MY LOCAL MALL HAS SEVEN — YES, SEVEN — JEWELRY STORES, and I’ve never been able to understand how they can all stay in business, though I assume that colossal markups have something to do with it. My guess is that it’ll be a lot harder for them now that Amazon is selling jewelry online at a discount. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Clayton emails:

Like a lot of purchases that are very “personal”, buying jewelry for most people is what I call a “squeeze the merchandise” business.

If you’re buying a standardized commodity — CD, DVD, book, etc. — e-tailing is a delivery channel, though many people still go to Borders or Barnes & Noble for the “experience”.

There are some things that we just have to “see it/touch it” before we buy it. Jewelry is one of them.

Only not everyone feels that way, as reader Jeff Miller emails:

If you think Amazon selling online jewelry is a big deal, check out Seattle-based Blue Nile, which sells diamonds and jewelry over the Net.

They’re set to go public and, according their S-1, last year they brought in $128.9 million in revenue and made a whopping $27 million in profits. That’s a nice little profit margin.

News to me, but apparently there’s a market. And, it turns out, one of the companies is headquartered in Knoxville, which was also news to me. Reader Andrew Coloctronis emails:

You may be interested to know that Knoxville is the home to a TV and Internet Jewelry sales company, Jewelry Television (formally ACN TV). With over 1,000 employees located at a facility on Kingston Pike, Jewelry Television conducts all its production, shipping, broadcasting and web hosting locally.

I knew we had several cable-sales channels here, but I didn’t know about this one. Apparently, plenty of people are willing to buy without touching.