S3-06: Tony Rodrigues, Sculpting Jewelry in Scale

Master goldsmith Tony Rodrigues is a 3D-manufacturing jewelry legend, the Vice President of Product Development for William Henry and co-founder of ZBrush Jewelry Workshop. An early adapter of CAD, Tony has been pushing boundaries and sharing strategies on sketching, sculpting, modeling and printing intricate jewelry designs. His detailed, sought-after pieces are worn by celebrities like Richie Ramone and even included a Vatican-certified remnant from the crucifixion cross. With detailed focus and limitless software applications, Tony shares, “I couldn’t possibly make everything I’ve ever thought of making.” Nor would he trade his career for any other. This For the Love of Jewelers podcast episode provides a candid glimpse of a down-to-earth jeweler who takes on artistic challenges because there is no other place he’d rather be. 

Transcript

Courtney Gray:

Welcome to For the Love of Jewelers, a podcast brought to you by Rio Grande Jewelry Supply, and hosted by yours truly, Courtney Gray. Now in our third season, we celebrate the unconditional strength driven by our passion to create, and the motivating factors that enable us to adapt. We recognize the relevance and resilience of the jewelry industry through inspirational stories that challenge and honor its makers. Our journey, although unchartered, is one we are on together. Let's pause, share, and discover the variety of silver linings gained from each personal story of innovation and determination.

Courtney Gray:

Master goldsmith and jewelry design junkie, Tony Rodrigues is currently the vice president of product development for William Henry and an award-winning jewelry designer. He was born and raised in Hinsdale, IL, a suburb of Chicago to Portuguese immigrant parents—one an artist and the other an engineer. After five years of honing his skills, Tony continued his career as the Midwest regional manager of jewelry repair and design for Nordstrom department store. He spent four years with them, overseeing the repair shop, working with merchandising on Nordstrom private label, his own label designs and custom jewelry. Tony left Nordstrom to open his own design studio gallery. In that same year, he became an early adopter of CAD/CAM, which forever changed his approach to design and the manufacturing of fine jewelry. Tony went on the become the design director of Paragon Lake, now called Gemvara. In 2013 Tony and Tomas Wittelsbach joined the William Henry team and helped bring them into the world of jewelry. Since that time Tony has expanded his role to designing, prototyping and creating the production pipeline for William Henry products. Alongside Tomas Wittelsbach, Eric Keller and Henry Williams, Tony co-founder ZBrush Jewellry Workshop—an online educational platform where members can take an idea from concept to production. We begin. 

Courtney Gray:

Hey guys. Welcome back to For the Love of Jewelers today, we have Tony Rodrigues with us. Hey Tony, welcome.

Tony Rodrigues:

Hey there, glad to be here.

Courtney Gray:

Tony is vice president of product development of William Henry Jewelry and co-founder of ZBrush Jewellry Workshop. And I would say that's only the tip of the iceberg. I'm excited to have Tony with us today to share all of his history and just his jewelry journey in general is fascinating.

We'll try to keep this one to an hour, but I don't know. Once we get talking, Tony, we'll see. Tell us the first experience with jewelry and what pulled you to this particular industry?

Tony Rodrigues:

So I grew up in the Midwest first generation American. My parents are from Portugal. My mom was a ceramic artist and my dad was an entrepreneur. And so I was exposed to art from the earliest times. But I was a math prodigy and got pushed to math science all through grade school and high school. High school specifically, I went to an all guys, Catholic boarding military school. They didn't believe really in art as a benefit to you as far as getting a job.

                So when I got to college, it was interesting. I was in my dorm room and I looked down on the floor and it was a broken floor tile at the time. This is the early 1980s. I was dating a girl who was worked for Saks Fifth Avenue and she was hardcore into... We went to punk clubs and new wave stuff, and these triangular pieces, and I started playing with them and different juxtapositions.

                And then, I got out a big pen and drilled some holes through moon in a notebook and broke glass. The spiral notebook made jump rings out of that and created this singular earring, which then I got a post and she started wearing this out to clubs and actually was offered at one point $1,500 from somebody in a club for this earring. And that was when I went, "Oh, that's interesting."

                A couple years later on a bicycle trip across country, my friends had an accident wiped out and this, truck almost hit us. And these four girls in this car spun their car around and stopped. And my friend who's swearing and yelling about his bike and these girls I'm like, "Oh, hey girls, what are you up to?" And they were on their way to a jewelry party. And that idea stuck in my head.

                So later on, as an independent as... When I started actually making jewelry, which came after finishing college with a Philosophy degree, I traveled around to Europe for an entire summer and then realized I wanted to focus on art. And I started doing large scale wood sculptures and doing furniture pieces where I would find half broken furniture and then take it, refinish that, and then design the rest of it in a more contemporary style.

                And then one day in the adjacent studio, a girl came in and started talking about her studio. And I walked over and it was jewelry. And I went, "Oh, this really interesting. I can stop trying to get grants and sell these large things." And this makes perfect sense, sculpture, that's miniature and saleable, and I could make a living. So, those are kind of my-

Courtney Gray:

And so it began?

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

I love the punk rock earrings from the binder, really Tony. So you've been designing since.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. Correct.

Courtney Gray:

Just naturally from an early age…

Tony Rodrigues:

I mean, when I was in high school, it was another weird story. I'd a friend who he was in driver's ed and there was this crayon drawing of this weird amalgamation of some Quetzalcoatl bird and something else. And it really freaked him out and he brought it back to our dorm room and to calm him down, I took coat hangers and made a bird cage and a perch, and we locked this cartoon drawing in a cage. So he felt way he felt better.

But we used to... There were four of us in our dorm room and we would engineer things with the light switch. So, I've always been the engineering design side comes out of the math, but then that left, right brain has always been something that I've been able to jump back and forth too pretty easily.

Courtney Gray:

Business design.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

And that's guided me through, through my careers and landed me different jobs because of my ability to communicate with both communities. There are people who are like, "Artists? Artists drive me nuts." And it's like the real business people.

Courtney Gray:

Right.

Tony Rodrigues:

So if you can manage both worlds, it's a benefit.

Courtney Gray:

It's definitely a strength, right? A rare strength. You're lucky.

Tony Rodrigues:

I do feel lucky.

Courtney Gray:

I mean, it's gotten you all kinds of experience from was it designing for... Excuse me, for Nordstrom, now William Henry. You've been with William Henry for nine years?

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. Nine years. When I first started, I was doing primarily hand fabrication, a bit of casting got into. There was a great professor at this little junior college that I started making jewelry at. He didn't know a tremendous about making jewelry, but he just had this enthusiasm, this excitement about anything you did and made, and it bolstered your confidence and trying different things and experimenting because there was no instruction at the time.

                I think the only book I had was one from Harold O'Connor, maybe Tim McCreight’s. It was just a lot of trial and error. And we get access to the studio as long as you volunteered. So you could go in 24 hours a day. And I just immersed myself. I was doing every day, probably 12 to 16 hours in the studio, just playing and making stuff. And rather quickly got into probably took me about three months. And I got into some galleries in the Chicago suburbs in the Chicago and started making some money, which was nice. And then, from that professor, he had a former student who he recommended me to, and I reluctantly went and went to this jewelry store.

Courtney Gray:

Reluctantly?

Tony Rodrigues:

I really wasn't ready to have a job and do that, but it turned out to be a great experience. The man who I worked with for five years, it was really a very low paying, I was getting... I got paid $4.25 an hour when I could get $6 at the bagel place.

Courtney Gray:

Right. Oh, man.

Tony Rodrigues:

So that was-

Courtney Gray:

And free bagels.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

I got to carve waxes, cast, hand fabricate, set stones, and in five years I had garnered enough knowledge to really be good enough to get hired by Nordstrom to run their jewelry repair for the Midwest, which was when I left, I think we were at 12 or 13 stores and doing custom designs for both the fine and fashion. And then, for their high end customers doing one-offs. So, that was great training along with all the repair and things, those situations. Repairs one of the best ways to learn. Anybody who at scoffs doing repairs doesn't want to do them. I think you're missing opportunities to learn.

Courtney Gray:

To learn. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

It is a bit scary when somebody gives you something very expensive and there's a potential to screw it up. But what you'll gain from that experience is priceless.

Courtney Gray:

Well, dissecting something, taking it apart, putting it back together, it's a whole different level of learning.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

You're right. Yeah. Well, that's quite a training. I mean, just to walk right into Nordstrom repair, that's pretty... I think for a lot of us that would be like, "Wow, Tony, what are you doing to... What do you attribute that to?"

Tony Rodrigues:

I think it was just the type of work that I had been doing and the volume of it gave me the skillset. I mean, there was when Nordstrom, when that job was supposed to start, they had some issues. And I found myself in November and not having a job going to start up. And I took a job for three months in Wisconsin and Madison. Wisconsin, I would commute. Had two little children at home, left my wife there. I'm like, I have the easy part. I just have to go and work, but I made a deal with them that I would take... We would split everything a third, third for them, a third for the shop and a third for me. And I was able to 50, 60 ring sizing’s a day doing setting 10 to 15 stones, carving a wax, all these things every day except on Sundays.

                And I made almost $60,000 in three months. And this is 25, 30 years ago. It was real money, life changing money. And then my job at Nordstrom started and it was... So that was a good warmup going into that, along with my previous experience. And Nordstrom, we would get 10, 12 stores and up to 60 people from each store on a daily basis. So it came in handy to have some computer background and a little bit of programming and I set up databases to track everything. Initially they wanted it all tracked on a notebook on paper.

Courtney Gray:

Oh dear.

Tony Rodrigues:

It was insane.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. Oh yeah. I can imagine, I guess that's part of too, why you ended up working on the website for saying Paragon Lake.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Now Gemvara, right?

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. So, when the next generation of Nordstrom boys took over, they eliminated customer service, a bunch of the customer service departments, and we were considered customer service. The good thing was they gave me a huge payoff. After Nordstrom, I had started my own jewelry store called the Hidden Gem, which was a clever name my wife came up with. And that was around 1999, 2000. After a brief period, I came across through a friend Gemvision and Matrix. And after in the first... So it was in 2000, I bought Matrix and a Revo Mill. And that was my first employee and got into doing CAD. And that for me, was life changing in terms of... I’d have been carving… I'd be at work all day and then at the end of the workday, I'd carve waxes and then set them up, invest.

                And I was doing this and it was killing me. Now I could do my design, throw it in the mill and go home.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

It was huge-

Courtney Gray:

Life changing.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. And then 2008 happened. I decided I would go to different events and was always the wallflower 2008. I sensed a shift before it really happened and decided to really hunker down on my CAD skills and focus there. The same time my marriage was ending. So I was looking for something to energize myself. And I went to an event and with the idea that I was going to say, instead of going, "Oh, I love my job and everything's great." I was going to go and say, "No, here's what I am. Here's what I can do." And literally, I met somebody who was the CEO, founder of Paragon Lake. When they started, they wanted to take somebody's sketch, pencil sketch to CAD design in 24 hours and then fulfillment within a few days. And they got-

Courtney Gray:

Wow.

Tony Rodrigues:

... They were connected with a company in LA and they got funding initially $500,000 and then $7 million. And then ultimately they got, I think it was $50 something million.

Courtney Gray:

Wow.

Tony Rodrigues:

So, I was brought in to... They had shifted how they wanted to do. And I was brought in as the design director to corral designers, into putting their designs up on a site as opposed to generating them for each client. They wanted to have a virtual display case is what they called it. And that was a challenge. The jewelry industry, especially at that time, there's so many people still didn't want to share their knowledge and felt like somebody was going to steal their design. They overvalued their product is what they did. And they lost out because the people who did sign on made really good money through that.

                And I did that for three years. Basically the idea was to take them from B to B, to B, to C and get their next funding. When I left Paragon Lake, I spent the next three years basically doing stuff on my own, traveling around the country, visiting artists and jewelers and hanging out and trying to figure out where I wanted to focus my skills. I was working on stuff at home. I had a home studio and but I wasn't trying to sell it. I would do some contract CAD for people to keep things going, but I was picked up hand engraving and another, worked on another skill set. The most fun is when we would have in store in Chicago. I was living in Chicago at the time. And I would throw an annual party and invite 30 or 40 jewelry artists. And I missed those days and supposedly in stores coming back.

Courtney Gray:

Yay!

Tony Rodrigues:

So, we'll see.

Courtney Gray:

Oh, that'll be so amazing. Yeah. Well, I think that's important, getting out in the community and getting face to face with everybody. I know you do quite a bit of that, still traveling.

Tony Rodrigues:

I try to.

Courtney Gray:

Well, now that we can. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. I try to intersect with jewelers, stores, trade shows, get the feel the pulse of what's going on in the world. After doing that for three years Tomas Wittelsbach who's a dear friend, he and I spent a lot of time together, hanging out and he was always complaining nobody could produce his jewelry. And there was a competition from the Palladium Alliance where they would give you three ounces, they'd pay for three ounces of Palladium if you were selected of one of a hundred pieces, they chose. I had a piece chosen. And at the time he was working for Green Lake Jewelry Works with Jim Tuttle up in Seattle. They had submitted, I think it was 40 designs from the whole team. And 10 of them were Thomas's and seven of his were selected in 20 of theirs total.

Courtney Gray:

Wow.

Tony Rodrigues:

And I jokingly said, "Oh, Jim, I'll come out and give you a hand." He's like, "Would you?"

Courtney Gray:

Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

And I flew out and hung out with, and worked with his team there and did some CAD for them, but then orchestrated a bunch of the pieces. And there was a particular one, this palladium watch that I only had... We had it cast... Theresa, cast the palladium for us, but I had to build and create the clasp, the lobster and do the crystal and tried about five days to do that. And out of that, Tomas had been trying to work with Matt Conable at William Henry on a project. And we had stopped by to see the studio in Oregon. And with the idea of... We were talking about doing a group project where some of my great artist friends, we would each do a little bit of work on something and documented, and then auction it off. And Matt was like, "That's great. I'd love to invest in that. But you seem to be the missing link to getting his work into the real world." And that was when we decided to work with each other.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. You mean you and Tomas or [inaudible 00:17:36].

Tony Rodrigues:

Tomas.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Me, Tomas and William Henry.

Courtney Gray:

William Henry.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. Tomas, actually I had the privilege of interviewing him in season one of this podcast.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

So look back and you can hear from Tomas. Yeah. I think I that's when I met you both, I think together. Yeah, traveling. Well, what a cool history. It's so interesting how to hear how it all played out for you and continues to... It's like just show up and meet people basically, and continue to grow your skills and things tend to fit together when the timing's right.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. I think for me, it's like, I've been doing this a long time and when I started designing stuff, the stuff I would design was ridiculous. It can't be made, I think, and that's a common. You just start drawing things and you're very wishful, but you realize quickly that the more you expand your skillset, you don't need to start dreaming about stuff. You can target those skills to what you can make and the more skills you have, the broader and the more options you have and what you can produce.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. You picked up CAD, you were a early, early adopter of CAD.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

That was the beginning-

Tony Rodrigues:

There were like-

Courtney Gray:

... For jewelry trade.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. I went to Gemvision’s first symposium in Chicago, and there were like 50 of us there.

Courtney Gray:

Wow. Small.

Tony Rodrigues:

It was a very small community. It was a little... The people had signed on, there was more than that, but there was a point and it wasn't that many years later where there were maybe when you're talking about 2005 to 2008, maybe there were 50 competent jewelry CAD people in the country if not... Now, there are tons and there's different software available that's developed. And now most of my work and Tomas too, we work in ZBrush, which is digital clay. From having carved waxes for 15 years and carving that and being a jeweler, that transition was fairly easy for me. And also, being involved with software and programs, ZBrush is a little intimidating when you first open the interface, but there are ways around that and minimizing the pain of learning.

Courtney Gray:

The learning curve. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

So it was used primarily... Well, correct me if I'm wrong, a movie production. I know Tomas talked about working on Batman and-

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

... Different movies that required a lot of that sculptural background.

Tony Rodrigues:

It started as a 2.5D program. And then, once it developed into 3D, it was primarily used for animation, for gaming, for film, for special effects, all that. It wasn't until... It was probably around that at same time, probably around 2008, 2007, 2008, somewhere in there where people were actually able to make real world objects, things like CNC Milling and 3D printers had been around for a period. They weren't affordable. But the first jewelry object, Tomas likes to take credit for that in around 2008 where he had... Through a variety using multiple software was able to get an STL where he could... He'd do it on his Revo Mill. Since then, the software’s only gotten better. Now you don't need any other software. You could literally sketch, sculpt and take to production right out of ZBrush. It's very nice.

Courtney Gray:

There's like a 2022 update, right? Is it updated a year?

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. They've been updating... ZBrush is now 20 years old.

Courtney Gray:

Okay.

Tony Rodrigues:

But it gets updated fairly regularly. They're constantly adding new features. And then they're very open to... Even though jewelry's not their biggest source of income. We developed relationships with Tomas for a long time and also one of my other business partners, Eric Keller. So from the education side, Tomas, Eric Keller, Henry Williams, myself, we founded ZBrush Jewelry Workshop, an educational platform online to teach jewelry focused with the use of ZBrush. So the company picks a logic that makes Zbrush has always been very open to taking guidance from us and adding features. And then whenever new features come out, we do videos that target how that can apply to jewelry. So exciting times.

Courtney Gray:

Amazing. That is very exciting. I just love seeing that it's still growing, it's going to be new features added probably moving forward. I'm sure. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Oh yeah. There's always requests for new stuff and we're happy that they accommodate, but the applications as they keep growing and adding these features, it just opens up so much more CAD. When I started doing CAD, for a lot of people, it was very clunky, blocky, they're like, "Oh, that's a CAD model." Luckily for me, I was able to very early on figure out ways to make them look more organic. I did a lot of stuff with flows on curves that allowed me to produce stuff that didn't look so CAD. And now that ZBrush is opening up so much more organic sculpting, although you can do hard model surfacing in it very easily and have that more say an art deco, blocky looking piece, more geometric, but the ability to add accents in detail now just opens up so much more in terms of design possibilities.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. I remember when it was first being talked about more in the industry and it seemed like it was more of a sculptural approach, but you're saying you can do both.

Tony Rodrigues:

I think the thing is understanding how the models actually are built. So, a lot of people would see tutorials and they were based on film or animation or gaming. And that's the exact opposite way you want to build a model for jewelry because they're... And once you realize that and understand that, and we've tried to make that more open to people and educate them that way. But once you get there, it's like, "Oh, this makes so much more sense and I can actually easily do this." And everything has gotten with the tools has made that process easier too.

Courtney Gray:

Nice. Well, what would you say to those of us who maybe don't have a strength like you do as far as the math and the computer background, is it something that is attainable for?

Tony Rodrigues:

Oh yeah. Pixelogic offers a strip down versions. I can't remember the name of it, they've got... But they have a one that's it's really easy to get into.

Courtney Gray:

And the basic intro?

Tony Rodrigues:

There's a basic and they do free versions where it's stripping down the interface to just less tools. If you know and understand a handful of commands and a few brushes and it sit down... The hardest part for most people is sitting down and figuring out how to work with a Wacom pen and making things move around in scale. But literally if somebody explains that to you, which we do very succinctly in some of our videos and you take about 10 minutes of practice, you will get it. And then from there, having an understanding of a handful of tools, you can start playing in it. ZBrush does a summit every year, at least they used to do it live in LA and there'd be about 2000 people there from all over the world.

                These artists would come in and we brought actually some people from Rio Grande to that and who had no design CAD and sat them down. And it was had them playing with ZBrush. And they're like, "Oh my God, this is amazing. This is a game changer. This is something totally unique." And I think, there's so many things on YouTube and people having classes and there's all these techniques. And the thing that always disappoints me, you'll see a select few that really rise and look unique, but then you see this, "Okay, somebody's taught a technique and everything starts to look that way." And that was the way CAD started at first.

Courtney Gray:

Right.

Tony Rodrigues:

But I think with a program like ZBrush, it's only limited by your imagination.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. It's very painterly design. I mean, the things that Tomas, for example, my gosh, I mean really intricate, just amazing sculptural work. Is there a good source we can send people to go see, like what's possible with Zbrush? I mean, I know they have the website of course, but whose work should we look at, to get a feel for what's possible?

Tony Rodrigues:

So Eric Keller, to me, he's a great example of... So Eric literally wrote the first book on Maya and ZBrush and he teaches at Gnomon school and he took our class that we had before we did the workshop. And he adopted our methodology and our workflow through, from what Tomas had developed. And Eric does hyper realistic things for film and medical schools. He loves entomology. He loves creatures and he does these amazing real things. And now, he's been taking his pieces and different insects. He just did the other day. He showed me a model of a horned toad that he's turned into a ring.

                So it's taking this passion of his, from these other things and turning it into jewelry. And his stuff is amazing considering... I mean, he's a highly skilled ZBrush artist, but it's his development into jewelry design is really cool to see and watch transitioning. Tomas's work obviously, if you look at this stuff that I do for William Henry that's old and been done in ZBrush.

Courtney Gray:

Okay. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

And there's a thing called Art Station. I had to think about that for a second where there's... Or a really good is through Pixelogic's website they have ZBrush gallery that people can purchase, but that's going to be a mix of all stuff.

Courtney Gray:

Applications. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

A lot of different applications.

Tony Rodrigues:

But it really opens up your mind as to what's possible.

Courtney Gray:

Very cool. I love hearing about what's possible with this and excited to see as it moves into the future. Let's talk a little bit, Tony, about your work with William Henry that you're doing, and you've been product manager all the way to VP of product development, right? Over the last nine years you mentioned?

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. So it's been nine years. I was brought to... With Tomas and I came in as a team as... I was hired as the vice president of production. So, overseeing production and initially we had Matt Conable who started the company and was a knife designer and Tomas's design work really appealed to him, but they're really very quite different. We were brought in and we started producing jewelry designs that were very Matt designs and were very Tomas and trying to blend and make that work. And from my side, it was just mainly guiding because Tomas was primarily a sculptor at that point in coming out of sculpture and had transitioned into doing some jewelry stuff. So, he and I worked closely to... So his pieces were more suited towards jewelry production.

Courtney Gray:

Function meets sculpture.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah, yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

And we came up with some pretty cool stuff.

Courtney Gray:

What I love about William Henry is it seems as though the brand is more directed towards men. I mean, I see both but the wording and the brand seem like it's very masculine, which is unusual for a jewelry company to target that.

Tony Rodrigues:

So at that point in time, nine years ago, one of the reasons I was willing to come and do this was that we were going to be focused more on as a men's brand. And that I saw the opportunities and I had been designing primarily... I had done a lot of men's jewelry over the years, but 90% or more was for women. A ton of engagement rings, a lot of fashion stuff, tons of earrings. So to get into something that was totally different and where I saw a huge opportunity for growth. When my kids were little, they started wearing like, you'd go on vacation and they'd start wearing bracelets and things that they'd get up at some tourist place. And I started seeing that transition as men, young guys were wearing more stuff. And then as they were getting older, it was the comfort level had changed, which was a signal to me that this was an opportunity for huge growth and that in opportunity to do something different.

                What I realized in the end though, that men's jewelry for me is actually harder to design than women's jewelry. Women are so much more open to what they'll wear on their body, they're not repressed. They'll like, "Oh, this is cool. I love this form. And this compliments what I'm wearing or my hair or... And I'm comfortable with that." And men have always, they struggle with that a little bit more for myself, for my parents being from Europe, I grew up having from the earliest days having gold cross, having... My grandparents gave me name sterling silver, name bracelets. And I grew up having jewelry and wearing it. So for me, I was like, "Oh, it's about time that I can start doing this more across the board for men."

Courtney Gray:

So, that is challenging though, to come up with something that's almost like an everyday piece that they can wear all the time and feel comfortable in.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

I mean, most men I've worked with don't even want to wear a wedding ring. It's just-

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

... Not used to jewelry.

Tony Rodrigues:

And you get a lot of people who just equate, it's like, "Oh, it's either got to be rocket roll or some more traditional thing that..." So it cut pigeonholes quite a bit. For us, my biggest challenge is having the initial jewelry was from two different designers has been trying to keep the brand looking like William Henry, but coming to a happy medium so that our customers that like both sides of that meet in the middle and we can continually grow.

Courtney Gray:

Keep coming back. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

That's fascinating to me to hear. I was thinking about you Tony and meeting with you today and how do you stay ahead of that? Like, you seem to have a really good intuition for industry and how it's going to shift and potentially move and open up opportunities. It's obvious, but with design it's like, don't you run out of ideas at some point? No?

Tony Rodrigues:

No. I couldn't possibly make everything I've ever thought of making. I think it's constantly evolving in terms of my approach and thought process because at a certain time I'll feel like, "Okay, I look at a lot of stuff online. I look at people. I try to keep ahead of a trend. If I see something going on, a shift, I try to keep ahead of that. And it's not easy. It's a lot of research, but most of what... A lot of my education in terms of that is just knowing your history. So, I have tons of books I'm constantly... If there's somebody who's doing a class on a period of jewelry, I'll pop in online and do that. I'm constantly reading and researching and trying to figure out ways to take some classical piece of jewelry and update it.

                Sometimes it's just a matter of blending cultural items, like these symbols and coming up with something that it seems to me that's one of the only ways to generate something that's actually feels new and fresh is to... Because when you look at certain things that have been made when they're executed well, you can keep doing that same thing. I mean, there's beautiful jewelry that you look at. And you're like, "Oh, that looks like something I've seen a thousand times. But oh my God, look at that stone and look at that craftsmanship."

Courtney Gray:

Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

And it's a really a different feel, but getting something that feels fresh is hard. And sometimes there was recently I did a ring, it's a raven ring. I didn't do it... I did it for Zbrush Jewelry Workshop. All I did to really change the look was I had seen so many animal pieces like that. And the positioning of the bird's face is always straight down the finger. And you look and look and you're like, "What the hell?" So the piece that I did, it curves over and sits in a unique way. And to me looks really cool. And so far it's sold, actually it was gifted to Richie Ramone from the Ramones, which was pretty cool.

Courtney Gray:

Oh, that's awesome.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. That's definitely a feather for your hat right there.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

What's the most wild, just outrageous piece that you've ever been a part of? Can you think of a... I'm sure there's a lot, but...

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. Let's see, the wildest piece. So there's some strange things I've... Yeah. Like I had somebody come in and bring what was... I was told, it was a certified piece from the cross of the crucifixion verified by the Vatican.

Courtney Gray:

Whoa, whoa.

Tony Rodrigues:

And it came in this little tin cross that shaped container with a little plastic lid and some... And I was like, "Oh." And the woman had worked closely with the Vatican and she would... That was gifted to her. I don't know whether how true this is, but they asked me to make a little reliquary so I could drop. So I made a cross shape that was out of silver and we would drop this tin and plastic and she would take it to churches and people would come and pray for a miracle.

Courtney Gray:

Wow.

Tony Rodrigues:

So that's pretty crazy.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

I've worked on a variety of things for different stars and things. Early on, I had this one gallery I did work with. They would always say, "The weirder you can make it, the better." And I was like, "Oh, okay. I can do weird."

Courtney Gray:

Awesome. It's like, yay, right?

Tony Rodrigues:

My first gallery show and I made this pin that was probably about... It was probably about four inches long. And it was silver in the shape of a woman, but she had no... It was Venus de Milo, no arms, no legs. And then I had given her this wild wire hair and a couple of breasts that were different shaped black onyx. And then, I had down in the pubic area, I had cast these giant plastic ants and they had them crawling around her belly and around her groin.

Courtney Gray:

All right, we're getting to weird now.

Tony Rodrigues:

And I thought... Yeah, that's weird. And it was in the show and a woman bought it. It was probably $800.00–$1,000.00. And I was like, "I can't believe somebody's paying $800.00 for this piece." And she said to me, she's like, "I'm a lawyer and I am going to wear this to court and it is going to intimidate the hell out of the other lawyers."

Courtney Gray:

Oh my goodness.

Tony Rodrigues:

That she was going against. And I thought, "Oh, okay. That's cool."

Courtney Gray:

Oh my goodness. There's a whole line right there, Tony.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Lawyers intimidating the other lawyers. Wow. Interesting. Very interesting.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. Yeah, I've worked on...

Courtney Gray:

I had a feeling you'd pull out something pretty well with that question. How did I know?

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

And that's just two of them. Yeah. Very interesting.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. Yeah. I could go on.

Courtney Gray:

I bet, that's a whole episode right there.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

So back to William Henry, he's doing within the line, there's the Damascus steel, leather goods. It's not just jewelry. It's kitchen knives. Talk to me about how that expanded, how that grew?

Tony Rodrigues:

So when they started off, there were knives. They had done kitchen knives years ago, and they were really cool, super expensive to produce, super expensive for sale. And they were…  and we lost money doing those. That was before my time. And then, slowly the transitioned to other categories, they had started making pens and money clips and then jewelry was the next thing. And then from jewelry, we got into another one of my skills that I developed over the year. I can make handbags and leather goods and I have a whole leather studio that I make stuff.

Courtney Gray:

Ooh. I'll be right over. That sounds fun.

Tony Rodrigues:

So we designed, we wanted to get into leather goods. So, we sat down and worked with a manufacturer that out of Florida that actually can produce volume and they do it for a variety of high-end leather. We did the design and where we wanted to differentiate was to make it unique. I design zipper pulls that we incorporate our unique materials. So we have dinosaur bone, mokumé, meteorite, Damascus, and some gemstone materials. So, and then people can select what zipper pull they want on their piece. And that gives them... It's crazy. That's been the foundational thing with the knives. And that's been consistent is using these fossil materials, using mammoth tooth and dinosaur bone. And that's guided some of our design. And we know that's become the DNA. We come from the knife and the sword and Damascus, but then those materials are strong component of what makes us desirable as a brand. So we incorporate that whenever we can.

Courtney Gray:

And it's not a huge team that you have, right? Tell us about what it's like in the studio. How many orders are you guys handling and how many staff members, et cetera?

Tony Rodrigues:

Well, so there are probably... In the whole company, there's probably 40 people. The knife division is there's two buildings, there's knives, pens, money clips, there's the one side. And then I have a building that's probably 2200 square feet. I have five people currently who work for me and they are on just jewelry. The other projects and things are throughout the rest of the people on the other side of the business. They've all worked for me now as almost the entire time. I've handpicked a few that I plucked from the knife side and then the rest... I have a rule with, for me, anybody who's hired and brought in, everybody has to approve. I don't make it my decision. I assess their skills, but then I let my team assess their ability to assimilate with the team.

                It's a lively bunch. I have a lot of fun. It's really like a family environment. We do each other's weddings and births and everything else. It's a close-knit group. They work hard. And I feel very lucky to have a team that I can count on. I could ask them just about anything. There's probably a couple of them that would even bury a body for me.

Courtney Gray:

Oh, no. Yeah. Well, that's important.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

So you feel like you can just walk away when you need to and do your things and they will take care of everything. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. From my day to day, I don't have to... These are people who self-manage. We have a shop manager in terms of dispersion of work, and I can just... They know what they need to do and they do it. And they're always overachieving in my mind. If they're doing well, I fight for them to get good raises and keep them happy. And I think that's important. The trust we have is important. If we didn't have that, I think they would've all quit long time ago.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. There are higher paying jobs out there than what we do, but it's hard to walk away from something where you're really happy and comfortable with-

Courtney Gray:

Family.

Tony Rodrigues:

... The people you work with and the family. Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. That's nice to hear that you're running things like that, Tony. Who was the strongest influence for you in your life?

Tony Rodrigues:

In my life?

Courtney Gray:

It could be more than one.

Tony Rodrigues:

In my life overall, it was easily my parents. I'm the youngest of four, but my siblings were the next oldest. There was a gap of almost five years. So I'm like the youngest and the only in some ways, and my parents instilled in me that I could do anything and be successful in that and had zero expectations or didn't push me towards anything. And I think that's when I see so many people are intimidated by what they're trying to accomplish and the fear of failure. I never had fear of failure. I think that's helped me tremendously with design and just every job and that's in turn out, right? Can I do something with it? Is it garbage? It's the detachment from expectations, not everything we do is good. Most things that are bad or broken, you can learn something from. So, it's good to not be encumbered by feeling that you're... I know people whose parents look at them and just think they're failures because they decide to make jewelry or make art. "Oh, I was hoping..." It's sad.

Courtney Gray:

Shame on those parents. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. Yeah, my mom being a ceramic artist, I was lucky I had... It's funny. I think back, she also knitted and crochet and I was thinking about... There's times when she'd be like, "Oh, can you untangle this?" And I would sit there and my obsessive compulsive side would sit there and I developed all these fine motor skills by doing all these things like that over the years. Somebody would get their chains tangled. And I remember at Nordstrom, they used to... They would have this. There was this giant ball of chains and the manager would pay the salesperson to untangle them as in the fashion jewelry part. And if I got a hold of that, I was like, "I can't stop. I've got to untangle all of these. Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Oh my goodness. Definitely a natural born jeweler.

Tony Rodrigues:

No, my parents, my dad, on the weekends he was always building something, doing something, whether it was making a lamp or doing a project around the house. And just, I learned by watching and I found that when I got older and I would do something, I'd be like, "How do you know how to do that?" I'm like, "I saw my dad do it. I just picked it up." And my mom always had us doing creative things. So sort of that. I think that's how I got to be that engineering and artistic side blending from the two of them. As I got into jewelry, the first teacher at this junior college that I took for my first jewelry experience, his name was Willard Smith.

                And Willard was... He just had this enthusiasm. He made crazy stuff and he didn't really understand most of the processes and couldn't explain them. He would do a demo and it would always fail. There was an entertainer in Chicago called Ray Rayner and he had Chauncey who was his stage manager would do the beautiful project. And then he would do the project live and it would be this glue covered disaster. And I think that was one of those things where seeing that you went... The lesson was, it's not going to be perfect but then Willard always reminded me of Ray Rayner. And I was like... No matter what you did, he'd be like, "Everybody come look."

Courtney Gray:

Right.

Tony Rodrigues:

He soldered a pin back on.

Courtney Gray:

Because everything was a big deal.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. Everything was a big deal. And it created such an amazing environment for the people who were there. And I just fed off of that. It was great fun.

Courtney Gray:

Excitement, energy. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

And then-

Courtney Gray:

Exploration. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. And then jewelry wise from there, at my first job, it was Jamie Fitzpatrick who was the... He had an art major and gotten to be into a goldsmith and metalsmith and stone setter and designer for... It was Fey and Company Jewelers in Chicago and where I worked. And Jamie, he had that same combination of artistic and engineering. When he would get a mounting in the way he taught himself, he would tear it apart, figure out how it was set. He taught himself stone setting by tearing apart stuff and seeing how it was cut and the seat was cut, everything else, and then he'd rebuild it. And I always thought he was nuts for doing it. I thought…

Courtney Gray:

Right.

Tony Rodrigues:

But he taught me, he gave so much of his time and energy to me to guide and take. And we had a great, so much fun. I having fun shop experiences is in itself the great influence. In that shop, there were three of us and we were all about seven or eight years apart. I was the middle. Even though they, we had different ages and viewpoints, we came together and we just... It was work and laughter. And I always wanted to make sure that if I ever got in the situation where I was in charge, that I would educate, we'd work hard and we'd laugh our asses off and-

Courtney Gray:

Very important.

Tony Rodrigues:

So with that now, trying to be influence on my employees, I try to get involved in training. I've got a young guy, Rob, who works for me, who has now been with me six years. With Santa Fe Symposium®, I was able to sponsor him. So he got to attend that a couple of years ago before COVID, and now his job every day is a lot of times it's the same things and he wants to do and grow and learn. So we started doing Alan Revere's book that there's also a Facebook page. So we've been going through the projects. He's just coming up on... I think he's on project 15 now. And it's been so much fun for me to help guide him and give him some tips and just cut him loose. And that's exciting. So that's something where I feel really strong paying it back. I always felt like I had great influences and hopefully I can continue doing that.

Courtney Gray:

I love your approach to like, you just seem a real open book type person, willing to share, teach openly, which in the past hasn't always been the case with everyone, but-

Tony Rodrigues:

It was horrible when I first started that's why Willard was a great, because he didn't know a tremendous amount of stuff, but he'd tried to find you access to things. As a funniest side, I wanted to start setting some stones and I had a cast a gold ring, and I wanted to set a sapphire in the side that was unconventional at the time. And he's like, "Oh, well, you can do that with beads and engraver." And he's like, "I think we have some gravers." And he handed me a graver that unknown to me was a raw on... It had not been sharpened or changed the shape. And I took it and I looked at to find whatever I could on setting, which was almost nothing. I knew I had to get a beat up and then use a tool to turn it into round. So here I am, I'm standing over this work table and I am bearing down and using this raw graver. And it's amazing I didn't hurt myself.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. I was going to say, "This is not going to end well at all."

Tony Rodrigues:

And the people are, "What is he doing? He's setting a stone." It was like this, they all came to watch and I got four beads over it. And the gold move, it took seemingly forever. But I got this little three millimeter Sapphire set in the side of this stone and this ring. And then later on learned that you were supposed to do other things.

Courtney Gray:

Like, sharpening and-

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah, yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Well, like you said, that's dive in.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. I've always just dive into things, and sometimes it works well. So, I love doing reticulation, and there was people had formalized things and one time I had a particular solder pad and I was like, "Oh, that doesn't look very good." But then I flipped it over and realized that if I had what I had done, I got the best reticulation, but it was on the underside instead of what I was expecting. So sometimes, just diving into new things, you get these pleasant surprises.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. I love that. And it stems from that, no fear approach, that your parents instilled in you from early on. So it's like-

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

... Just try it. And nothing's really a failure as all just part of the journey or part of the process of learning.

Tony Rodrigues:

I look back, my poor mother, it was no wonder she was a little goofy from my behavior. I remember as a kid, I was hyperactive, had a little OCD, and then later on, I do have also have a... It's not a traditional dyslexia, but I have a form of dyslexia too, which a lot of interesting enough CAD artists do. But the hyperactive side, it was before Ritalin and things like that. So they tried to medicate me with downers to suppress my energy, which only acted in the opposite and made me-

Courtney Gray:

Oh, no.

Tony Rodrigues:

... More of a nut job. Hyper energized, I was like the energizer bunny on steroids.

Courtney Gray:

Oh no. Oh, no. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. So that was a...

Courtney Gray:

This is common with artists too. I don't think it's just...

Tony Rodrigues:

Oh no. It's... Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

... With CAD designers seems to come up a lot in these conversations.

Tony Rodrigues:

Oh yeah. It's definitely, I always said CAD designer, because we were at a symposium and somebody said, "Damn, my dyslexia." And then there were like 30 people there and they all rose their hands and said, "They were all." It was like, "Oh." Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Very common.

Tony Rodrigues:

Very common.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting.

Tony Rodrigues:

The hyperactivity part was it went into that where my mom would support just about anything. If she thought it was going to wear me out or just cut me free to do it. I used to-

Courtney Gray:

Help you focus or [inaudible 00:59:04].

Tony Rodrigues:

... Yeah. Whichever direction it took, she just never inhibited me. She would go and take me to garage sales and thrift stores. And I forgot about this. I used to love, wind up manual watches and that you used to be able to get them in thrift stores and things for $0.50 or a $1 for overwound mechanism. And I would open them up and I had figured out how to make them. So, when you wound it, it just spun around really fast until it unwound and I would sell those to my friends at school.

Courtney Gray:

You just remembered that?

Tony Rodrigues:

I forgot about that. Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

So this was pre 80s.

Tony Rodrigues:

Oh, this is-

Courtney Gray:

Binder earring, punk jewelry, this is grade school.

Tony Rodrigues:

Oh no, this would've been 19... Let's see. Probably 1970 or so.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Rodrigues:

Late 60s, early 70s.

Courtney Gray:

Pretty interesting isn't that? Oh, how funny?

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Well Tony, this is so fascinating. I know we could go on and on. I have one big last question for you.

Tony Rodrigues:

Sure.

Courtney Gray:

If you were to write a commencement speech, what would the main heart of it be?

Tony Rodrigues:

Okay. It would be about asking, I think. I have found that so many people limit themselves because they'll have an idea or a thing they want to do and they'll hang onto it and they won't put it out into the world. And I have found continuously that there are so many people who respond to just ask. When I was traveling around the country, somebody would say something and it'd be like, "Oh, how'd you feel about me coming to visit?" And they're like, "Oh great. I have a guest room and you can stay." And there were so many situations when I started doing jewelry where people were so closed and they made it, so you didn't feel comfortable to ask so you didn't. With the internet and the way things are, really, when I saw people start opening up is when they realized, "Oh, you're in Chicago and I'm in Los Angeles. You're not at competition. I'll talk to you."

                More and more as people intersected. And they realized that there's mutual benefits to being a little more open. So that's gotten better. But I found that different jobs, different scenarios, different things, just being confident enough to say, "Can you help me? Can I learn what you know? Whatever it is, just ask the worst thing that's going to happen is they're going to say no, but they also might say no, but, "I know somebody who will," Which is often one of the things that comes from that.

Courtney Gray:

I love that. I actually have a song about... I'm going to send it to you later.

Tony Rodrigues:

Oh, cool.

Courtney Gray:

It's like verbatim what you just said.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Well, and if you don't ask for what you want, you're not going to get it. Like, it just doesn't... Things don't just happen. So I think that-

Tony Rodrigues:

Well, yeah. And-

Courtney Gray:

... There's a lot to that. There's just show up and there's worst they can say is no.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. There's a lot of people who... You get things where they want to. Well, the universe is against me or I'm going to reach out to the universe and it's okay. Whatever your belief system is. But if you want something, yes, you can create a board on the wall where your dream board or you can have something you wish and want, but until you take some action and asking is often the most simple action to take and can get the ball rolling, get those dominoes falling over but take action, ask.

Courtney Gray:

And believe you can do it and be willing to fail a couple of times or whatever we want to repeat that word. I do not like that word. We need to replace it with.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yeah. It's not-

Courtney Gray:

I think it's like a discovery. It's more of an exploration.

Tony Rodrigues:

Well, I think too people need to detach a little bit. If you're good at your work, you've made something you're proud of. You should be able to do it again. If you're only enamored with this thing, why are you enamored with it? Why are you hanging out that? Is it because you have a fear, you can't do it again? Well, you need to try to do it again. And I often like... So Rob, in doing the Revere stuff, he was just doing the... And I told him he was making a four prong basket head and it looked a little wonky and I gave him some pointers afterwards, but I'm like, "I'm glad you didn't do this the way to the level that you wanted to."

He's like, "Well, I thought it might be harder, once I read through it." And I said, "Yeah, if you do this perfectly the first time, that's only going to frustrate you." You're going to be much better off screwing it up or whatever you want to do, failing. It's not a failure. It's a learning experience. It's something to go, "Okay. Here's what I did that didn't work. How do I adjust? What do I do to make this work? And that's where I would come in with him as going and giving him the guidance and some tricks to help alleviate the pain that some of the stuff I went through trying to get through that.

Courtney Gray:

Oh, it's so nice when you can just knock off that 10 years learning curve for people. It's like, "There's one little thing that it didn't click for me for a good eight to 10 years and here you go. I just kind of a gift..." Why not? It's more exciting to be successful together I think, and collaborate as much as we can.

Tony Rodrigues:

When you have the solitary side of design and fabricating and doing things to interact with other people, just for me, it's what energizes me tremendously to be more creative and to follow through on things to finish up on projects I've been working on. It's that little boost, that, "Oh." And often it's that collaborative process, which will push something to the next level that you've been struggling with, trying to figure out how to make it. It just doesn't look right. One of the things I do with everything that I design, so I have to do all the... I do all the prototyping. So, my process is concept, CAD, prototype, and then master models and then push to production. But all through that stage, I will ask everyone I work with their thoughts and I trust their opinions.

They'll be like, little wins and go, "I don't know if I like that or..." But then they also have learned enough to apply what their views are, but then what they think our customers might respond to too. But if I just based it only on my view, it would be a much different product. I think it's important to be open to that. You have to select the right people though, and who you're open that to because often you can get designed by committee and that just is bad design.

Courtney Gray:

What do you mean?

Tony Rodrigues:

So, where you get people who are... Like they're interjecting their opinions, their personal opinion. They're not looking at it objectively to what's best for our customer>.

Courtney Gray:

Right.

Tony Rodrigues:

What's best for our brand? What looks and will work aesthetically towards those goals? They're like, "Well, I don't like it. Well, doesn't matter what you..."

Courtney Gray:

Right. It’s about our audience.

Tony Rodrigues:

The audience is always interesting. When I started doing... I would do these sales, student sales when we started off and there were a group of us and we would make a bet on who could make the ugliest piece of jewelry and include that with all of your other work. And the funny thing was, every time we did it, that was the first piece we all sold.

Courtney Gray:

What? Oh, how interesting.

Tony Rodrigues:

Every time. It was hysterical.

Courtney Gray:

It's like, you're trying to make... Oh my goodness.

Tony Rodrigues:

We were trying to... Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

That's hilarious. We should bring that back to live, Tony. That would be a fun.

Tony Rodrigues:

I think it's a good... Yeah.

Courtney Gray:

Yeah. It would be a fun win. Well, oh my gosh. Like I said, you guys, Tony and I could probably talk to you guys all day.

Tony Rodrigues:

Yup.

Courtney Gray:

But we will sign off for now. And Tony, thank you for sharing your journey and your history and the happy accidents along the way and all the inspiration that you have to share. Anything else you'd like to share with the community before we say goodbye?

Tony Rodrigues:

I would like to thank you for allowing me to share some of my life. And like you said, I am an open book. I am open to people reaching out and asking questions. I've always been that way. I feel like I owe the community for the gifts that I've received. So, I'm always there.

Courtney Gray:

Awesome. What a gift. That's amazing. Yeah. You guys, like Tony said to ask for what you want. That's the first step to getting towards your goals and the worst they can say is no or not right now, or look over there. But we're all here to direct each other and to just level that playing field a little bit. Tony, I love what you stand for in that way and can't wait to see you in person soon. And thanks again for your time today.

Courtney Gray:

Thanks for tuning in you guys. I hope you have enjoyed this episode of For the Love of Jewelers. Stay tuned for the next episode by subscribing through Spotify, iTunes or by searching podcast at riogrande.com. I encourage you to rate us, write a review, and share with friends and colleagues. I hope you're all finding ways to stay inspired. I'm your host, Courtney Gray. Until we get to connect again, onward and upward.