I arrived at the Knoxville headquarters of Jewelry Television (JTV) at 9:30am Tuesday.   My new book The French Blue was scheduled to be debuted that evening and I had come to town for the kickoff .  For those of you who have never heard of it, JTV is a 24 hour a day, 500 million dollar a year on-air TV gem and jewelry selling juggernaut.   I am not sure what I expected, but I was certainly not prepared for what I saw.

JTV is doing pretty well but it was not immune from the economic slowdown, laying off about one third of its workforce since the economy hit the wall last November.

Adam Bedwell, the book and tool buyer, had made the arrangements and my visit began with a tour.   Anyone who has an e.commerce website would be basically familiar with what goes on at JTV.  The product arrives, is examined, inventoried, stored, photographed, described and generally made ready for sale.  The difference is, at JTV the scale is best described as colossal.

We entered the warehouse.   There were gemstones in bins, gemstones in bags  and gemstones in well 50 gallon plastic cans all together in a room the size of a basketball court or maybe a football field.

I toured the media department.  I have one digital camera, JTV has a bank of them with half a dozen photo technicians clicking away.  They have built there own photo setups and some truly remarkable gizmos that show the gemstone or jewelry piece  in all sorts of ways including one that they take particular pride in that shows aerial views.

They take quality control seriously at JTV.  I met one woman who, using a 200x digital microscope examines every stone sold on air.   Every stone?   If true, this is truly remarkable given the incredible volume of gemstones that are sold by JTV.  Stones that are cracked or chipped are photographed and sent back to suppliers.

The call center is located in a separate building of astonishing dimensions.  This is the front line of JTV, when the phones start ringing.   Spent some time signing books and  talking with several of the representatives.   I was impressed by the fact that many of the employees I spoke, phone reps, drivers, security personnel,  went out of there way to praise the management of JTV and to tell me how much they enjoyed working for the company.

The JTV offices are setup on an open plan in a series of cubicles.  The layout is egalitarian.   If you didn’t know who was who, it would have been impossible to tell.  No one, it seems, rates a fancy private office.

Finally the time arrived.  After makeup and a meeting with the show’s hosts Mandy and Tommy, I went on the air.  The company is very proud of their state-of-the-art TV studio and I must say I was impressed.   JTV had bought 2,000 paperback special editons together with 500 hardcovers.  Adam was hoping for 300 sales, but none of us was quite prepared for what happened.  The segments are about 15 minutes each.  By the end of the first segment we had sold over 200 copies.  “I think we are going to sell out”, said Adam, and he was right.  By the end of segment two, one hour later we had sold 495, we topped 500 as we left the studio along with 15 special editions.  The best book introduction in two years.