Memo, consignment and outright: how jewelry changes hands at a show
The three sets of terms buyers and exhibitors agree to on a trade floor, what each one does to title, risk and cash, and what to get in writing.
Two buyers can leave the same stand with the same ring at the same price and have made entirely different deals. One owns it and owes for it. The other is holding it, insuring it, and will pay only if a customer takes it home. Price is what gets negotiated out loud on a trade floor. Terms are what decide whether that price was a good one.
There are three ways stock moves between an exhibitor and a buyer, and the trade has used the same three for a century: outright, on memo, and on consignment. They differ on four questions. Who owns the goods. Who carries the risk if they are lost or damaged. When money moves. And what happens to whatever does not sell.
Outright: you own it the moment you sign
An outright purchase is a sale. Title passes to the buyer, the invoice is raised, and the goods are the buyer's problem and the buyer's upside from that point on. Payment terms vary more than people expect: an established account might get thirty or sixty days, a newer one a deposit at the stand and the balance before shipping, and a first order from an unfamiliar buyer is often written against a proforma invoice paid in full before anything ships. None of that changes the nature of the deal. It changes only when the cash leaves.
Outright is also what most cross-border buying looks like, for an unglamorous reason. Once goods cross a customs frontier, a clean sale with an invoice and a declared value is straightforward, while an arrangement where the supplier still owns stock sitting in another country is not. A buyer meeting an overseas manufacturer for the first time should expect to be quoted firm, and should price accordingly: freight, insurance, duty and the exchange rate on the day all land on top of the number agreed at the stand.
Memo: possession without title
Memo, short for memorandum, is the trade's oldest working compromise. Goods go out to the buyer for a defined period. Title stays with the supplier. Nothing is owed unless the buyer sells the piece or keeps it past the agreed date, at which point it converts to a purchase at the price stated on the memo. It is the normal way loose diamonds and higher-value single pieces travel, because it lets a retailer show a customer a stone nobody could justify owning on spec.
What memo does not do is move the risk. From the handover on, the buyer is responsible for goods somebody else owns, which is what a jeweller's block policy is for. Two details cause most of the arguments. Alteration is one: sizing a memo ring, resetting a memo stone or breaking a parcel usually converts it to a sale, because it can no longer go back as it left. Aging is the other. Memo has a return date, and quietly passing it is not a neutral act; it is an unsigned purchase.
- A description of each item, with weights, grades and report numbers, itemised rather than lumped.
- The memo price, which is the price owed if it sells or is kept.
- A return date, stated as a date rather than a number of days.
- Who insures the goods while they are out, and to what value.
- What happens on alteration, sizing or breaking a parcel.
- Who pays freight and insurance in each direction, including the return.
Consignment: the long stay in the case
Consignment is memo with a longer horizon and a different intent. The supplier stocks a section of the case, the retailer sells from it, and payment is made on a cycle for whatever went out the door. It is common with designer lines, high-value one-offs and any category where a retailer wants depth without owning depth. On paper it costs nothing to carry, which is exactly why it needs watching: consigned goods take case space and staff attention, and a slow line is displacing a category you could have bought, marked and sold twice.
For the exhibitor, memo and consignment are not marketing expenses to be handed out on a busy Friday because a stranger asked politely. They are capital sitting in someone else's safe, under someone else's insurance, with your name on the title. The trade has always managed that with references and time: a new account is worth a credit check and two trade references, and a first placement is worth keeping small and short. Photograph and weigh everything before it leaves the stand, and diarise the return date on the day it goes out.
Agree the price at the stand if you like. Agree the terms in writing before the goods leave the hall, because that is the document you will be reading in six weeks, not the conversation.
A show floor is the one place where all of this is negotiable face to face, which is an advantage worth using deliberately. Valumira runs Friday to Sunday in each of its twelve cities, with Friday reserved for the trade, so the trade day is where terms belong: quiet enough to read a memo sheet properly, and the day the people who can approve one are on the stand. The series runs from Las Vegas in November 2026 to Sydney in October 2027, with Antwerp in June 2027 given over to diamonds and New York in December 2026 to estate pieces, both categories where memo does most of its work.