LKI's main business activity is cutting and polishing "ideal-cut" and "fine make" diamonds, which it sells to upscale retail jewelers throughout the world.

By focusing on people rather than product, we broke the mold of the traditional retail jeweler, offering customers a look at themselves in a very attractive way.

That's what happened to a retail jeweler in a start up business in a small midwestern town.

Ratners already owns Sterling Inc., a large American retail jeweler it purchased three years ago for about $200 million.

Canadian diamonds are tracked from mine, through the refining process to the retail jeweler with a unique diamond identification number (DIN) laser inscribed on the diamond's girdle.

Psi Prime, Inc is a web programming firm specializing in building websites for retail jewelers in New York City.

As a consequence, many retail jewelers refer to Blue Nile as the "evil empire" - or worse.

One major undertaking is by Lazare Kaplan International, which sells the Lazare diamond through retail jewelers.

The Jewelers of America's annual business survey of independent retail jewelers showed an average sales growth of 9.3 percent for 1998.

A retail jeweler in the building, Jonathan Itzakov, 23, the president of Star Light Diamond, acknowledged that security was less strict than usual yesterday.