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Business & Tech

Owner Says Destiny Wanted Diamond Shop in Clayton

Thom Kohn, owner of The Diamond Shop, explains how a century-old family business located in a 100-year-old Clayton building has stayed successful through the years.

The Diamond Shop is nestled in a century-old whitewashed brick building between and . Owner Thom Kohn’s father, Joseph, moved the store from downtown St. Louis City to its Clayton location in 1986 because, in his son’s words, the elder Kohn fell in love with the neighborhood.

While The Diamond Shop itself is more than a century old, the Kohn family didn’t take over until the late 1940s. Before World War II, Joseph Kohn worked in a jewelry store. When he returned from serving his country, he was eager to pick up where he left off.

“My dad is a tremendous people person, so sales came naturally to him,” Thom Kohn said. “Back then, you either did manual labor or you wore a suit. Jewelry has some glamor to it, some elegance, so he was drawn to it.”

About a year after his return from World War II, Thom Kohn said, his father asked his boss if he could become a partner in the business. His sales were up to his pre-war figures, and he had a stable of loyal customers.

The store owner told Joseph that wasn’t possible: His daughter had married while Joseph was in Europe, and now his new son-in-law needed the work to provide for his family.

Meanwhile, during his lunch breaks, Joseph moonlighted at another store: The Diamond Shop. He relieved sales people during their lunch hours.

“In those days, you got a buck, maybe a buck and a quarter an hour. My dad had a family of his own by then, and he couldn’t afford not to work through lunch,” Thom Kohn said.

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Eventually, all of the The Diamond Shop owner’s children decided to go into professions other than jewelry. That meant no family members were available to carry on the business. The owner knew Joseph’s grandfather and was impressed with Joseph’s charisma and determination, so he offered him a chance to take over the business.

“It was such an opportunity," Thom Kohn said. "My dad said he didn’t have anything saved up. The owner told him to go take another look at his finances and see what he could scrape together, and they’d figure something out."

Joseph Kohn took over the store a few years before mid-century dawned. In the more than 30 years that followed, The Diamond Shop stayed in its original downtown location.

In 1986, the son-in-law of Joseph’s old boss asked him to help negotiate the purchase of the building at 12 N. Central Ave.

Joseph held no hard feelings about the job he had once been denied, Thom Kohn said, and he fell in love with both the neighborhood and Clayton.

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“He said it was what downtown St. Louis used to be,” Thom Kohn said.

But despite Joseph’s successful negotiations, something kept holding up the purchase. The son-in-law told Joseph he was waiting on the bank to approve the loan. When Joseph talked to the bank, he discovered that the loan had long since been denied.

Joseph decided to buy the building himself and reopen The Diamond Shop in Clayton.

“It all ended up full circle,” Thom Kohn said.

The building's age isn't a problem because it has been well maintained, he said. Today, he’s just as in love with the building and the neighborhood as his father was in 1986.

These days, Thom Kohn runs The Diamond Shop with the help of his wife, Mona, and his mother, Sirose. He spent years as a professional jeweler before joining the family business. He said he always knew he would work in jewelry, even when he tried to be a rebellious teenager during the 1970s.

“I went through a teenage rebellion phase where I had my own turquoise business," Thom Kohn said. "I’d travel out west, going to reservations, and trade rough stone for finished jewelry.”

In 1980, he founded a fashion-forward jewelry business called TK Enterprises and designed his own jewelry. For the next six years, he traveled the country making custom design pieces targeted at people who couldn’t afford older antiques but wanted vintage flair with modern materials.

When Joseph reopened The Diamond Shop in 1986, Thom Kohn joined him at the new Clayton location and took over after his father’s retirement. Today, in addition to managing the store, he continues to create original and innovative jewelry under his own line.

One of the secrets to The Diamond Shop’s popularity is its ability to work around any customer needs, Thom Kohn said. He’s currently using his design expertise to create a ring within a ring.

“This girl’s mom unfortunately passed away," Thom Kohn said. "She wants to preserve her mother’s solitaire, not change it in any way or fashion, but also wants to update the look so it appears to be a three-stone ring. We can’t touch the original.”

His solution? Creating a custom clamshell ring that encapsulates the original and lets the features of the original shine through.

“It’s a challenge," he said, chuckling.

At the moment, Thom Kohn has a passion for pearls in his own designs. “A sphere is very sexy," he said. "You can do a lot with it. A lot of girls think of pearls as their grandmother's jewelry, but the look, what we can do with them now, is totally different.”

Thom Kohn said he knows that going into a jewelry store can be stressful for young men looking to get engaged, so he puts games on the big screen and offers the guys beer instead of the traditional soft music and wine.

“We’re a family business," he said. "Whatever people need, we want them to feel comfortable here.”

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