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10 Things to Know About JCK Las Vegas 2017
From lab-grown diamonds to rocking the Bowl, here are 10 items of note about the upcoming jewelry trade show.
Las Vegas--As of today, there are 12 days to go until Monday, June 5, the first day of JCK Las Vegas 2017.
Following previews of both Couture and the new Jewellery Box show, National Jeweler brings readers a list of 10 things to know about the show this year, which runs through Thursday, June 8, at Mandalay Bay.
1. For retailers considering adding man-made (lab-grown) diamonds to their inventory, there’ll be plenty of choices.
They include American Grown Diamonds (Booth #B28185); WD Lab Grown Diamonds (formerly Washington Diamond, Booth #B30190); New Diamond Technology LLC, the Russian company responsible for growing big blue diamonds (Booth #B27185); Pure Grown Diamonds Inc. (formerly Gemesis, Booth #B24183); Altr Created Diamonds, which is a company of the R.A. Riam Group (Booth #B58063); and Chatham, the longtime purveyor of man-made gemstones (PC-110).
With the exception of Chatham, which is in the Plumb Club, and Altr, which is in the Bridal pavilion, all of the aforementioned companies are in the First Look pavilion, which is located on Bayside Level 1. (The “B” before each company’s booth number indicates that they are Bayside.)
The Bridal pavilion is also Bayside Level 1. The Plumb Club is Shorelines, which is Level 2.
2. There’s now an entire “neighborhood” dedicated to security. The Jewelers Security Alliance partnered with the show this year to create an area dedicated to companies that offer services for physical and IT security as well as other concerns, like shipment and payment processing.
“The Security Neighborhood” is Bayside Level 1, right inside the entrance that’s near retailer registration.
3. There’s also an “Experience” area. Retail Experience is a new area of the show floor that houses a total of eight companies: Augmente, Gem Cam, Imagine Advertising and Publishing, Main Street Hub, Miicraft 3D Printer, This Is My South Bay, Trax Sales and Yelp.
They’re not selling jewelry but solutions for e-commerce, customer relationship management (or CRM, strategies and technologies for managing and analyzing customer interactions), social media, merchandising, staffing analysis and online reviews.
The Retail Experience area is on Bayside Level 1, right behind the Security Neighborhood.
4. Augmented reality will play a role. Jewelers Mutual Group is bringing its Holojem machine to the show, an augmented reality platform that can educate about, display and share custom designs and diamonds via holograms. Holojem includes portable mobile pyramids that customers can use to share
Holojem won the 2016 Think Tank award at last year’s JCK Las Vegas show and, this year, Jewelers Mutual is making the machine available to retailers.
In addition, Venus Jewel (Booth #B53017) will be displaying a machine that allows customers to virtually search its inventory and view holograms of its diamonds in both their polished and rough state and also, in some cases, see which mines the stone originated from.
Jewelers Mutual will have Holojem on display at the Holojem Tech booth (#B61086) and its booth in the lobby, #L106, while Venus Jewel’s booth is located in the Diamond Plaza.
5. The layout of the show can been seen online. A PDF of the Disney-like version of the floor plan is available here.
A full listing of exhibitors along with their locations on the floor plan also is available on LasVegas.JCKOnline.comm.
6. There’s an app for this show. It’s available for both Apple and Android devices and includes the full list of exhibitors, an interactive floor plan map that’s actually better than the stagnant map on the website and an event schedule.
7. There will be no rocking the beach this year. The show instead will be rocking the Bowl--Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas, the Sin City offshoot of the popular bowling-alley-on-steroids located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, N.Y.
There won’t be any headlining act at the alley--meaning no Bruno Mars or Maroon 5--but will be more of a networking event with, of course, bowling for those who are so inclined.
Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas is located at 3545 S. Las Vegas Blvd., between the Flamingo and Harrah’s.
8. Water, water (sort of) everywhere. There will be a total of 10 hydration stations, all sponsored by Effy. They’ll be necessary, as they always are in the desert, but the situation won’t be quite as dire as it was last year.
Right now, the Las Vegas forecast for early June calls for highs to be in the mid- to high 90s, a break from last year when the temperature was well over 100 degrees during the shows.
9. JCK Las Vegas is moving back to the Sands Expo and Convention Center in 2019, so this is the next-to-last year at Mandalay Bay. The time is nigh to log those wave pool hours.
10. For now, the various jewelry trade shows that take place that week remain at opposite ends of the Strip. There are, however, complimentary shuttle services.
For the first three days of Couture (Friday, June 2 through Sunday, June 4), there will be shuttles going from Mandalay Bay to the Wynn Las Vegas regularly between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., according to the information posted on the show’s website.
That service, however, ceases when JCK Las Vegas begins on Monday, June 5.
From Couture, the shuttles run from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. for the entirety of the show, departing from an area located near self-parking in the Encore hotel. The only exception is the last day of the show, Tuesday, when the shuttle service will depart from outside the Alsace meeting room at the Wynn and end at 5 p.m.
JCK Las Vegas also runs shuttles to a number of different hotels and to the JIS show taking place at the Tropicana. A full list of shuttle services is available on the show website.
Editor’s note: This story was corrected post-publication to reflect the correct spelling of Jewelers Mutual’s augmented reality display. It is Holojem, not Hologem.
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