Action Content

Garnet: 5 Great Sales Hooks for January’s Birthstone

This underrated gem has surprising colors and wilder stories. Here’s how to sell them both.

Published

3 weeks ago

December 31, 2025

INSTORE Staff

14K yellow gold ring featuring garnets with diamonds

14K yellow gold ring featuring garnets (3.29 TCW) with diamonds (0.16 TCW), $1,908, allisonkaufman.com

HERE’S THE THING about garnet: it’s the Swiss Army knife of gemstones. Since the Bronze Age, it’s had more jobs than a gig worker—precious gem, good luck charm, actual abrasive for industrial use. Indian warriors reportedly loaded them into guns and fired them at British soldiers, which is either incredibly badass or incredibly wasteful depending on your perspective.

Most people picture one color: that muddy brown almandine. But garnet comes in nearly every shade imaginable. Bright green tsavorite. Fanta-orange spessartite. Even color-change varieties. One legend claims Noah lit the Ark with a single giant garnet, day and night. Is that true? Almost certainly not. But is it a great legend to share with a January birthday customer? Absolutely.

Five Ways to Promote Garnet This Month

1. Kill the brown stereotype. Create a display showing garnet’s full color range side by side. Most customers have no idea tsavorite and spessartite are garnets. Blow their minds a little.
2. Arm your staff with the weird stories. Noah’s Ark. Garnet bullets. These aren’t just fun facts — they’re conversation starters that turn a “just looking” into a 20-minute engagement.
3. Target second-anniversary couples. Pull your customer database for anyone who bought an engagement ring two years ago. Send a personal note mentioning garnet as the traditional anniversary stone.
4. Post the Fanta-orange spessartite on social. Nothing stops a scroll like unexpected color. Caption it: “Yes, this is a garnet. No, we’re not kidding.”
5. Bundle it with birthstone marketing. January birthdays get overlooked after the holiday rush. A simple “Born in January?” window sign with a tsavorite or rhodolite catches eyes when competitors have already moved on.

INSTORE Staff

Since launching in 2002, INSTORE has won 89 international journalism awards for its publication and website. Contact INSTORE's editors at [email protected].

click to Comment(Comment)

Don't Miss

Monthly Project: Get Your Sales Team on LinkedIn

Honoring a Legacy: How Smith & Son Jewelers Exceeded Every Goal With Wilkerson

When Andrew Smith decided to close the Springfield, Massachusetts location of Smith & Son Jewelers, the decision came down to family. His father was retiring after 72 years in the business, and Andrew wanted to spend more time with his children and soon-to-arrive grandchildren. For this fourth-generation jeweler whose great-grandfather founded the company in 1918, closing the 107-year-old Springfield location required the right partner. Smith chose Wilkerson, and the experience exceeded expectations from start to finish. "Everything they told me was 100% true," Smith says. "The ease and use of all their tools was wonderful." The consultants' knowledge and expertise proved invaluable. Smith and his father set their own financial goal, but Wilkerson proposed three more ambitious targets. "We thought we would never make it," Smith explains. "We were dead wrong. We hit our first goal, second goal and third goal. It was amazing." Smith's recommendation is emphatic: "I would never be able to do what they did by myself."