|
Business Buzz
Tri Valley Magazine, January/February 2008 Issue
 11TH ANNUAL TRI VALLEY REGIONAL MIXER
Tri-Valley, California Convention & Visitors Bureau is hosting the 11th annual Tri-Valley Regional Mixer at the Carr America Conference Center in Pleasanton on Tuesday, January 8, 2008. Tri Valley city mayors as well as council members and representatives are planning to attend. This is a great opportunity to start the 2008 business year at one of Tri Valley’s largest business mixers drawing over 600 attendees and 40 exhibitors.
4400 Rosewood Dr., Pleasanton
5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Tickets: $25 advanced purchase, $35 at the door
Register at www.trivalleycvb.com/meetings, or call the Tri-Valley CVB at 925-846-8910 for more information.
WIGGED OUT! INTO ITS 14TH SEASON WITH THE TALE OF BARBAR ELLA
The cabaret show, full of singing, dancing and comedy, performs currently Saturday nights through June 2008 at Hair On Stage, 520 San Ramon Valley Blvd. in Danville. Many notable Bay Area actors are featured including Shellie winners, Jeff Seaberg and Donna Turner. The box office is open Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. For tickets, phone 925-855-SHOW.
GEMESIS CULTURED DIAMONDS NOW AT BARONS JEWELERS
Barons Jewelers announces that they are featuring the Pintura Cultured DiamondsTM jewelry line which uses Gemesis cultured yellow diamonds. Barons Jewelers is the only jeweler in Northern California to carry these gems. Pintura Jewelry uses yellow diamonds in their designs with natural white diamonds in a dramatic showcase of rings, earrings and necklaces. The new cultured diamonds sell for about a quarter of the price of natural yellow diamonds depending on their size and quality.
Cultured diamonds, or lab-created diamonds, are the same chemically as naturally mined diamonds, i.e. they’re both carbon and can be cut and polished the same as natural stones. Natural diamonds are created in the earth under intense pressure and heat over eons. Lab-created diamonds use the same types of heat and pressure intensity, but the process now only takes four days in controlled laboratory conditions. The process has been used commercially since the 1950’s when General Electric perfected the process for industrial diamonds.
Gemesis is currently one of only three companies creating the majority of gem-quality diamonds. They are mostly colored diamonds which seem to be easier to create than the clear colorless ones we are most familiar with. In nature though, colored diamonds are actually rarer and therefore more costly per carat. Gemesis is using the term “cultured” because they are comparing their process of creating diamonds through heat and pressure starting with a “diamond seed” as similar to the process of creating cultured pearls, which are now accepted as real.
These lab-created diamonds are not to be confused with cubic zirconia and moissanite which simulate diamonds, but are chemically different. With the debut of the cultured diamonds, cubic zirconia and moissanite have fallen dramatically in price, to about $5 to $15 per one-carat. Due to the quality of the lab-created diamonds, they are now being graded by the Gemological Institute of America. Their popularity is so great that Gemesis has doubled its plant size this year and will be able to produce about 50,000 stones per year. Even at that, the president of Gemesis, StephenLux, has said, “We are basically sold out.”
"The Pintura line of cultured diamonds will allow our customers to experience the beauty of yellow diamonds[…] that would otherwise be unattainable [in naturally] mined yellow diamonds,” said Ronnie Heller, owner of Barons Jewelers. The diamonds will be featured in Barons three stores located in Stoneridge Mall, Bayfair Center and Newpark Mall. For more information, please phone 510-351-3030 or go to their website at www.baronsjewelers.com. |
