Steve's son-in-law tries to impress upon the auditionees the company ethos: "Present like you're selling to your mum, produce like you're selling to your nan." I'm not entirely sure what the last bit means, but I found myself utterly charmed by the Gems TV family. Another is enthusiastic but a bit off-message: "I know Cleopatra, who loved amethyst, would be grabbin' at these." One prospect has selling experience, but bad hands for close-ups: they shake when he's nervous, and his nails are in a dreadful state. New presenters are easier to come by, but hard to train. Then he sets about turning its colour into a virtue, instructing his presenters to invoke sunsets, and launching tulelei as if he were offering viewers a unique opportunity to own the next tanzanite. Undaunted, Steve picks a new name – tulelei, a Masai word. His solution is a new and plentiful mineral called spessartite, but this gemstone comes with problems of its own: it's bright orange and it has a stupid name. It's Gems TV's biggest seller, but Tanzania's miners can't find any more. The latter is a blue gemstone from – you guessed it – Tanzania. At times it's like watching a highly-charged geology lesson.Īway from the cameras, Steve has two main problems: he's running out of both presenters and tanzanite. He buys his gemstones directly from the mines, and his presenters are schooled in their history and their structure. Steve has been clever enough to recognise that an attachment to jewellery, even cheap jewellery, is an emotional one. It's a business with a £100m a year turnover they ship 10,000 parcels a day. Edina once sold 1,000 diamond rings in an hour, although the channel mostly specialises in pushing jewellery containing gems I'm unfamiliar with – spinel, tourmaline, sphene, labradorite – at knockdown prices. If giddy amateurism appears to be the prevailing tone, the presenters are also very good at what they do. "I always say, if people aren't watching, they can't buy," said Steve. Most of all, they smile and talk – endlessly, relentlessly, like DJs who never get to take a call or play a song – in an attempt to keep you glued. They corpse, they squeal, they shout, they drop things, they trip over the set. Steve's future son-in-law runs the American operation son Matt is the one who has to stand in front of the cameras for all of Christmas Day and most of Boxing Day, because the other 38 presenters are off.Īh, the presenters. There are nine or 10, or perhaps 11 (Steve isn't sure), Bennett relations working at the company. Gems TV is a family business run by Steve and Sarah Bennett out of a light industrial shed in Birmingham.
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