Abe
"Honey" Donsky |
The story of Houston Jewelry, as the story of all family businesses, is both a rough genealogical story of an early Texas family, as well as a history of the growth of the retail industry in Texas. It follows the various generations of the family as they evolved the family trade from frontier general store to fine jewelry, catalog and finally, to internet sales. With the development of new media for the promotion of trade from 1852 on, each generation of our family has taken what came before, altered and adapted the trade to the newest selling methods.
The Houston Jewelry "superstore" concept was created by Abe "Honey" Donsky in 1953, however the roots of the family business stretch back to the 1850's in early Houston, with the family's first store, Ephraim & Rosenfield, which in 1866 was located on Main St, in Houston, Texas.
Honey's father, Jacob Donsky moved to Dallas in 1898 and began his career in the grocery business. By the mid 1920s, Honey and his elder brother, Nathan followed their father in business, as merchants. The brothers were two of ten siblings. Over the next decade the brothers and their father engaged in numerous merchant business ventures throughout north and central Texas, such as selling concessions at rodeos and minor-league baseball games. By the mid 1930s Nathan had settled in San Angelo. At that time, the Permian basin was the center of the Texas oil boom and the economy was thriving. Nathan was initially in the pawn business with a relative before opening Nathan's Jewelers.
While Nathan was busy in San Angelo, Honey had settled in Longview, Texas and tried his hand in the beer business with his good friends the Glazer family. According to family lore, one evening while driving a Glazer truck, he was held up at gunpoint by none other than Bonnie & Clyde! But perhaps the most exciting thing to happen to Honey while living in Longview was that he met and married a beautiful Tyler rose, Margaret Solinger. Margaret's maternal grandfather, Jacob Ephraim had emigrated from Germany to Hempstead, TX in the mid 1850's and served in the Hempstead Light Dragoons during the War Between the States. After the war, he moved to Houston, where he owned and operated a store called Ephraim & Rosenfield. Seeking a slower pace, he moved the family and the business back to Hempstead in the 1870's. After Jacob Ephraim passed away, his daughter Henrietta married Jacob Solinger, moved to Tyler and opened a general store. Honey's future wife, Margaret was born in 1914.
In 1940, Nathan Donsky became very ill so Honey moved his family from Longview to San Angelo to manage Nathan's Jewelers while his brother recovered. This proved to be a very successful time for Nathan's Jewelers because the Army Air Corps base in San Angelo was a major training area and the surrounding country was a major oil-producing region at the time. During this decade Nathan's Jewelers expanded to neighboring towns such as Paris & Brownwood. Ervin, the youngest Donsky brother, and his wife Frances managed these stores and were also partners in the branch. As with any growing family business, eventually many of the other Donsky siblings and their spouses operated these other stores as well. Honey and Nathan also operated the Kish's Jewelers store in the San Angelo area. By 1948, brother Ervin and Frances decided to move back to Dallas, where they purchased Kuhn's Wholesale Jewelers and transformed it into Sterling Wholesale Jewelers, becoming one of the first catalog showrooms in the nation.
In 1953, Honey and Margaret decided to relocate to Houston, just down the street from where Margaret's grandfather, Jacob Ephraim had located the first family store in the mid 19th century. They met Dave & Ruth Rubin who owned DaRu Jewelers and together the two formed a partnership to open Houston's first catalog showroom, Houston Wholesale Jeweler located at Main & Rusk upstairs above the Baker Shoe Shop. As was the family tradition, Honey's brothers Nathan, Ervin and his brother-in-law, Bob Slaton invested in the new venture. Houston Wholesale Jewelers was closely modeled after the successful Sterling Wholesale Jewelers and the two jointly produced their catalog and bought many items together in order to get preferential pricing. By 1955, Houston Wholesale Jewelers was so successful that Honey was able to return his investors principal and a profit. The business continued to thrive and by 1956 it had to move to larger quarters on the corner of Travis & Rusk in the lobby of the Houston Club Building. In 1957, Dave Rubin unexpectedly passed away. True to their agreement, Honey purchased Rubin's share of the partnership. Ruth remained with Houston Jewelry as a buyer until the mid 1980's.
In 1961, sensing the future of retail, Ervin Donsky decided it was time to expand outside of downtown Dallas so he built a large, 50,000+ square foot, store in the suburbs of north Dallas at Northwest Highway & Central Expressway. Both Honey & Nathan invested in this bold new venture, becoming officers of the new Sterling Jewelry & Distributing Company as well as running their own thriving businesses.
Also in 1961, due primarily to the lobbying efforts of the nation's largest jewelry chains, one based in Houston and the other in Dallas, the Texas Legislature changed the business code, which prevented any business with the word "wholesale" in their name to sell to the public at all. Not to be deterred (or in violation of the new law), Houston Wholesale Jewelers ceased all consumer operations and became a buying agent & service provider for the new Houston Jewelry & Distributing Company. [Houston Wholesale Jewelers currently provides repair and manufacturing services to Houston Jewelry.] Sterling Wholesale Jewelers pursued a similar course of action.
By the mid 1960s the business had grown so much that Houston Jewelry began to look for a new, larger location. At the time, Star Furniture was preparing to move to the suburbs, and wanted to sell its buildings at Milam & Rusk, just across the block from the Houston Club Building location. In 1966 Honey purchased the buildings and his good friend and architect, Arnold Hendler remodeled them into a beautiful, clean, modern, retail showroom.
In 1971 the Galleria opened in Houston and it became clear to the Donsky brothers that the future of retailing was not going to be in downtown Houston. They began their search for property to build a second and larger store on Westheimer, much the same way Sterling Jewelry did in Dallas in 1961.
In 1973 they found and purchased almost 5 acres of raw land at the intersection of Westheimer & Gessner. At that time, beyond Gessner was open ranch land. In the early 1970's the stock market was booming and the three brothers decided to merge the Dallas & Houston operations and take the combined company public but the 1973 oil embargo crushed the stock market, and the newly merged company remained a privately held growing family business. In 1979 the merged company opened another large store in Richardson, TX. Five years later, in 1984 a group of real estate investors approached Honey with an offer to purchase his building at Milam & Rusk and build an office tower in its place. He sold the property and the downtown Houston Jewelry store was relocated to the First City Financial Tower, one of many office towers built on the southern end of downtown. Within a year after the property sold the Houston real estate market collapsed, the tower was never built, and the building remained vacant until 2010. In 1987 the original downtown Dallas store was closed and a new store was opened in Arlington, TX. In 1991 it was decided to close the downtown Houston store, and remodel the flagship location at Westheimer & Gessner.
In 1992 Nathan Donsky passed away. At the time of his passing, there were 35 family owners of the corporation, fifteen of whom worked for it, comprising 3 generations, and 3 branches of the family. There were four stores, and over 800 employees. What's more the catalog showroom industry was dying quickly. Houston Jewelry remains as one of just a few former catalog showrooms in the United States to have successfully converted back into a tradition jewelry and fine gifts format. Every month stores across the country were closing, as the format was obsolete. The original "category killer" store format of 50,000 square feet of selling space was now too small to compete with the new mega-stores like Wal-Mart, with 120,000 square feet. In areas such as electronics, Sam's Club was selling product below the price Sterling paid for the same item.
The family pleasantly discovered that the real estate that the brothers had purchased to build these large stores on had quietly escalated substantially over of the years and could produce more revenue if they were redeveloped and used for other purposes. Many members of the family wished to pursue other ventures. Honey's son-in-law Andrew L. Solomon, daughter, Dana Solomon and grandson, Rex Solomon wanted to transform Houston Jewelry into a high-end jewelry & fine gift store. Similarly, Ervin Donsky and one of his sons, Howard wished to do the same thing in Dallas with Sterling.
In the spring of 1993 Sterling Diamonds & Fine Gifts opened in Dallas, and in the summer of 1993 Houston Jewelry opened its current location at 9521 Westheimer, Houston, Texas. Although in very grave health, both Honey and Margaret were able to attend the Grand Opening and see the new store open. Shortly after the opening, Margaret passed away in November 1993 and Honey quickly followed in March 1994.
In 1996, Ervin Donsky had decided to retire and Howard wanted to focus exclusively on designing and manufacturing fine jewelry, so they sold Sterling Diamonds to Barry Zale, who shortly there after changed the store's name to Barry Zale Fine Jewelry. Howard Donsky founded the now award winning Jeffrey Howard line of designer jewelry, and also branched into fine jewelry for pets with www.Silver-Bones.com.
By 1998 Natha's children decided sell their Nathan's Jewelers stores to the Silverman Chain as neither of them lived in San Angelo. Nathan Donsky's grandson, the late Jeffery Donsky founded www.Perfect-Timing.biz, an e-tailer that trades vintage watches. About the same time Houston Jewelry launched its e-commerce Wedding Band division, www.1WeddingBand.com.
Houston Jewelry is one of the region's most trusted buyer of scrap gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, watches and coins. We buy single items or entire estates.
The Donsky-Solomon family is now in its fifth generation of active management of this business. On September 22, 2008, the State of Texas Historical Commission recognized this achievement as well as Houston Jewelry long standing connection to the Houston Community and awarded Houston Jewelry the Texas Treasure Business Award.
Houston Jewelry Inc is the owner, and retains all rights to number of trade names and trademarks, including the following: