Brook Ellis has enjoyed success off, and on, the ice

By Amanda J. Luke

Ellis only wears one piece of jewelry: a family crest ring that his father gave him when he was 25. “I learned a long time ago, as a salesperson, that you have to be careful you don’t fall in love with the jewelry itself – you’re there to sell it,” he says. “The best piece of jewelry you have is the one you just sold.” Photo by Eric Welch/GIA

"Most Canadians who are good athletes play hockey even if they end up in another sport - it's in your blood," he says.

But Ellis learned more from hockey than just how to move. He developed a competitive edge with a drive to win that has served him well in his close to 50-year career in the jewelry industry.

Take the circumstance of how he came to learn about store budgets.

"Someone whacked me across the face with a hockey stick and [the store director] decided it wasn't a good idea to have me behind the counter, so they set me down to work on the budgets," he says.

He's enjoyed an interesting, challenging and fulfilling career ever since, working his way up the management ranks of a major Canadian jewelry chain and later as vice president of GIA Education - and developed a love for the mental challenge of golf – but says he is looking forward to a change of pace. Ellis officially retired from his role at GIA in January, although he will continue to act as an executive advisor until his full retirement in June 2009.

Ellis never planned on going into the jewelry business. He completed a bachelor of commerce degree and was set to make his mark in the financial industry, when his father asked him to join him and his uncles at the jewelry store his family used to own. The store had been taken over by a major upscale Canadian jewelry store chain, Henry Birks & Sons, Ltd.

Ellis has played ice hockey for most of his life, but plans to spend more of his time playing golf in retirement. Photo courtesy of Brook Ellis

"One man came in at 5 p.m. Christmas Eve to pick up a piece of emerald jewelry. I was wrapping it up for him and he took a look in the showcase and said, 'what's that?'" he recalls. He picked up the second emerald piece "tore the tag off it, put the piece in his pocket, said, 'Here, charge this,' and walked out the door.

"The pieces were worth about $5,000 each. That was a lot of money in 1959," Ellis says. "It's so different from today with all of the security."

There are a lot of differences in the way managers run stores today, too, he says.

"In those days you did everything in the store – you hired your people, did your own payroll and accounts receivable and bought a lot of your own merchandise – it was almost like owning your own store," he says. "It was a whole different era. And it normally took approximately 20 years to work up to the position of store manager – I was doing it in my late 20s and early 30s."

It turns out that Ellis had an avid curiosity for the business and quickly picked up on the mechanics of managing a jewelry store. "All of the business aspects of running the store were sort of fascinating to me. [Like] how you merchandise a store; I had never been a buyer before so I had to learn about how you plan your buying," he says.

Along the way, the company asked him to take some of GIA's gemology courses so he could become a Certified Gemologist from the American Gem Society.

"I gained a lot of information that was useful for me later in my career," he says. "Completing the GIA courses and becoming a C.G. quickly was a way to impress the bosses."

Ellis eventually became Birks' National Merchandise manager, in charge of its fine jewelry and silver giftware departments, in the Montreal-based head office in 1970. It was a perfect fit for a young man who wanted to travel the world doing business. "There were not many businesses at that time where you had the opportunity to travel like that," he says. "It wasn't sitting in an office pushing paper."

He says he likes jewelry, but his fascination with the industry had more to do with the challenge of making the business successful.

"For me, the passion is making the business work. And doing it with jewelry is interesting because there are so many things going on with jewelry," he says. "It's a really complicated business in the sense that there's so many different ways of making a piece of jewelry – the possibilities are almost limitless as opposed to walking into a store to buy a men's suit. In my size, there may be a dozen suits to choose from in any one given store, and that's it."

Ellis became one of the youngest directors ever of the parent company in 1974 and, ultimately, vice president of Birks Fine Jewelry.

Ellis was involved with many industry organizations during his tenure at Birks, including director of the American Gem Society, president and director of the Jewellers' Vigilance Canada, Inc. and a member of the 24 Karat Club of Canada.

In 1983, Richard T. Liddicoat asked him to join GIA's Board of Governors.

"Dick felt he would be a good addition to the Board," said Glenn Nord, fellow board member and GIA president from 1983-1986. "We recognized that he had done some good and exciting things at Birks."

Nord recalls that Ellis went to Moscow to buy diamonds for Birks and noted that negotiations with the Russians were always difficult – sometimes extremely difficult – and thought the skills he learned doing that would serve him well as a board member.

"He didn't talk a whole lot, but whenever he did, he made a good impression," Nord said. "He had a lot of really good ideas about education, which was one of the main drivers of the Institute at that time."

Ellis was ready when an opportunity to work at GIA arose in 1995. "Even though it wasn't easy to leave Birks or move to a new country, I had been doing the same job for many years and was ready for a new challenge," he says. "The fact that it would be something totally different, but still targeted to the jewelry industry, appealed to me."

He joined the staff as vice president of Operations, but soon assumed the position of vice president of Education. He used his many years of sales experience to develop the concept for the Accredited Jewelry Professional (A.J.P.) program, which includes just enough gemological information to help salespeople sell gemstones without overwhelming them with science.

"[The industry] needed courses for salespeople who don't need to know about grading and identification, but do need to learn about product knowledge and selling skills," he says. "We needed what became the A.J.P."

It was a good move, Nord said, and led a lot of people into all of the other GIA courses.

"Brook's global real-world business perspective and firsthand experience were refreshing and invaluable," says Susan Johnson, director of Education Administration, who has worked with Ellis for more than a decade. "His light-hearted spirit and high energy were fantastic to be around."

Ellis made a point to work with the Distance Education and Training Council, one of GIA's accrediting agencies, to make sure GIA continued to meet the ever-changing and improved standards of the distance education experience for its students. He was elected to its Board of Trustees in 2000, was second vice president in 2001 and was elected to its Accrediting Commission in 2002, where he serves as treasurer and chairs the audit and finance committee. He was also honored with its Distinguished Service Award in 2007.

During Ellis' tenure, GIA Education opened new schools in London, Moscow, Los Angeles, China and India, thereby expanding GIA's global presence to 14 schools in 11 countries. He also supervised the introduction of the Applied Jewelry Arts diploma, the Jewelry Business Management diploma, and the Bachelor of Business Administration degree offered by the GIA School of Business, which he established.

Bill Herberts, director of Education Operations, who has worked with Ellis for the past six years, says he learned a lot about education, responsibility, life and how to be "a true gentleman" from him.

"GIA Education is in great shape today – recognized and respected around the world as the pre-eminent provider of gem and jewelry education – which is in large part due to the vision and leadership Brook has provided," Herberts said. "He has never looked for recognition or glory for himself, but treated staff, students and all of GIA's stakeholders with the utmost courtesy – and the same attitude that Mr. Liddicoat instilled in all of us: always do what is best for the students and the rest will take care of itself."

It's kind of like the way he'd act as the captain of a sports team – perhaps an ice hockey team.