorporate into a larger development,” but has not ruled out “renovating and leaving them as is.”
For all that is unknown about Extell’s intentions for its extensive holdings in the Diamond District, its track record is clear. While the District may gain international free-trade capabilities and a new coat of paint, the Extell’s developments push it toward a less localized, less personal identity that trades mom and pop shops for big brands with international footprints.
For now, the Diamond District sparkles, even when nobody’s there to see it. Windows still gleam. Eager salesmen find the customers they can. Traffic has ticked up a bit in recent weeks from its mid-year trough, but is still nowhere near its pre-pandemic levels. There is a prevailing weariness on the block, perfumed by a confidence that things are on the upswing. It could have been worse. Yet, it would require willful ignorance to miss the District’s obvious bruises, and the jewelers are anything but ignorant.
Outside of Malidani Jewelry, a salesman sporting a close-cropped beard and denim jacket that reads “HUSTLE HUSTLE HUSTLE” scans the corner of 47th Street and Sixth Avenue for walk-ins. The shop is holding up, he says, but there is only so much it can do without the regular traffic. There are echoes of him up and down the block, dozens of hustlers doing their best to eke out a living, to be one of the survivors. Everyone knows someone whose shop closed in the pandemic. Those who are making it through are haunted by those who have not.
The salesman retrieves his unlit cigarette from the ground, passing time dispensing unsolicited musings about recent protests that he believes are scaring people out of the city. All the time, though, wherever his mind goes, his eyes remain locked on the corner. He waits. And then: he’s gone. A young couple is thinking of buying a ring. Their fingers are naked. The salesman can help with that.
