Yehuda to fight Blue Nile unfair-competition lawsuit

The Yehuda Diamond Co. said it plans to fight a federal lawsuit filed by Blue Nile that claims ads on Yehuda's Web site make "false and misleading statements" in comparing its clarity-enhanced diamonds to natural diamonds sold by Blue Nile.

The lawsuit, filed on Dec. 18 in the U.S. District Court in Seattle against Yehuda parent company Diascience Corp. of New York, stems from ads on Yehuda.com in which Yehuda compares its diamond prices to those of diamonds sold by Blue Nile. The ads point out individual Yehuda diamonds that are priced significantly below diamonds of the same weight, cut, color and clarity sold on Blue Nile's Web site.

But, the Seattle-based online jeweler says the comparisons do not tell the full story, and accuses the New York diamond company of unfair competition, copyright infringement and violations of the Washington Consumer Protection Act.

"These diamonds are not equivalent, and Yehuda's Web site falsely represents that they are," the lawsuit says. "Moreover, to emphasize a false equivalence between Yehuda's artificially enhanced diamonds and Blue Nile's natural diamonds, Yehuda wholesale copied portions of Blue Nile's copyright-protected Web site and displayed the Blue Nile Web pages on the Yehuda.com homepage."

Yehuda, which does not sell to consumers directly but instead uses its site to send consumers to retail jewelers that sell its clarity-enhanced stones, insists that the comparisons are fair game.

"What would be misleading would be to prevent consumers from being able to make the choice between our clarity-enhanced diamonds and those Blue Nile sells without clarity enhancement," Yehuda Diamond Co. President Dror Yehuda said in a statement issued on Friday. "The public needs to know that our prices, which come with unsurpassed expert service, are—plain and simple—lower than Blue Nile's prices."

Yehuda also points out that the Web site contains full details on its quality-enhanced diamonds, and consumers are also encouraged to visit a local jeweler to check out the stones for themselves.

He told National Jeweler that the company has taken down the copyrighted material from Blue Nile's Web site, and that the material had only been posted for one day.

In the suit, Blue Nile seeks a preliminary and permanent injunction that would bar Yehuda "from making false or misleading comparisons, orally or in writing, between Yehuda's artificially clarity-enhanced and Blue Nile's natural diamonds," court papers said.

It also asks that Yehuda be made to notify its customers and the diamond industry of the difference in quality between the two products.
Source: nationaljewelernetwork

Blue Nile Announces Q4 Revenue Growth of 24%

Blue Nile, Inc. today announced that revenue for its fourth quarter ended December 30, 2007 grew approximately 24% over the prior year.

"2007 was a great year for Blue Nile, and the holiday quarter was no exception," said Mark Vadon, Chief Executive Officer. "While we have not previously released our fourth quarter sales results in advance of our earnings announcement date, we felt it was important to share this information given the industry data that has been released recently. Over the past week, a number of large jewelry retailers have reported negative same store sales results for the holiday season.

"We are extremely pleased with our fourth quarter sales results, particularly given concerns about the macro economic environment. In addition, we anticipate reporting strong profitability for the fourth quarter in our upcoming earnings announcement. We believe we are well positioned to continue to gain market share despite the difficulties that are being experienced within the jewelry industry," added Vadon.

Blue Nile will report fourth quarter and fiscal year 2007 financial results on Tuesday, February 12, 2008. The Company will hold a conference call that day at 2:00 p.m. PT/5:00 p.m. ET. The call will be broadcast live via webcast and may be accessed at http://investor.bluenile.com. Following the completion of the call, a recorded replay of the webcast will be available for 30 days at the same Internet address.
Source: cnn

Blue Nile Names Robin Easton CFO

Online jewelry retailer Blue Nile Inc. on Tuesday named Robin Easton chief financial officer, effective Sept. 10.

Easton is treasurer of Paccar Inc., a commercial trucks and parts maker. He was previously director of global treasury operations at Applied Materials Inc., a semiconductor company.

He will replace President Diane Irvine, who had been chief financial officer.

Blue Nile had named Scott Devitt, a managing director and senior analyst of Internet consumer services for financial services company Stifel Nicolaus & Co., as CFO in June, but the company said in July he had a "change of heart" and would not join the company.
Source: forbes

Blue Nile, Tiffany Make the Hot List

Blue Nile Inc. and Tiffany & Co. are the two hottest jewelry retailers in the U.S., according to an annual survey of retailers.

Stores magazine, the official magazine of the National Retail Federation, ranked Blue Nile, the Seattle-based online jewelry and diamond retailer, 20th on its "Hot 100 Retailers" list. The venerable luxury jeweler Tiffany came in at 92. No other jewelry retailer made the list, which appeared in the magazine's August issue. The list highlights retail companies with a minimum of $100 million in annual revenues that reported the greatest increase in year-over-year revenues in 2006.

Blue Nile reported revenues of nearly $251.6 million, a 23.8 percent increase over the previous year's earnings. Meanwhile, Tiffany posted revenues of more than $2.6 billion in 2006, an increase of nearly 10.6 percent over 2005 revenues. While revenues soared for both companies, earnings for the year declined by less than 1 percent (Blue Nile 0.7 percent, Tiffany 0.3 percent), according to the rankings.

Among general merchandise retailers that sell fine jewelry, Seattle-based Internet retailer Amazon.com came in at number 19 with a 26.1 percent increase in revenues in 2006 to $10.7 billion. Federated Department Stores (which has been renamed Macy's Inc.) came in at 28th with a 20.4 percent increase 70 $26.9 billion.

Among big box retailers, Target was ranked 70th on the list with a 13 percent increase in revenues to $59.5 billion. Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer and the world's largest jewelry retailer, came in at number 78 with an 11.7 percent increase in revenues to $348.6 billion.

Nordstrom finished 89th on the list with a nearly 10.6 percent increase in revenues to $8.6 billion.
Source: jckonline