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Southern Jewelry newS Clark Jewelers Serves Diamonds Neat in Bourbon Country
By Wanda Freeman
Clark Jewelers may have established a tidy niche long ago in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, but in 2014, it became … neat: In December of that year, Patrick Clark was making a ring for a client friend in the bourbon industry when he set a brown diamond amid white diamonds and was inspired by the striking image.
“I called my brother and said, ‘Hey Chad, guess what I’ve got here at my bench,” Clark recalls. “A bourbon on ice!”
Sensing they were onto something, the brothers scoured the internet and confirmed that no one had marketed the brown gems as bourbon colored. They promptly applied to trademark three expressions: Natural Brown Bourbon Diamonds, Bourbon on Ice, and Bourbon on the Rocks – for the gems themselves, the overall collection, and a men’s collection, respectively.
While registering the trademarks took years, the new collections quickly became a hit. Clark Jewelers has attended the Kentucky Bourbon Festival in Bardstown, the Bourbon Capital of the World, every September since 2015. And every year, their booth brings in new customers.
“It’s the biggest part of our marketing,” says Clark. “We’ve sold pieces to people in Australia, Japan, England, Canada. We’ve shipped pieces all over the world, sometimes a year later. People have an anniversary coming up and they remember us from the festival.”
As for the moment that started it all - a client bringing in a picture of a ring his wife admired: “She’s thrilled to have the inaugural piece,” he says.
The Bourbon on Ice line has been popular throughout the bourbon industry. Clark says he has made items for Fred Noe of the Jim Beam line and Wally Dant of Log Still as well as others he knows would prefer not to be mentioned.
“It’s fun to have a product you created, and to have somebody come in and ask for it like it’s a national brand,” he says.
Kentucky-based Clark Jewelers has enjoyed great success with their trademarked Natural Brown Bourbon Diamonds, Bourbon on Ice, and Bourbon on the Rocks collections.
