A Man of Many Facets

Wherever they wander in Latin America, travelers can seldom escape the enticements of a short, slender Brazilian named Hans Stern, the continent's king of diamonds. At the most important South American airports, in the best hotels and on the broad boulevards of cities from Buenos Aires to Caracas, Stern's jewelry showrooms are in glittering evidence. His 136 boutiques span from the Sugar Loafs peak to the depths of the Amazon Valley (at Manaus, Brazil), also float on 37 ships at sea, where Stern men are planted among the passengers to talk up lapidary lore. Stern has already opened a shop on Manhattan's Third Avenue, is the only Brazilian businessman represented at the New York Fair. Last week, ready to expand further, he flew across the Atlantic to negotiate for his first shops in London, Lisbon, Rome, Frankfurt and Tel Aviv.

Money-Back Guarantee. Brazil provides a rich base for an international jewel millionaire. Its gummy subsoil yields more gems than any other nation except South Africa (including such stones as the 120-carat Southern Star diamond), and it is unrivaled for the infinite variety of colored semiprecious gems that are scattered from Rio Grande do Sul northward to the state of Piaui.

Stern, now 41, discovered this bright world when he traveled to Brazil's inland mining regions after fleeing the Nazis in his native Germany in 1939. He decided to exploit what he found. He opened a small shop in Rio, bought rough stones directly from friends at the mines and polished them himself. Developing this unique mine-to-showroom integration as well as a flair for promotion, Stern gradually outshone better-established jewelers to become the world's largest dealer in semiprecious stones. Now he has exclusive work contracts with many mines, farms out work to 5,000 craftsmen and dominates 70% of Brazil's jewelry trade, which runs to uncounted millions of dollars a year.

Stern's aggressive marketing has often sent his competitors into a ruby rage, and his publicity barrage at first made many tourists suspect that they would have to pay Tiffany prices for discount-house merchandise. But he has steadily burnished his image by such devices as sponsoring art displays and jewelry-design contests, holding discreet weekly luncheons for leading politicians, and offering to refund to any discontented customer the full purchase price of any piece of jewelry within a year of the sale. Now half of his customers are tourists, and almost none ask for a refund.

Bestsellers. Though Stern enjoys a brisk business in diamond pieces, he prefers to deal in semiprecious baubles. Recently he paid $75,000 for the world's largest aquamarine, a 15-pounder (35,000 carats) that will be sliced into thousands of pieces. Stern himself sometimes mans the cutting wheel, exhorts his craftsmen to study each stone "to uncover its individual personality." His bestsellers are the green, blue or pink tourmalines, golden topazes, purple amethysts and bluish aquamarines--some of which, in rare shadings, are as expensive as emeralds. Whether costly or cheap, Stern estimates that his stones are almost inevitably good investments. In the past five years, their average value has increased 100%.

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