The Board of Directors of the relatively new World Pearl Organization (WPO) met earlier this year in Kobe for two days of talks that focused on the industry’s most urgent project: fundraising for WPO’s planned promotions and activities worldwide.

“It was largely at that conference that the importer and the exporter each would contribute a 1 percent surcharge of their sales invoices, and that WPO would draw on this fund for promotions in appropriate [pearl] consuming countries,” said David C W Yick, one of four observes attending the meeting.

Yick of YNA International (Thailand) was joined by observes Antonius S Nurimba and Norman Z Analau of Indonesia, and Chris Gisi of Singapore. Shunsaku Tasaki of Tasaki Shinju Co is president of WPO, while the 15-member board is represent by pearl dealers from Japan, the United States, French Polynesia, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, the Philippines, Canada and the Cook Islands.

Implementation of the “compulsory surcharge system” would take some time to materialize, but board members are said to give it priority. Said Francesco Roberto of Italy: “We should rush to out this project into practice soon. It needs a lot of fine-tuning, but in our view, it has top priority over any other ideas about promotion.

In our opinion, only the cultured pearls from the countries where the system is enforced are going to be promoted. For instance, if funds come from Japan, only the Japanese akoya are clearly going to be promoted. Let us note here that the statement-‘the Japanese alone should pay for advertising’-is incorrect. We should not oversee the fact that at the end of the day, with the kind of system proposed, it is the end-user who is eventually going to pay for the advertising. We can’t imagine anyone from cultivators to makers to importers giving up the 1 percent from their own profit. It is all added to the final cost which we take the liberty to remind as being a mere minuscule percentage,” said Roberto.

Last November, Jacques Branellec, who manages Jewelmer in the Philippines, voiced reservations about the compulsory system to surcharge the buyer and seller. “As producers, due to the length of the production, we are exposed to unlimited risks such as typhoons, diseases, natural and ecological catastrophe, local and global pollution, variables we cannot control. Therefore, the producer is in a high-risk situation.

The trader will buy the size and quality of goods he needs and the volume that he feel he can sell. After consulting with other producers, he will not be willing to accept the surcharge.”

“In the case of Southeast Asia, [where] pearl producers [have their farms in] developing countries, it is impossible for the administration and the government to accept the idea of absorbing part of the advertising/promotion which will be used in developed countries. What about promotion costs in pearl-producing countries which also are consumer markets?”

Thailand has no “immediate gain” from this “compulsory surcharge system,” said Yick. “ because our present volume of import is small, but in the future, this could change” as fashionable Thai women increasingly incorporate pearl-set jewelry to their working and party-wardrobe.

Yick said he values WPO’s purpose. “I want this organization to become very established. It mustn’t turn out like the [1994] International Pearl Summit-how to say it: finite. Kobe will have its World Pearl Center.”

Kobe is the world’s largest pearl entrepot, where about 80 percent of the processing and distribution of pearls in Japan are done. Some 127 processing companies are sited here, with annual sales totaling 167 billion yen in 1993, according to WPO figures.

Yick is presently involved with the founding of Thailand’s Pearl Producers and Traders Association. “I still see that Thailand can still contribute to the pearl industry in a big way. Bangkok’s Asian Institute of Gemological Sciences (AIGS) is in a good position to standardize a universally accepted grading system for pearls, I think,” said Yick. At the WPO meeting in Kobe, there was such an attempt with the proposed use of a “synoptic table related to the variation of qualitative characteristics of cultured pearls.”

Yick describes the response as “not good”. Like many things in life, there is much room for improvement.