By Claire Adler

Jason Holt is the man responsible for successfully transporting Holts - one of the UK's most respected gem houses and jewellers - into the 21st century. But the decision to join the family business and stay there was far from easy, as Claire Adler discovers.

In 1999, two years after qualifying as a solicitor with Paisner & Co, Jason Holt sat down and wrote his own obituary. I ask him innocently, “Things couldn't have been all that bad, could they ?” he explained, “I was trying to find out what I really wanted. I knew the family business was an option and that my Father's retirement was imminent, and I started to think about what I wanted to achieve in my life.”

When several months later, Jason joined Holts - suppliers of loose gemstones and specialists in gem-cutting - the company consisted of nine people, three of whom had been there for 40 years. “When my Father made the announcement “Jason will be joining us for a while”, I was only too aware that many of the people had known me since I was in nappies.

Holts had been successfully selling gemstones to the trade from its prestigious premises in Hatton Garden's with its lapidary workshop for the best part of four decades. But Jason wanted to shake things up. “A look at the figures showed me that there had been no change in the company for years. We already had an excellent team in the shop selling gemstones but I felt that there was more to be achieved in the company. So I began to look for a new direction,” he says.

Within eight months of joining the company, Jason was chasing funding of £100,000 to get the Holts Jewellery School off the ground. “I wasn't a gemmologist at the time and I knew I was putting the company at risk. But I believe that in order to create opportunity, sometimes you need to step out of your comfort zone” he says.

What motivated him to make such radical changes so soon? In his polished, lawyerly way, Jason carefully weighs and measures every word before responding. It becomes clear that he himself is not entirely sure how one thing led to another and that the whole trajectory has possibly had as significant an impact on him professionally as personally.

“I went against professional advice and my father wasn't sure about the idea, and indeed many staff members voiced doubts too. Our accountant told us there were too many pitfalls to the project and warned us not to touch the idea with a bargepole. But I was convinced that this was the right direction for the company to take. Some could say I was risking our relationships with clients, the £100,000 investment funding, the loss of our company's knowledge to competitors and of course, our name,” he explains. “I'm sitting here and everything was stacked against it from happening. But crazy as it was, I was determined to do it anyway,” he says at the memory of it all.

Yet it was Jason's tenacity and stubborn one-track mind that enabled him to build on Holts' established reputation and past successes so effectively. In just six years, student numbers at the Holts Gemstone and Jewellery School have increased from 75 to 700 a year. Each semester between 30 and 40 courses are packed to capacity. Plans for significant further development of both the school and gem business are already underway.
“I had a gut feeling I could control the spend and that we could phase out how we'd have to hand back the money. I was involved in the Hatton Garden Association at the time and that gave me knowledge about what grants were available. At that time we already had a huge demand for apprentice places in our workshop.”

One long night in February 1999, Jason applied his legal knowledge to write a successful bid application in his hotel room whilst attending the Tucson Gem Show. Despite staff resistance, the Holts Gemstone and Jewellery School specializing in gem cutting opened that same year in the company's 2500 square foot Hatton Garden basement. Nine months later it was covering all its fixed costs and had 75 students. The company had turned a corner financially.

Jason Holt attributes the success of the school to the quality and focus of its syllabus and the dedication given by our tutors and staff. “Our aim is to teach industry relevant skills.” These include how to make a ring in two hours instead of two weeks and how to design using the very latest technology.

In 2004, Hatton Garden was voted the most enterprising area in London in the first ever Enterprising London competition. As head of the Hatton Garden Skills and Links Project, Jason was quoted at the time saying: “The work that has been done in Hatton Garden to support jewellery businesses in London is not about being virtuous. It was and remains the only way we can thrive as we depend on a strong jewellery industry in London and the rest of the country.”

Yet Jason still feels somewhat misunderstood by others in the jewellery industry.
“No-one believes I am being anything other than opportunistic,” he says. “Naturally, creating a first-class training body for the industry is a sales tactic. I am not a social entrepreneur, it is not about being benevolent. It's about creating opportunity.”

Housing a school in the most expensive premises in Hatton Garden has driven hundreds of design students through a building they might be otherwise intimidated to enter. More importantly, it encourages them to enlist the very same company as their long-term gem supplier.

In fact, Jason seems to have inherited his characteristic tenacity and strong will from his father. Robert Holt came to England as a refugee from Austria in 1948 when he was 16. He began working as a diamond polisher on Greville Street in a factory where the Queen's Coronation diamonds were being prepared. When the Queen paid a visit, his socialist tendencies got the better of him. He refused to wear his new overalls for the occasion and he was fired.

As fate would have it, the lease on a nearby shop was ending and the tenant offered Robert the premises - 97 Hatton Garden. “My younger brother is named after this man,” says Jason. “A day after opening the shop, a Brazilian man came in and offered my father a pile of rocks on approval. They were all sold the next day.” Holts was to became the home of Hatton Garden's first ever gem-cutting facility.
Today, stones are still at the heart of Holts' business. In the last several years, Holts has begun selling to individuals as well as the trade. So how do sales staff overcome the problem of trade customers getting impatient waiting for individual customers who are only buying small amounts? “We don't compete with volume deals at a cheaper price,” says Jason, who counts manufacturers such as Shaun Leane amongst his regular customers. “We have the same attitude to a £5 customer as to a £15,000 one. We carry very comprehensive stock and we offer value for time, not only value for money. If you have no time to shop around, you can rely that Holts will have what you are after.”

But now, Holts is developing its own brand. The gem company and the school are to be run as two separate bodies. A newly formed Holts Academy of Jewellery will be run by an independent board, which Jason will chair, unpaid. Having identified a need for technology education, Holts has partnered with the Innovation Centre in Birmingham. “The Holts Academy will reach out to people outside the jewellery industry and the Holts name will validate the quality of the training,” says Jason.

What's more, later this year the gem business will go on line and by 2007, Holts will launch its own jewellery collection in its refurbished shop premises. Jewellery from the Academy's most talented designers will also be showcased there.

Jason Holt openly admits he could never have guessed his early, almost naive fixation with opening a Holts jewellery school, would lead to the establishment of Holts as leaders in training and development for the UK's jewellery industry. But with his smart business mind, his sense of purpose towards the company founded by his father and his first-class networking, it's all coming together swimmingly.