BIOGRAPHY: Hearts On Fire came into being in 1996, a result of Glenn and Susan Rothman's passion to create nothing less than a new benchmark of quality in fine diamonds. The impetus for the brand had struck Glenn Rothman in Belgium, where he encountered an amazing ideal cut whose perfect symmetrical arrangement created a pattern of hearts and fireburst patterns. Success for "The World's Most Perfectly Cut Diamond" was rapid, and within the year, Hearts On Fire's first collection of diamonds sold out. By 1998, Hearts On Fire had established a considerable global presence, taking markets throughout Asia and the Caribbean by storm, and in 1999, jewelry connoisseurs could enjoy the brand's first jewelry collection, comprised of rings and earrings wrought from the most luxurious materials. The quest for diamond cutting perfection carried on into the new millennium, which saw Hearts On Fire introduce the extraordinary Dream diamond--a creation of dazzling beauty which revolutionized the brilliance and optical performance of the square-cut.
Recognized by The Robb Report as "one of the icons and innovators who define excellence", Hearts On Fire has become a true global phenomenon, establishing a strong presence in 32 countries throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe. To take a jeweler's loupe in hand is to understand the Hearts On Fire magic, where a ring of eight hearts from the bottom and a symmetrical fireburst of light through the top silently testify to the exacting cutting dimensions that assure the ultimate in fire and brilliance. Remarkably, only 1% of the rough diamonds evaluated by the company meet the rigorous standards required to become a Hearts On Fire diamond, and from there, each of these best of the best stones are cut under 100 power magnification--a factor 10 times more stringent than the typical industry standard.
With its dynamic combination of elegant marketing and a tireless devotion to diamond cutting excellence, Hearts on Fire has emerged as a lightning rod for many jewelers, who are able to reap the associative benefits of representing a brand whose name is synonymous with the very best.
VIALUXE:
Hi Glenn, thanks for taking the time to talk about Hearts on Fire. Hearts on Fire has had a bit of a meteoric rise over the last few years. Can you give me a little background on the Hearts on Fire Company? GLENN ROTHMAN:
Hearts on Fire was established in 1996 and in the last 12 year the brand has grown at a compounded annualized rate of 30 percent a year. It’s the fast growing diamond and jewelry brand in the world. And this year we will sale over 400 million dollars worth of Hearts on Fire of diamond and jewelry in 32 countries around the world.
VIALUXE:
What sets the Hearts on Fire Diamond apart from the competition? GLENN ROTHMAN:
The only thing that man can control in relationship to a diamond is its beauty and the beauty of the diamond is established by how it’s crafted and the Hearts on Fire diamond is crafted to 10 times industry standards. What we’ve done is we have a proprietary formula for the faceting of our diamonds and for the alignment of our diamonds which results in maximum performance. This performance means that the diamond sparkles more than any other diamond. Only 1 percent of the world’s rough is eligible to be manufactured into a Hearts on Fire diamond because we use what’s called in our crystals “knot-free rough.” So between the color and clarity and knot free rough so there is only one percent and it’s very rare and so we maximize the performance of our diamonds. The result is a diamond that captures all the light, internalizes it like no other diamond and sends it back to your eye in the full range of all the colors of the rainbow.
VIALUXE:
What does the Hearts on Fire brand stand for? GLENN ROTHMAN:
Hearts on Fire is not a diamond company. Hearts on Fire is a global iconic brand. Diamonds happen to be the product that we use to symbolize and recognize what our brand means. And so Hearts on Fire is all about what it means, it’s not about what it is, it’s about what it says - not about what color and clarity it is. And so as an iconic brand it symbolizes the very best in human emotions, the very best in love and communication, spirituality, success and today it is being recognize like that all over the world.
VIALUXE:
What is the main focus of Hearts on Fire Brand? GLENN ROTHMAN:
Our jewelry’s main focus is that the diamonds are the actors and the actresses, the metal is the stage. And so everything that has to do with our jewelry design and collection is focused on how we can maximize the beauty of the diamond. Today our jewelry is an amazing collection, as a matter of fact, as the CEO of the company one of my jobs is to recognize and acknowledge what we call quantum leaps. Very rarely do we have a quantum leap in a company, it comes every year and half to two years. A month ago our vice president of product development Kathryn Rosenberg took me through our new jewelry collection for three hours in a private showing in her office and it not only wowed me it blew me away. I’ve been in the diamond/jewelry industries for thirty years and I saw us as a completely different company.
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VIALUXE:
Hi Kathryn, Glenn said you could give us a sneak preview of some of the new pieces from this year’s collection. Do you mind saying hello and introducing yourself? KATHYRYN ROSENBERG:
Hi I’m Kathryn Rosenberg, VP for product and merchandizing for Hearts on Fire and I’m here to talk to you a little bit about our new architectural series that we are launching here. Well not formally launching - it will be a formal launch in September but we are doing a preview here at the Couture show and this is an interesting collection for us. It is a collection based on architectural structures from around the world. We see this as a global collection that will tour fourth quarter of 2008 and we took designs - we took architecture that really lent themselves -had elements of design that would really execute beautifully in a piece of jewelry. This was designed and inspired off of the Beijing Olympic Stadium that was just built for the 2008 Summer Olympics and this is one of my favorite pieces. It happens to be all hand wrapped wire and we actually originally thought it would look best in all gold, in yellow gold, not white gold, but as we started to wrap it was in white so we continued the process in white. I still had it in my mind that it should be in yellow so hence I have a yellow ring so I got to have a little bit of yellow. This retail for about $400,000, it’s quite comfortable on, believe it or not, you can wear it down on the wrist or pull it up on the arm. The ring that I am wearing and that you also see here in the case retails for $36,000 and they are all one of the kind pieces and all hand wrapped.
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VIALUXE:
How did you come up with the name Hearts on Fire? GLENN ROTHMAN:
Our diamond, because of its performance, has an extraordinary unusual natural phenomenon. This natural phenomenon can be seen with a 3 powered jewelers tool -3 powered scope- and what you see is from the bottom is eight symmetrical hearts and from the top you see an amazing fire burst – an eight pointed fire burst. People say to us “How did you polish hearts into the diamond? How did you polish this fire burst into the top?” and the answer is that is the actual natural phenomenon of light as the result of the alignment , of the length of facets, of the combination of the angles and the highest standards of polishing that you can achieve. So in seeing that natural phenomena of light of course we saw hearts and we saw fire, so Susan and I, my wife and I, were driving to the beach after we had discovered the hearts on fire diamond and we wrote down ten different names in the car on the way to the beach. We took these ten names and we did a very expensive deep marketing survey - we asked every single person we knew between 18-30 which one of those names they liked the best, and 80% of them said Hearts on Fire, not Hearts of Fire, but Hearts on Fire and that’s how we came to the Hearts on Fire name.