Sparkling through time

Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri is known for defining jewellery retail.

What in 1864 had been a 8'x 8' goldsmith's workshop is now a four-storey, 14,000 sq ft jewellery showroom and company headquarter.

"In those days, you'd have seen Bhimji on a gaddi with a hukkah, surrounded by all the women of the neighbourhood," laughs RK Nagarkar, general manager at Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (TBZ).

Otherwise, at first glance, not too much has changed about the setting of the TBZ flagship store. The constricted bylanes of Mumbai's Zaveri Bazar are still teeming with wholesale jewellery businesses and it's nearly as impossible to inch forward by foot as it is by car.

But for TBZ, considered one of the pioneers of jewellery retailing in India, change is all-important as the brand transitions from a family run partnership to professional management, a move spearheaded by Binaisha Zaveri, the fifth generation to enter the business.

"Even our designs, once discernibly traditional, are now recognised as both classic and modern," says Nagarkar. But for TBZ some traditions will never be shaken off, like the trust they've built over the decades.

"We don't believe that to be perceived as modern, we have to be too ritzy or trendy, because our customer base is still from a wide cross-section of society. We don't want to sacrifice our middle-class clientele," Kiran Dixit, marketing manager explains.

Organic growth is the company's current fixation and by the end of the year TBZ will operate out of 10 stores across the country. They are irked by the confusion caused by jewellery brands initiated by breakaway family members like the TBZ Nirmal Zaveri and the TBZ & Sons brands, and so, they've re-christened themselves TBZ "" The Original.

"We are such a large volume player and so different from the rest that we're not unduly worried," says Nagarkar.

And for those of you wondering... no, Zaveri Bazar was not named after them, although they were one of its first inhabitants.