Clarity and integrity are critical when it comes to building lasting customer relationships, maintains Sharrie Woodring, senior gemologist at GCal by Sarine. In our recent conversation on Instagram — titled “The Jewelry Truth Test: Are You Selling It Right?” — she shared key legal and ethical guidelines every jeweler should follow.
1. Transparency: A legal must
One of the overarching themes from the IG Live was the importance of transparency in product descriptions and labeling. Accurate representations lead to better customer satisfaction and loyalty, Woodring emphasized. “Everything you say about the product you’re selling is legally binding. It’s not just marketing — you’re making an express warranty. So whether you’ve said it verbally during the sales presentation, or it’s on a tag, a receipt, or an online description — if you say it, you own it. The customer is making their purchase decision based on what you’re telling them.”
2. Make sure your phrasing won’t mislead the customer
Misrepresentation, whether intentional or not, can seriously harm a retailer’s reputation and may result in legal consequences, Woodring warned. Even small mistakes can escalate into major disputes, especially when value differences are significant. Examples GCal by Sarine has encountered include advertising sterling silver that’s actually silver-plated base metal, describing an item simply as “gold” when it’s not 24-karat, and overstating diamond color or clarity.
Some jewelers fail to disclose gemstone treatments like heat, fracture filling, or diffusion, Woodring added. “You can’t use vague words like ‘enhanced.’ You need to state the exact treatment. If a treatment isn’t permanent or the stone requires special care, that has to be explained to the customer.”
3. Highlight the ‘lab-grown’ in lab-grown diamonds
Lab-created diamonds have very specific labeling requirements under Federal Trade Commission (FTC) rules, which apply in the US. The lab-grown aspect must be disclosed immediately before or after the word “diamond” in all instances, Woodring explained: “You can say lab-grown diamond, laboratory-created diamond, manmade diamond, but it has to be immediately next to the word diamond…in the title, in the fine print, everywhere.”
Simply calling a stone a “diamond” without this qualifier, she stressed, misleads the consumer into thinking it’s natural, which is a clear violation.
4. Precious metals: Mind the numbers
When labeling metal content, retailers must strictly adhere to the FTC’s guidelines. It is imperative to disclose any gold under 24 karats and to mention the karat number — 14-karat, 18-karat, etc. — rather than simply calling it “gold.” In addition, gold-filled items must have at least one-twentieth of gold by total weight, and electroplated items must be clearly labeled as gold-plated.
As for two other metals that are gaining in popularity — silver and platinum — sterling silver must be at least 0.925 fineness, and jewelers must disclose the exact fineness for platinum pieces of less than 950 parts per thousand.
5. Call colored gemstones by the correct names
Woodring emphasized the importance of being up-front about any synthetic origins a gemstone may have. Using deceptive names or hiding important information in the fine print is not only unethical, but illegal.
Retailers should use accurate and legally recognized terms, she said. “You cannot sell a topaz as a sapphire, or glass as a topaz. If it’s a red cubic zirconia that looks like a ruby, you must say it’s a ‘simulated ruby cubic zirconia.’ ‘Simulated’ is a perfectly acceptable word. But you cannot use a trade name like ‘Brazilian sapphire’ if it’s actually a topaz. The customer doesn’t know what that means, and that’s a problem. The law requires that we say what the stone really is.”
To ensure compliance and avoid costly mistakes, Woodring recommended that jewelers familiarize themselves with industry resources such as the American Gem Trade Association (AGTA) guidelines and the Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC) information on FTC requirements. The full recording is available on Rapaport Jewelry Pro’s YouTube channel and Instagram’s Reels section.
Main image: A man working at a laptop. (Glenn Carstens-Peters/Unsplash)
