Howard Hauben, president and CEO of the Centurion Jewelry Show, assesses the state of consumer demand and the impact of US tariffs on trade fairs in the latest episode of the Rapaport Diamond Podcast.
The founder of the annual exhibition in Phoenix, Arizona, hasn’t seen any companies pull out of the February 2026 show so far due to the tariffs. “I think we just have to watch it day by day and see where this takes us, because it’s kind of an adventure for the whole industry,” he told Rapaport’s Joshua Freedman on May 6.
Luxury jewelers, who are the focus of Centurion, are doing reasonably well at present, he added. “As long as the consumers who have the money to buy nice jewelry have money, and most of them do, then [the jewelers are] going to be okay.”
There will likely be some caution from buyers at the upcoming Las Vegas shows because of uncertainty around the new import duties, Hauben noted.
Hauben explained why he started Centurion in 2001 after launching the Couture fair in Las Vegas. When the Couture parent company, Miller Freeman, was sold in 2000, he found himself out of a job. He gathered 100 Couture exhibitors at a meeting in New York the following February. This led to the founding of the new show.
It became known for its unusual model: Offering shares in the company to committed exhibitors and sponsoring serious buyers to attend.
“We believe that nobody really is that interested in what we do unless we can attract great buyers to our show,” Hauben commented.
As a relatively small organizing company, “we were a little bit of a David versus Goliath kind of thing, because we were competing with Couture; we were up against the Luxury show by JCK,” he continued. “Here we are 25 years later and growing.”
The episode also addressed security at trade shows, the jewelry publishing industry, and how Centurion managed to secure Bill Clinton and George W. Bush as guest speakers in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
Listen to the full episode here:
