More than 80 years after it was founded by his grandfather, M. Evenchick Jewellery will close next month in the face of what Brian Evenchick calls unfair competition from offshore.
In its heyday, M. Evenchick Jewellery Inc. employed more than 500 people, displayed the costume jewelry it manufactured in more than 300 stores and grossed $10 million in retail sales annually.
Earlier this month, the Gatineau-based, family-owned company, which has been in business since 1922, announced it will close its doors on June 18.
"We are an old company that the world has passed by," said Mark Evenchick, part of the third generation of owners of the business.
The owners said they decided to close shop because of a steady decline in business. They currently employ 19 people.
In a news release, the company lamented its inability "to compete against foreign markets where labour standards are far below Canadian standards."
For Mark Evenchick and his brothers Brian and Lawrence, the closing will bring to an end a family tradition.
Four out of five of the current generation of brothers in the Evenchick family have worked for the business at some point.
The company was started by their grandfather, Meyer Evenchick, a wealthy Russian landowner who, according to his sons, feared for his life after the Bolshevik Revolution and fled to New York City around 1919.
Approximately three years later, Meyer moved to Canada to manufacture jewelry. After the Second World War, his son, Abbey, took over.
Under Meyer, Evenchick was the first jeweller in Canada to import pearls from Japan. Under Abbey, it became the primary supplier of costume jewelry to major Canadian department stores such as as Eaton's, The Bay and Birks.
But "globalization has changed everything," said Brian. By the mid-1990s, many of the department stores had gone under, and the ones that remained began buying jewelry from developing economies in Asia.
"Everything is going offshore," he added. "Its a fact of life and I can't do anything about it."
Jewelry manufacturing is labour intensive. Costume jewelry is made mostly by hand, with non-precious metals such as brass, copper and pewter alloy metals.
"We follow labour regulations and provide insurance and pension for our workers; we can't compete with offshore companies who pay so much less for their labour," said Mark Evenchick.
The Evenchick brothers, who took control in 1982, did try to adapt to survive. They worked to expand their production base, taking over competitor Nemo Inc. in 2000 and entering the specific niche of "Canadian-made" brand manufacturing to win contracts to produce lapels, pins, badges and metals for the Department of National Defence.
But Evenchick found itself steadily losing out on bids to lower-priced competitors.
Mark Evenchick questions how well the government enforces its requirements for varying levels of Canadian content for goods and services -- for military medals, for example, 80 per cent of the "combined price" of production must be of Canadian origin.
"The government used to do inspections to ensure that the Canadian content policy was being met," he added. "But not anymore."
However, a spokeswoman for Public Works and Government Services Canada said the requirements are enforced.
"We monitor the bidder's certification to ensure the contractor's compliance with the Canadian content policy" said France Langlois, who added that "there are a number of measures that the government can take (to make sure requirements are met)."
Judy Roberts, owner of Davidson Jewellers in Ottawa and former president of the Canadian Jewellers Association, says more protection of such industries would benefit Canada as a whole.
"The government is actually losing out.
"These domestic industries die and the government loses the federal and provincial income taxes that they would gain from having a strong domestic economy in this sector," she said.
For the Evenchicks, however, the decision has been made.
Source: canada
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