Gemport: A New Spot, A New Start?

's 42-year-run at 240 Fort Salonga Road is over.

Facing dwindling profits and rising operating costs, owner Jerome Sellick decided not to renew his lease after it expired at the end of the year.

For a while, it looked like Gemport would close altogether, too, following a clearance sale. But Sellick was able to rent out a building neraby at 691 Fort Salonga Road just days before the old location was going to close. With affordable rent costs, and a lot of jewelry left to sell, he decided to continue. The store can be accessed from Laurel Avenue near the , as well.

Gemport was founded in 1969 by Sellick's father-in-law, Clem Reseska, who originally owned a warehouse on the lot where Gemport was located. Clem took up gemology as a hobby at first, making small rings that he could sell to truck drivers whose trucks he loaded. But the jewelry quickly became more profitable.

“He would load the trucks for $30, and they had 30 days to pay,” said Sellick. “It would take him two or three hours to load the truck. Then the driver would come in to sign the invoices, and he’d see the rings, and he’d buy them for $150. After it happened a couple of times, [Clem] was like, ‘What, am I nuts?’ ”

Once he realized how profitable his jewelry business was, Clem took the steps to become a gemologist and converted his warehouse into a 3,800-square-foot jewelry store. Three of his daughters later joined him in the family business. One became a jeweler, one a gemologist, and one a bead stringer).

About 25 years ago, when Clem wanted to retire, he approached Sellick to take over. But Sellick, who was concerned that his lack of experience in the industry would hurt him once he took over, initially refused.

“I told [Clem] I didn’t know anything about jewelry,” he said. “But I was running a couple of businesses at the time, and he said ‘You know the business end. You could learn about the jewelry.’ ”

Clem convinced him, and Sellick took over as manager. Ten years later, he and his wife Jeanne bought the business from Clem and his wife, and they've owned it ever since.

One of the unique ways Gemport drew customers was that it doubled as a museum for a long time. Local families and youth groups would get tours of the store's extensive collection of fossils, dinosaur eggs, dinosaur footprints, and minerals.

"It would be packed," said Sellick. "People would come just to look. It was good advertising. They would eventually come back when they did need a piece of jewelry. That's what made us different."

For a while, things went well. Local residents were able to get top-quality jewelry for much cheaper prices than at high-end stores like Tiffany's. At the turn of the century, Gemport was taking in over a million dollars a year in business. But things started to turn soon after that.

Sellick saw the signs as far back as 2000. “The first thing that happens is that all of the cash disappears,” he said. “People stop spending cash. It’s amazing. Everything becomes credit cards or checks. That’s the first sign that a recession is coming.”

At the time, it didn’t seem like it would be anything out of the ordinary. “Every ten years or so you have a recession,” said Sellick. “What happens then is business goes down maybe 2 or 3 percent. It’s like that for two, three years at most.”

But Sellick and the rest of the country couldn’t prepare for the tragic events of 9/11. Sellick pointed to the attacks as the starting point for a decline that he could never stabilize. “It was a slow process,” he said, “but it was just a continuous downturn.”

The slight downturn accelerated about five years ago, when the economy started to take a turn for the worse. Gold prices rose from $300 an ounce to $1400 an ounce. Previous declines that were two and three percent became upwards of 20 and 30 percent.

“Everybody just started buying light,” said Sellick. “It affects everybody; the wholesalers, the people who are buying from other countries, the people from Italy who make a lot of the gold. It’s like a ripple effect.”

The small-market jewelry industry saw profits slashed dramatically once the market hit, a sign that their typical customers were forced to cut back. The high-end jewelry stores, however, came through relatively unscathed. “They’re still doing business because a lot of people with money who will buy in those places,” said Sellick. “The jewelry industry was one of the few places left where there were smaller businesses that were able to be competitive. This economy has taken a lot of the jewelry stores out.”

Sellick's initial solution was to invest in the area around Gemport (which he also owned) in the hopes of building a shopping center. But his plans were thwarted when Northport Village issued a two-year moritarium on building permits along 25A. That wait, along with the standard three-to-four year wait for a permit, was too long to bear.

“We had the site plans done,” he said. “We spent money on surveys. A lot of money was already put into it. I had the site plans, right down to where all the shrubs were going to be, but they weren’t accepting applications for 25A.”

With a good offer in place, Sellick made the decision to sell the surrounding area while keeping his store. “I figured I would ride it out, and that the economy in three years would start to turn, and that I could go back to where we were,” he said.

But business got worse, not better, and Sellick had no choice but to give up his store as well. He still had items to sell, though, so he looked for a new location to continue his clearance sale, and found one that suited him. “The rent is affordable,” he said. “It’s close to where I was. It’s still on 25A.”

The plan for Sellick, at least for now, is to continue the clearance sale that he started during the holidays at the old location. After that, the future is unclear. The new store could become a new permanent home, or the clearance sale could be just a temporary stay, with him out of business altogether at the end of it.

“Stuff is being priced to sell,” Sellick said. “I want to sell it off as much as possible. But if I find that I still have customers coming in, and that there is still an interest, we might stay. We’ll see how it goes over the next few months.”

He did see a good sign at his old store during the holidays. “A lot of people were coming in,” he said. “I didn’t know if they were coming in because it was a 'Going out of Business' sale or because it was the holidays. From other jewelry stores and from other people I’ve spoken to, this was a positive Christmas.”

If he does continue, he expects to turn his store into more of a discount jeweler. “That’s definitely not what Gemport was,” he said. “We just sold really high-end, beautiful stuff. But I found that when we did discounting, we were really busy. In this economy, people are looking to save money. If I can get stuff that’s affordable, so that people can still get interesting pieces at a price that’s not going to kill them, that’s what I’m going to try to do.”

Gemport's new hours at 691 Fort Salonga Road are Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10am to 5pm.