Blogs

Hi, I'm Joel Schechter the CEO of Honora. Welcome to our blog, where we will update you on our trips to China, new idea and products, happenings at QVC, and industry news from the pearl markets. I'll be writing this blog along with HONORA's President Ralph Rossini who runs the business with me these days. We travel to China together, go on air for QVC (Ralph does QVC in London as well as some US QVC appearances), manage the business day to day and plot the direction of HONORA for the future.


Honora is 62 year old family business, now going into our third generation. A lot of people ask about our history, and how all this got started. Well it was my father Stanley who first began traveling the globe as a young man in early thirties, searching for pearls and stones from different corners of the earth. He and his partner Jerome Grossbardt built a reputation for excellence that we still strive to maintain a half a century later. In my teens and twenties I traveled with my Dad to Thailand, India, China, Japan and other exotic gem centers, acquiring his love of foreign cultures, gemstones, mining and pearl farming. We both loved the stones, the pearls, the people, and the hunt for new and exciting gem finds. By the early 1990's we were focusing our business on what we felt was the future of the pearl business----Chinese freshwater cultured pearls. Of all the gemstones I had ever worked with, I found more value and excitement in these pearls than any other product I had come in contact with. By 1997 we met with QVC, and the rest is history. QVC was the perfect place to explain these incredible gems, and the high quality coming out of China was just gobbled up by savvy QVC shoppers.


12 Years later we are still focusing on that top few percent of the harvest, believing the price/value ratio is superb there. That first HONORA show seems like a long time ago---but we still get just as excited today about doing them. The pearls have continued to get larger, better and more affordable. There's something new every time. So we just keep concentrating on new ways to design with them It's fun, and really rewarding. I'm a lucky guy, because I get to do something every day that I love to do. That's the best lesson my Dad taught me. Don't do it if you don't love it.


I hope you enjoy reading about us, and we look forward to your questions and comments about the business.


Joel