The late pop artist and passionate jewelry collector Andy Warhol known as the Bulgari jewellery boutique on Rome’s Through Condotti “the most significant museum of modern art.” If Warhol was nevertheless alive and browsing now, he could describe TWISTonline.com as the most world’s most vital free of charge-standing jewellery merchants and site. With boutiques in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington, moreover a web-site that attributes 120 impartial designers from all around the environment, TWIST provides three incomparable destinations for sourcing constrained version and 1-of-a-form jewels.

What is much more, Warhol may possibly also flip his silver wig around the site’s 53 jewellery movies (produced by Sasha Schneider, the daughter of TWIST co-founders Paul Schneider and Lauren Eulau.) These movies existing jewels and their designers in kinetic, persuasive strategies that still images and copywriting can never ever realize. Documenting studio visits, jewellery-building procedures and highlighting the enthusiasm guiding designers’ aesthetic aspirations, TWISTonline video clips provide to life different features of the artwork, craft and enterprise of fantastic jewelry. According to Paul Schneider, “My wife Lauren Eulau is a weaver, and I’m a potter. We have been in enterprise for 40 yrs with the similar ambitions: to existing an artfully curated choice of fantastic jewelry that’s also wearable art, to purchase jewelry outright from designers instead than engage them in financially unsure consignment specials, and to delight our buyers with lovely and unusual jewels. Although our merchants are the bedrock of our business enterprise and we generally provide a few generations of persons in the similar spouse and children,” he carries on, “we launched our internet site in 1999 and debuted our e-commerce site to functionality as a 3rd retail store in 2005.”

And what a trifecta TWIST is: although there are above 11,000 merchandise on the net web-site and in the two boutiques, all jewels posted on the internet are truly in stock at TWIST, rather than drop shipped by e-tailers from distant, uncommunicative warehouses. Even though the TWIST stores and on line boutique offer you alternatives from $40.00 Julie Rofman beaded bracelets to goods in the tightly curated stylistically diverse $250.00 and underneath section, all branches are quite much luxury jewelry shops. For illustration, the site’s expansive engagement and wedding ceremony jewelry collection involves creative takes on vintage diamond solitaire rings, alternative engagement rings readily available in champagne and darker diamonds as properly as colorless ones, in addition coloured gemstone engagement rings. (These range from $515 for a Sofia Zakia 14-karat gold and colorless diamond Antlia ring to a Johnny Ninos sustainably mined, Montana blue sapphire and diamond engagement ring established in 18-karat gold. Centered with an asymmetrical untreated and muted blue sapphire that was ethically sourced from a Montana mine, this $3,800 ring is the type of vanguard jewel that TWIST and TWISTonline have been selling for years just before “sustainability” grew to become a luxury marketing and advertising buzzword.

An unusually varied choice of engagement rings priced at $5,000 and up rounds out this realm, and, Schneider notes, “TWISTonline consumer assistance staff members are available to answer inquiries and function with you to uncover the best engagement ring and/or marriage bands.” (Wedding ceremony bands in a variety of kinds and treasured metals round out the nuptial jewelry menu.) At the time of publication, the most high-priced jewel on TWISTonline was an engagement ring offering for $40,880. Built by Cathy Waterman, the 2.01 carat, cushion-slice champagne diamond and platinum marquise leaf ring embodies the sleek strains of an antique. Centered with a sizeable cushion slice, champagne diamond relatively than a colorless round brilliant, this platinum jewel makes a persuasive visual impact and also capabilities .28 total carat excess weight of marquise minimize diamonds.

“Our purchasing staff gets 2,000 submissions a calendar year,” Schneider explains. “Although we are unable to carry all of the designers that we would like to, we compensate by commonly refreshing our two boutiques and TWISTonline.com with new pieces that are unavailable elsewhere,” he adds. While Schneider’s way too modest to say so, TWISTonline’s selection of distinctive items from French, British, Italian and US luxurious designers these as Marie-Hélène de Taillac, Pippa Little, Cathy Waterman, Francesca Villa, Mallary Marks and Judy Geib helps make it a digital United Nations of jewelry. Even though TWIST designers benefit from compelling, inherently beneficial, repurposed or from time to time semi-important or other observed products in sophisticated approaches, prevalent threads running by way of TWIST jewellery choices contain in advance-of-the-tendencies sorts and concepts, an exuberant colour feeling, progressive use of materials in addition artisanal finesse.

TWIST’s five-member site team will work to supply visitors with an straightforward-to-navigate experience that’s supported by responsive purchaser support. “While on the web income are predicted to improve for luxury jewelry in coming several years as gross sales gaps in between jewelry web-sites and brick-and-mortar merchants continue on to slim,” Schneider studies, “our physical boutiques continue to be the foundation of what we do.” And however TWISTonline has confirmed to be a dynamic buyer-company tool for jewellery lovers in Seattle and Portland. “Our local customers generally pre-store on the web-site and get in touch with forward to ask us to be sure to pull items they’re intrigued in,” Schneider states. “Surprisingly, our site has aided us develop more robust bonds and profits with the shoppers we deal with deal with-to-confront, and this is primarily legitimate with millennials.” 5 total-time personnel are demanded to keep the digital realm of TWIST alive and present, as the sheer selection of jewels provided and TWIST’s encyclopedic contents often modify and will need to be up-to-date.

According to London-dependent jewellery rep Valery Demure, who also operates the Marylebone jewellery gallery Objet d’Emotion, “The excellent of TWIST’s in–store and on the web assortment, the web page videos and other material, combined with their customer services, sets them aside from other actual physical or electronic retailers. I think,” she theorizes, “that quite a few of their shoppers grow to be repeat purchasers mainly because their bodily stores and TWISTonline do extra than current attractive jewels. When Paul and Lauren have normally related personally with their buyers especially with ladies, they have also been building mutually beneficial relationships with designers and prospects for many years.” When this author ventures that the content material, layout and experience of searching on TWISTonline makes the shopper truly feel appreciated as a human, alternatively than qualified as a consumer, Demure responds, “TWIST puts the magic back into searching for jewellery, and men and women feel that magic when they pay a visit to the web page or move into the shops.”

Intriguingly, people to the retailers can mediate in between QR codes on their phones and jewels within showcases to link with the site’s videos about designers. The bodily and digital practical experience will become “phygital” as the customer tries on jewelry in the retail outlet and then watches a video clip about a designer and their respective creations on their cellular telephone. As Schneider relates, “We begun catering to women self-purchasers very well ahead of quite a few conventional jewellery suppliers and luxurious vendors recognized that this demographic is a sizeable and continually expanding neighborhood.” For illustration, the TWIST site caters to females shoppers’ certain passions by giving curated selections with headings like “Upgrade Him”. Then there are headings where site visitors can locate jewelry suited for a person of the four seasons, or shop for jewels made up of the birthstone of the month. Milestone-targeted headings like “She’s Graduating” or “Everything but the Ring” also aid customers concentration their search for personal purchases or jewels intended as presents.

Two vital elements that condition TWISTonline’s holistic solution to working a dynamic and development-location jewelry organization are the creative sensibilities and enterprise activities of Schneider and Eulau. “Both Lauren and I have a deep being familiar with of the professional and personalized challenges faced by artists who provide their creations for a dwelling. We commit totally to them,” he points out, “by getting jewels outright relatively than having them on consignment. We feel that this is the only sustainable enterprise product for designers and retailers.” TWIST’s business enterprise product contrasts with the typical tactics of luxury vendors like Bergdorf Goodman, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom, which usually just take jewelry only on consignment. This imbalanced ability dynamic partially describes why many independent jewellery designers knowledge perpetual fiscal uncertainty, and why designers rejoice at the possibility to function with TWIST. As Schneider relates, “Some of the jewelers we signify, these as Cathy Waterman, Judy Geib and 10,000 Items, have been with us for in excess of two many years.”

Because TWIST offers specific jewels at 50 % off in the course of its once-a-year Portland in-retail outlet sale every March, Schneider observes, “We usually deal with to make great on our financial investment in designers.” The yearly sale lasts nine times and is legendary for wonderful reductions on luxury artisanal jewelry, and its festive environment, which consists of complimentary cookies. “People start lining up in the early morning hrs in advance of the very first day of the sale,” Schneider relates. “Every 12 months, I bake 600 cookies which are handed out to consumers as they wait around on-line to gain entry into our store,” he suggests with a giggle. “We ought to handle customer movement for the sanity of our personnel, and for security causes.”

The jewelry field has regarded TWIST for its amazing dedication to jewelry designers, influential contributions to the fantastic jewellery business and ongoing business improvements. In 2018, TWIST received the Cindy Edelstein Award from the luxury jewelry trade demonstrate COUTURE Las Vegas. This award, named for the late jewellery brand name specialist Cindy Edelstein, honors outstanding resourceful commitment to the jewelry business by way of strong guidance of designers, enterprising merchandising and moral small business techniques.

In 2020, Jewelers of America, a top U.S.-dependent non-income jewelry association, honored TWIST at its annual Gem Awards with its Retail Innovation Award. Recognizing TWIST’s creative approaches in brick-and-mortar enterprise and its e-commerce successes, this award underscored how TWIST leverages digital technologies to thrive in a brutally competitive marketplace. Accepting the honor, Schneider credited his spouse, Lauren Eulau, for her creative judgment and visionary enterprise procedures. A lot more a short while ago, in June 2022, National Jeweler journal named Schneider and Eulau as inductees into the multi-keep unbiased division of its Retailer Hall of Fame. This once-a-year honor acknowledges jewelers who are creating important contributions to their communities, and to the jewelry field. “TWISTonline delivers the form of aesthetic, psychological and psychic ordeals of jewelry that fulfill jewellery lovers who are ill of bland, so-termed luxury jewels and empty advertising campaigns,” says Demure. While the increase in need for accredited sustainable jewellery and gender-fluid jewelry are two vital elements powering development in the on line market for luxury jewellery, so are the different psycho-social meanings and applications of jewellery.

“Whether you connect with it wonderful jewellery or luxury jewelry, its personalized importance transcends its style and design components, materials values and complex refinement,” claims Schneider. “Jewelry is both equally an art kind and a auto for self-expression. We check out to express that in all the things we present in TWISTonline, and in our physical merchants.”