Happy New Year from JAREEYA

December is nearing its end and with it we leave an other year behind us in the history books. And what a year it was! Leaving aside the geopolitical events, gossips and losses in the entertainment world, it was an exciting year for JAREEYA too!

JAREEYA was born beginning of 2016 and it took some time before the idea materialised itself in a real concept. After we got some products lined up that can be listed and sold on our website, it was time to develop the website. As usual, we did it from scratch to keep it clean, professional and functional, without superfluous overhead that only slows the page down. A few very hot weeks have been spent during our holidays in Thailand to prepare the listings – not an easy task when the thermometer breaks through the 40°C mark! A few weeks later, our website was up and running and ready for trade.

Of course, we didn't stop there: The website got regular updates and improvements and we added Pearl Earrings to our selection of fine jewellery. By the end of the year, we also got our hands on further Pearl Jewellery and you will be glad to know that it will be ready for you to explore at the beginning of 2017. The jewellery is with us already but it still awaits to be photographed, correctly described and – very important – hallmarked!

Other than adding to our choice of products we also took proactive steps to show our commitment that we are a genuine business and take your satisfaction serious and giving you the confidence that you get exactly what you were buying. To start with, we registered JAREEYA® as a brand-name in the UK. This shows commitment (since it doesn't come for free) and makes it harder for any other business to take our name and to pretend to be us.

Secondly, we applied for the Assay Assured program with the Edinburgh Assay Office and got approved just before Christmas. When you see the Assay Assured Trustmark, you know that you can buy in confidence. The program certifies that the retailer displays the metal content (fineness) of all precious metal jewellery and that all items that are not exempt by weight do carry a legal hallmark. Any approved retailer also agrees not to carry any counterfeitet branded jewellery. And should you have a query that you can not resolve with the retailer itself, the program acts as an independent arbiter.

It was a busy and successful year for us and will continue working hard to provide you with an even bigger choice of fine jewellery and outstanding customer service.

JAREEYA wishes everyone a Prosperous and Happy New Year, 2017!

Black Friday - Aftermath

Now that Black Friday is over, it's perhaps time to ask why JAREEYA was not involved in the hype and didn't entice its customers with special offers, freebies or discounts!?

Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving in the US and retailers there used Black Friday as an opportunity to rid themselves of surplus stock by discounting prices. Thus, it is considered by many shoppers to grab a bargain on that day – something that isn't necessarily true in the UK as in some instances you may have to pay more for the same product than before or after this big shopping day. And for us: We don't have any surplus stock that would be related to Thanksgiving and we also don't feel the need to copy everybody else.

Furthermore, our prices are already set low and any discounts we would be able to offer are too small to be exciting. Also, it would require a lot of preparation for a single shopping day, diverting resources from more important areas, to work out what discounts we can offer on what products. We rather ensure a great customer service and shopping experience instead of offering a mediocre discount.

We also feel that Black Friday is overrated and we certainly don't want to push you into a buy you may later regret. After all, there are already plenty of special shopping days the big businesses try to part with your hard earned money.

By offering aggressive discounts on a single day may not give you enough time to research the products accurately. It is better for both you and ourselves if you have time to browse through the products that interest you and ensure you find the right piece at the set budget. Buying jewellery under time pressure is best avoided, especially if it's fine jewellery – in contrast to cheaper fashion jewellery.

To us, it seems unfair to other customers who may not be able to go shopping on a pre-set day by giving a price advantage on the basis that some other big retailers tell you to do so. We value all of our customers equally and we don't want to punish someone who buys a day earlier or who needs more time to think about a planned purchase and does the shopping on the weekend following Black Friday.

That said, no one will be stopped to buy from us on Black Friday. And we also don't rule out introducing vouchers or special promotions in the future. But we don't want to contribute to the hype of shopping days with aggressive discounts and prey on consumers who think they have to shop on a particular day for the best deal or otherwise they are too late. You should enjoy browsing our range of fine jewellery and not encountering the feeling of time pressure to by the very same day.

Enjoy your stay on our site,

Your JAREEYA-Team

New Product Line: Pearl Earrings

It might not always be obvious on our website, but we are constantly working hard in the background to provide you with a better service, high-quality photographs, new features and of course: New product lines. Pearls are one of the most favourite gems and most ladies will have some kind of pearl jewellery in their collection. And we felt that our range of products would not be complete without offering you some very fine pieces of pearl jewellery.

At present, we only stock a small selection of Pearl Earrings. However, work is in progress to add more designs to the earrings section and we are also in the process of sourcing further pearl jewellery like bracelets and necklaces.

Pearls have been used in jewellery for thousands of years. Perhaps the most famous reference to pearls comes from the myth that the Egyptian queen Cleopatra was dissolving one of her precious pearl earrings in vinegar to drink it, in order to win a bet over Mark Antony in who can throw the most lavish banquet.

Thanks to advance in culturing techniques, pearls are affordable in these days but should you wish to look for some thing more special you should consider Tahitian or South Sea pearls which – depending on the size and quality – can demand very high prices.

We hope you find some interesting earrings and in the meantime we will continue our task in increasing our selection of earrings and add further categories soon. It is worthwhile to regularly come back and we are always available for your questions or queries you might have.

Best wishes,

Your JAREEYA-Team

Checkout faster with JAREEYA

Tired of a long checkout process? No wonder why... First you go to your shopping cart, then you move on to the next page where you enter your personal details, after that you land on the payment page, followed by the order confirmation page before you are transferred to the payment provider's own site (if no on-site payment solution exists)... And finally, you may end up on the "Thank you" or "Order confirmation" page which confirms your order was received.

Let's make an analogy to a supermarket: You wander through the aisles, take the products you need from the shelf and place them in your trolley. When you are done, you are heading towards the checkout lane where an emotionless checkout assistant takes your billing and shipping address (your goods do get delivered though, unless you want to pick them up later). You are then sent to the next desk where you inspect the contents of your trolley and confirm that it is all you need and you are ready to pay. Still happy with your shopping? Good. Please proceed to the cashier – who may not even work in the same shop but is placed at the other side of town, and it takes time getting there. Once your payment has been taken, you then go to the supermarket's exit to pick up your receipt. If you were sent to the external cashier half across town, you have to return to the supermarket first! After getting hold of your receipt you are allowed to leave the shop, but not without a subtle invitation to "Continue Shopping".

Screenshot of Cart and Checkout Page

Obviously, the online world differs from the physical in many respects and the above supermarket comparison is not quite fair. But you see there are a lot of steps involved, all that are normally done at checkout. The analogy above of being sent around various counters or even an external payment site is the going from one page to the next in cyberspace. All these transfers adding time. Not useful time, but waiting time. In the case you are being transferred to a 3rd party payment provider (for example PayPal), it normally adds even more lag as a connection to a different server has to be established first.

Each step means a new page needs to be loaded and even on a rather fast website, it all adds up. So we streamlined our checkout process and got rid of all checkout pages. View your cart, enter your payment and shipment details and pay – all on the same site, quick and easy. The obvious advantage is a faster checkout process. Naturally, no advantage without a drawback but it is only a small one: The shopping cart page is marginally slower with loading but it is hardly noticeable and only a disadvantage to you if you add items to your cart and then don't checkout.

Without going into too much technical detail, what happens when you load a page is that your computer is establishing a connection with the server that hosts the website. Data like text, images and scripts are loaded by your computer after the connection has been established. Going to the next page on the same site, both computers (i.e. your device and the server) have to start talking to each other again. Waiting for the server to respond is a relatively time consuming step – transferring data is pretty fast in these days. In fact, on a well configured website, images and scripts are  temporarily stored on your computer and they don't need to be downloaded every time they are needed, which improves a site's speed.

To summarise the above: Our checkout process is faster because all necessary things for both the shopping cart as well as checkout are loaded at once rather than at several steps like in a traditional checkout process. The disadvantage is that the shopping cart page is slightly slower than it could be, but the difference is negligible and more than offsets by the benefist of our all-in-one solution.

We wish you a wonderful time browsing our site and hope you enjoy our site and its fast checkout process :-)

Your JAREEYA-Team

Care for Your Jewellery

Jewellery, like any other item, needs some care and attention. Properly looked after, jewellery can last for a long time and regularly cleaning should not be neglected. It not only keeps your precious pieces clean and sparkling, it also helps you save money by avoiding the need for expensive professional jewellery cleaning, or at least it makes such visits less frequent. Even a tough diamond benefits from a bit of cleaning.

To help you to look after your priced possessions, JAREEYA offers you the entire range of Connoisseurs® jewellery care products. Connoisseurs is a specialist in jewellery cleaning and care products and their range covers pretty much any kind of jewellery you can think of: Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamonds, (Semi)Precious Stones, Pearls and even fashion and costume jewellery.

Connoisseurs Care Products Range

Looking after your jewellery should not be seen as a chore and the products from Connoisseurs are easy to use and also offer you different ways of cleaning. Wipe the tarnish off your silver items while simultaneously help preventing further build-up. Cover up tiny cracks in diamonds with their Diamond Dazzle Stik®. Give your golden chain a bath or use the Sonic Dazzle Stik for extraordinary cleaning results. There is a solution from Connoisseurs for nearly every type of jewellery.

Connoisseurs also offers a cleaning solution for delicate items like pearls and semi-precious stones like opal, coral, onyx or turquoise and is also suitable for fashion jewellery.

Since the world of jewellery covers many different materials, it is important that you choose the right product for the right material. For example, a product that is solely designed to be used for silver should never be applied to any other material as this may discolour or damage the piece. Some very sensitive items like pearls also require specialist products. If in doubt, it is always best to speak to a jewellery on how to clean an item.

Silver Dazzle Drops

One more word of warning: In case of diamonds and other (semi) precious stones, make sure you know whether they have been treated in any way. A diamond is a very tough stone which is not affected by most treatments. However, if a crack has been covered up with a filler, the filling material may be attacked by a cleaning solution or damaged when using an ultra-sonic cleaner. Treatments of diamonds and gemstones is a long subject and beyond the scope of this article, but the essence is to know your jewellery. Always make sure the jeweller you are buying from is disclosing any treatments and if in doubt with existing jewellery we recommend to seek professional advice.

Care products do not cost the world and are only a fraction of the cost of the jewellery itself (except for the cheapest of products of course). It is money well spent and ensures your jewellery always looks at its best, while at the same time prolonging the life of it. Not to mention the satisfaction you will get when you see the sparkle on your treasured pieces...

Enjoy browsing the range,

 Your JAREEYA-Team

Diamonds and their Four Cs

Here at JAREEYA, we don't sit still and work hard to provide you with a great and informative website. Not just for shopping, but also to provide you with some more insights and knowledge of the fantastic world of fine jewellery.

We put the first few articles together that deal with diamonds and what is to know about them. To start with, you can read about the famous Four Cs, to give you a quick starting point. This article summarises the four most commonly evaluated attributes of diamonds: Colour, Clarity, Carat weight and Cut.

Since the article is on our site, we do not go into too much detail here and instead only give a very brief summary of the four Cs here, to give you a taste what is discussed on our website:

Colour: The diamond's colour, graded from D (colourless) to Z (light yellow colour). The less colour a diamond has, the more valuable it generally is. Fancy coloured diamonds are not covered by the colour grading system of the four Cs.

Clarity: Looks at internal and surface defects of diamonds. Blemishes, inclusions, cracks, etc. all diminish the value of a diamond and in more severe cases can limit the durability of the stone itself. Flawless diamonds are priced the highest. Assessing the clarity of a diamond is a complex subject and requires the competence of a skilled grader.

Carat Weight: The title says it all: How heavy a particular stone is, measured in the units of Carat. One carat equals 0.2g (1/5 of a gram) and it is divided into 100 sub-units called points. All other factors being equal, the heavier a diamond is, the more expensive it is, although exceptions do exist when demand is higher for smaller stones.

Cut: Describes how a diamond is cut. The most common cut is brilliant (or round) cut. Other cuts are cushion, baguette, heart or fancy cut. Brilliant cut diamonds normally maximise a stone's beauty but other cuts may be suited better, depending on type of jewellery, to preserve an uncut stone's weight or to eliminate unsightly inclusions.

If you want to go into more details than just scratching the surface of the four Cs, then we also provide you with some more detailed articles for each of the four Cs, but without getting too technical. Currently, the following articles are available for you to browse:

• Diamonds and the 4 Cs
• Carat Weight
• Clarity Grading
• Colour Grading
• Cut (coming soon)

We hope you find the articles of interest and enjoy the read.

Best wishes,

Your JAREEYA-Team

Nobody likes to wait

This morning, an interesting article appeared on BBC's most read stories which summarised some findings of how a fast website helps businesses to increase sales – and how a slow one is bad. And what is good for a business is usually good for their customers too. Undoubtedly, you will also prefer a fast loading page over one that allows you to go for a cup of tea while waiting for the images to load.

While we do not want to endorse the trend of ever-increasing speeds and superlatives in every facet of life – after all it is nice to simply enjoy the moment every now and then without rushing through the day – there is also nothing wrong to speed things up on the technological side. Take your time to explore our site. But it should be time spent looking and browsing, not waiting for pages slowly appearing block by block. And that's our job here: Provide you with a fast website while not neglecting good product images and an overall pleasant visual appearance and functionality.

Now, what is JAREEYA doing to provide you with a great online experience?

The main factor is that our website is entirely built in-house, with only the absolute minimum of external plug-ins. Not only saves this a lot of costs associated with tasking this to an experienced website developer, but it also means we know our website in and out. Something needs changing? Something wrong? No problem, any updates and fixes are quickly made. We also refrain from pre-built websites or website building tools: The generated code is cluttered with junk which causes unnecessary delays and potentially decreased functionality.

To make sure you get a fast and responsive site, we test pages with tools like google's pagespeed and others. This gives useful insights as to what components of a website cause delays. Obviously, a website's speed also depends on where it is physically hosted and from where you try to access it. The day this article was published, our website www.jareeya.com managed a very fast load time of under 1 second from a server in Sweden! This takes it into the category of the fastest websites around and the speeds within the UK should be even higher (our website is hosted on a server in London). However, the actual speed depends on your own internet connection and may be slower than 1 second.

We streamlined our checkout process: You can see what is in your cart, make any changes to it and then go through the normal steps of checkout all on the same page! If you pay with debit or credit card, the entire checkout is done on the same page as your basket and shaves off seconds of the payment process (after all, paying is not the most exciting moment during your visit, so let's keep this quick and simple – while maintaining high security standards). But you do not need to worry that you click the wrong button and accidentally pay for something you do not like: The checkout process is hidden until you are ready to go through it.

Did you know that two pictures that look identical are not necessarily the same? Photos you shoot with your digital cameras include so called meta-data: Data that saves further details about the image, for example date and time photo taken, exposure length, user information, etc. These is extra data that would be loaded by the webserver but is of no use to the viewer. The same picture can also be represented by different file formats, each having its own particular benefits and drawbacks. Images on JAREEYA's website strip out redundant data, uses the best file format for its purpose and compresses images for the best balance of fast loading times and maintaining high quality.

Currently, JAREEYA's website gets good results in google's pagespeed tool (not top grade, but all in the “green” area). JAREEYA's in-house web-developer managed to get sites reaching the 100 mark (out of 100), but for our case we will need to settle on slightly lower scores: Just because google tells you what is best and fastest does not translate into the best solution for you as our customer. We still have some improvements to do, even though our website is in a very good and fast state already. Yet we continue to optimise and fine-tune – we never settle with good being good enough and strive to bring you the very best ;-)

Looking forward to welcoming you to an even faster site,

Your JAREEYA-Team

Zodiac Pendants

Zodiacs are a well known symbol in most cultures and an all-time favourite as a pendant. But have you ever wondered where their origin lies?

Nowadays, the twelve zodiacs or signs are associated with astrology, but it was also used in astronomy by the ancient Greek. The zodiac is a circle consisting of twelve equal divisions, with each division measuring 30°. These divisions are centered upon the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun as seen from Earth, across the celestial sphere during a year. In other words, the zodiac was a celestial coordinate system. Each of the

twelve divisions has an animal assigned to it, but because the divisions are regular, the star constellation do not correspond precisely to each of the twelve parts of the circle.

The word “zodiac” comes from the Latin word zodiacus, which itself derives from the Greek zodiakos kyklos (translated “circle of animals”). Half of the constellations in the zodiac circle are named after animals and therefore the name of “circle of animals” was derived.

Each zodiac also has a gemstone associated with it, in which case they are normally referred to as birthstones. The allocation varies between countries and cultures and also saw changes in the course of history.

The twelve zodiacs in ascending order (from 0° to 330°) are listed in the following table:

	Latin Name	English name
1	Aries	Ram
2	Taurus	Bull
3	Gemini	Twins
4	Cancer	Crab
5	Leo	Lion
6	Virgo	Maiden
7	Libra	Scales
8	Scorpio	Scorpion
9	Sagittarius	(Centaur) Archer
10	Capricorn	“Goat-horned”
11	Aquarius	Water-Bearer
12	Pisces	Fish

So far for the background of the zodiac signs.

Similar to Initial Pendants, Zodiac Pendants make a great gift which is well received and it's hard to go wrong with it – as long as you know the zodiac of the presentee. To allow you to quickly find the right one for you, we created a dedicated page on our website for zodiac pendants, made from 18ct Yellow Gold. Because gold is a highly priced metal, the prices for the pendants vary to reflect the amount of gold used. We treat you fairly and don't want you to pay more for less.


And as always, if there is something you can not find, please do get in touch with us.


Enjoy Browsing,

Your JAREEYA team
This article was first published in the time of the Cancer, 2016

Diamond Initial Pendants

We are happy to announce that our fine selection of pendants has now been expanded to include Initial Pendants too. Available in Yellow and White Gold, set with plenty of diamonds or just a single stone for a subtle accentuation – the choice is yours to make.

Despite their small size, pendants make a great gift for a loved person. They show you care and there is less worry about whether it's to the presentee's taste – they are normally well received. Of course, they are also gender-neutral.

It's hard to guess someone's personal taste, and while some other pendants can show passion for a particular interest like boxing or golfing, an initial pendant is neutral. Since they are made of shiny and prestigious gold and are adorned with diamonds, they won't go unappreciated. They are more than a quick and cheap thoughtless present.

Unfortunately, we do not have all letters in stock at present, but we offer the most common ones. We apologise for not having your initial if your name is Xanthia, but most common names are not a problem. If you are desperate to get your own initial and can't find it, please do get in touch with us and we will see what we can do. Also, don't forget that we work together with Scottish goldsmith Andrew McCallum and any letter – albeit in a different style – will be possible. That way, we can even cater for special and Asian characters like Chinese, Japanese, Thai, etc.

To make your search easier, we created an own section for initial pendants, saving you the hassle to browse through the other available designs. You can find them in our newly created Initial Pendants Section. Enjoy browsing!


Yours,

JAREEYA

Andrew McCallum Designer Jewellery

Andrew McCallum Jewellery section complete

It is our pleasure to announce that our Andrew McCallum Designer Jewellery section is now complete. All in-stock items have now been made available and have completed product information tables. If you visited our site before, you might have noticed that some items had no information at all. This has now been fixed.

All pieces of our Andrew McCallum Designer jewellery are in stock and ready to be despatched the same working day. Each piece has been handcrafted in Scotland and is made from 92.5 Sterling Silver, with most items being hallmarked by the Assay Office of Edinburgh.

Because Andrew is manufacturing each piece himself, every item can be customised. You may have found the perfect design but you want it to be made from 18ct gold instead of silver? No problem. Let us know and we are happy to provide you with a no-obligation quote and estimated delivery time. As prices of precious metals - especially the price of gold - are constantly fluctuating, we are unable to list prices for our range in gold.

Should you wish to commission your own idea of jewellery, please do get in touch with us to discuss your requirements and give you an idea of the price and timescales. We may be able to help you in your quest to find your unique and personal piece of jewellery - something the big chains can't do.

Should you wish to find out more about Andrew McCallum and the product range, please visit our AndrewMcCallum Designer Jewellery Section on our website to explore the products on offer and read a little bit more about the master goldsmith himself.


Enjoy browsing,

JAREEYA

Welcome to JAREEYA's world

Welcome to Our Blog

Thank you for your interest in JAREEYA – a newly established brand for fine jewellery, providing you with a great selection of silver, gold diamond and gemstone jewellery. Our website is now finally live and we are working under high pressure to add the currently missing sections on our website.

Now to the WHO we are. JAREEYA is a trading name of Idin Jewellery. While Idin Jewellery is selling a wide range of fashion, children and handmade jewellery, we decided to sell fine jewellery under its own brand and dedicated website. Due to the vast range of various kinds of jewellery offered under Idin, adding a section for fine jewellery would not only make the site way too crowded but jewellery made from diamonds and precious metals deserves its own webpage and label.

We understand that the jewellery trade is a tough market. Plenty of competitors, both domestic and abroad, and some trying to get your custom by offering the lowest possible prices – most likely by compromising on quality and service; spending hundreds if not thousands of pounds on that glittering engagement ring is still a big decision for most of us; the list goes on...

So how do we differ? To start with, we don't make any claims that we re-invented jewellery or come up with an ingenious business model millions of other people failed to discover. No. We keep things simple where we can and focus on the important aspects of business: Quality and doing our utmost to excel in customer service. Although we only retail jewellery, we do take an interest in the items we are selling and continue to learn and study about the relevant subjects. The theory of retail is simple: Buy something, sell it with a mark-up. You can go and buy a diamond from somewhere and sell it on for a profit. Or anything else. We don't like this attitude particularly much but instead value a business which knows what it is talking about. Naturally, we don't know everything and don't claim so, but we never stop adding to our knowledge. And part of this blog will deal with such educational materials.

The areas we save money on is our inventory and subsequently insurance premiums we have to pay. Most of our items will be ordered from our suppliers after you made a purchase with us. As our main suppliers are based in the UK, the delay of receiving your order will be minimal; perhaps a day or two later than you would normally get your order. That's the drawback. On the plus side it is easier to customise an item for you if needed, we can pass our cost savings on to you and it is easier for us to double-check the quality of every piece before sending it out to you. We don't want you to spend money on something called a “golden diamond ring”. We want you that you know it is a 1.00ct diamond of SI clarity with H-grade colour with a good cut set in a 18ct white gold ring. Sounds confusing? Let's put it into a different way: We want you to get a genuine diamond and gold ring and the quality is exactly what you pay for.

An other way we can save unnecessary costs is that we automate repetitive tasks and in areas where computers excel over humans, while not losing the human touch. For example, our prices get regularly updated with the prices from our suppliers. Around the clock, 24/7. It's faster than having a person sitting all day in front of the screen to check prices. Time we can use to interface directly with you on a personal level, with no standard copy-and-paste replies to your messages.

Finally, we added a few "smart" features to our website that run in the background. Missing product information; missing images or images that are too large; correct pricing options... it's all done automatically in the background and we don't have to rely on our customers to report back any missing pictures or us clicking through hundreds of links to ensure our site is working as it should. Our system is taking care of this and you benefit from a better experience: something missing today can be fixed within hours.

Thank you for taking time to read through our first blog and exploring our website. If there is something you should miss, please get in touch with us and we are happy to help. Not all sections are live yet on our website, but we work hard to get the remaining categories up and running as soon as we can.


Best wishes,

JAREEYA