JDC: A diamond on North Division - Doug Toone

Spokane North Notes

A weekly bulletin of the Spokane-North Rotary Club

February 3, 2014

Editors: Chuck Rehberg and Sandy Fink

Next week: It’s a field trip Feb. 10 as club members will tour the School District 81 Skills Center near Empire and Market and sample the offerings of its culinary students.  Location and parking directions will be e-mailed this week.

Presidents’ Day: No club meeting on Feb. 17 in observance of the federal holiday.  Meetings at the Red Lion River Inn resume Feb. 24.

Fund-raiser update: Coordinator Jodi Harland said materials will be distributed this week to share with potential corporate sponsors.  Each member is asked to recruit at least one sponsor and to buy or sell six tickets to the April 24 fund-raising event at the Patsy Clarke Mansion. 

JDC: A diamond on North Division

“Bling” was the thing at the Feb. 3 club luncheon as member Doug Toone shared his story and showed some of Jewelry Design Center’s innovative, beautiful work, including rings, pendants and specialty engravings.

Doug, a club member since 2001, said he grew up on a Moran Prairie farm with four brothers.  He said when his dad was asked what they raised on the farm, dad said “boys.”

But they Toone family also “grew everything,” he said, including vegetables, grains, pigs and chickens.  One of Doug’s regular duties was milking the cows at 6 a.m., a tough chore in high school years when his after-school job at the Early Dawn Creamery in the Parkade often got him home at 11 p.m.

But his exposure to DECA precepts in high school raised his interest in a business career.  Looking for friendlier hours than the creamery offered, Doug said he “went downtown where dad worked and walked into every single store, asking for work.”

One stop was a “little jewelry store” on the south side of The Met (now the Bing) theater at Sprague and Lincoln.  After telling the owner how he loved to work with his hands, Doug got a cleaning job and learned the jewelry business.  He said it takes four years to become a journeyman jeweler and 10 years to become a journeyman diamond setter.

After working nine years in wholesale jewelry, Doug said a retail store owner asked him in 1977 if he ever thought about opening his own store.  The opportunity came at the Diamond Shop in Argonne Village, where the mall was looking to add a jeweler.  Doug said in those early days most jewelry was sold in small independent shops or at chain jewelry outlets.  Most department stores and big-box retailers have since added jewelry lines, he said, with many of the products sold at “price-point,” less-expensive ranges.

After getting the use of about $2,000 in tools, Doug started his shop.  In the early years, he said, “I mostly learned how not to run a business.

Also in 1977, Doug said he decided to build his own home in Mead.  Working with limited help, he said, “It took 4 ½ years, and we lived in the basement for a while, but we’re still living there.”

Recalling his youth –“I was just a wild kid”—Toone said one of his early customers was an elementary teacher, Mr. McDaniel.  “He came into the store and, when he recognized me, he said ‘I thought you would be in prison.’”

The early years also had serious business challenges, including an embezzlement by a good friend and partner who had opened a satellite store in Moscow, Idaho.  “We had the store for a year and a half and lost $40,000, Toone said.

Another challenge was a major theft at the old Spokane store.  “Burglars got into our customers’ stuff and that hurt,” Toone said.  While insurance adjustors told Toone to just tell customers to file loss claims, Doug decided instead to replace all the stolen items as best he could.  “It took a year and a half,” he said, but customers were so appreciative that “our business doubled after that.”

Nine years ago he bought the land for the new building at 821 N. Division.  The result is the very distinctive Northwest-style jewelry center which has built a strong reputation in the region and beyond.

Toone said nine craftsmen work at the store, designing jewelry pieces to fit specific customer requests in various price ranges.

He displayed hard-wax molds and showed slides of JDC’s state-of-the-art casting and 3-D production printers.  “It’s enabled us to do things we really couldn’t do before,” Toone said.

Nodding to club member dentists Dave Petersen and Art Rudd, Toone said, “we’ve taken a lot of (production) things from the dental industry.”  He added, “We take a lot of things from nature, too.”

With his big roster of craftsmen, Toone said, “We are the largest store in the state of Washington.”

He adds that one key to success is that “you have to understand what the metals will do.”

Thus JDC is able to offer lifetime guarantees on its work, while other “price-point” retailers often use thinner, lower-grade metals which may fail over time, he said.

Toone also provided a lesson in lighting.  Good jewelry shops have a lot of natural light entering through large windows and skylights, he said.  Natural light is the best way to view diamonds, he adds.  Yellow traces show the stones are “really valuable,” while pink tints are “off the chart” and reds “are worth even more.”

With diamonds, he said, we are able to buy as good as anybody.”

Another rising product line is high-end watches.  Toone said JDC is now a Rolex retailer. “Rolex sent secret shoppers to our store three times, then asked us if we wanted to sell their products.  You can’t ask them.”

As Doug’s JDC brochure says, “jewelry is designed to create special moments and special memories.” His presentation to the club did much the same.