While travelling through Albuquerque, New Mexico, we usually order and pick up needed jewelry wire, findings, chains or other things needed for our business. Rio Grande is my go-to supplier for all my jewelry making supplies, and has been for years. Originally a Trading Post on historic Route 66 it has grown to be one of the largest suppliers for the jewelry trade in the world.

A history of Rio Grande can be found here: https://www.riogrande.com/ad/History-of-Rio

This year, through prior arrangement we got a special tour of the business from Executive VP, Molly Bell. Her father, Saul Bell, was the founder of the business (read link above). we were humbled that Molly would take time from her busy day to proudly show off the business to us. Much of the work done inside the plant is proprietary, so we did not take photos. You will just have to trust me when I say we were overwhelmed by what we saw inside.

Some of the jewelry making devices were custom designed and made on site. They are sold around the world to other companies. Much of the findings and jewelry is made on site by very skilled craftspeople, who are recruited from mostly America, but some skilled people come from other countries. Rio employs around 300, the majority that have been there over 20 years. This is an impressive statistic that Molly was proud of. Keeping their employees happy is their number one priority. Even though Warren Buffett’s Berkshire-Hathaway Group purchased Rio Grande last year, the leadership and the workers have not changed. The fact that Berkshire-Hathaway bought the company is a testimate to how good Rio is.

We toured areas that were creating lost wax findings and jewelry (I loved the wax trees ready for extrusion), saw banks of ovens and extrusion machines, saw the inventory and shipping areas, where employees wear hi-tech headphones or computers attached to their arms to assure order accuracy. We saw the area where my phone orders are taken by real American Citizens that you can understand. We saw the shipping area where thousands of orders are shipped each day. A UPS semi trailer is filled each day, is addition to Fed-Ex and USPS orders (How they keep everything straight is beyond me).

My personal favorite area was where all my jewelry wire is cut. The wire itself is not manufactured at Rio, but is was mind boggling seeing all the spools filled with shiny precious metal.

The care the Rio employees exhibited was remarkable. I had no idea all the things they do in their plant. The gallery wire machine intrigued me, as it punched out this fancy bezel wire. I do not use sheets of precious metal, but I saw the care the employees take to keep them scratch free.

At Snob Appeal Jewelry we pride ourselves in knowing our gemstones, as well as out materials we use in making your jewelry. By touring the source of much of our wire and chain and many of our findings; we can better answer our customers questions. Thanks to Molly Bell and all the great American workers at Rio Grande, I feel so much better about our truly American Made Jewelry. Quality is what we do, and it was obvious quality is what Rio Grande does also.