An Interview with Torry Hoover, President of Hoover & Strong

U.S. based Hoover & Strong prides itself on being able to supply a jeweler with anything that they might need at any step in the creative process and doing so in an environmentally friendly manner.

Founded more than a hundred years ago, the mission of the company today centers on the refining and reintroduction of formerly used gold, platinum, silver, and palladium to the jewelry market, the fabrication of completed jewelry items, the sale of pre-owned diamonds, and support and distribution of select ethically mined gemstones. 

Even more impressive, the company remains a family-owned and operated business with members of the fifth generation currently working there. 

Torry Hoover, a fourth-generation member of the Hoover family and current president of the company, spoke with me about Hoover & Strong's continuing commitment to eco-friendly practices when it comes to metals, gems, and jewelry making. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Thank you so much for speaking with me today! Can you describe the original mission of Hoover & Strong?

My great-grandfather Jay founded the company in 1912. Originally a schoolteacher in West Virginia, he moved to Buffalo, New York, seeking better opportunities to support his family. He took a job at Westinghouse, an electric motor company, where he noticed that burned-out long-life light bulbs—containing valuable platinum filaments—were being discarded as trash. Recognizing an opportunity, he began refining the platinum rather than letting it go to waste. Jay founded Hoover & Strong with the primary goal of recovering platinum from industrial light bulbs, refining the metal, and selling it to local platinumsmiths.

Ironically, platinum remains one of the hardest metals to refine today. We are probably the only independent company that refines their own platinum. 

It is incredible that your family from the very beginning had this instinct to recycle, reuse, and be kind to the environment. All very modern sensibilities. 

Exactly. That is our foundation. Then we started producing mill products to offload product and made wire. We sold that to the local Buffalo jewelry businesses. Then the depression hit and wiped out a lot of the local jewelers, so our company had to expand its customer base. That led to us becoming a mail-order business after the depression ended.

Who would you say is the current Hoover & Strong customer?

We serve everybody in the jewelry industry from independent jewelers to big companies. Unfortunately, the jewelry industry is small and is decreasing at a rate of 2% per year. In the year 2000, there were 40,000 jewelers in North America. Now there are less than 20,000. So your question about our clientele is an important one. 

The first rule of thumb in business is to pick your customer and who you want to go after. We sell to national chains who buy thousands and thousands of items, down to custom jewelers who need, say, 3 inches of 14k green gold wire.

We can manage this by careful inventory. Small jewelers require quick service and they are willing to pay a little more for that. We are not going to inventory, say, 3000 earrings for a big national chain. We make those to order. So we are happy to do both these options. 

Can you point to a specific reason that Hoover & Strong has managed to remain successful for over a century?

What I am most proud about, even though I am fourth generation and have been working here for 43 years, I reiterate to our whole team that if we do anything that we did a hundred-plus years ago we would be out of business. The only thing that remains unaltered is our core values which are integrity, family, and quality. Everything else is open to change as far as improving our systems. We are always looking for new products. 

One of the fundamental things that we have changed is that we used to be a catalog company. Part of our brand is that we do not print huge paper catalogs. Everything is on our website.

I imagine that keeping everything digital helps maximize your efficiency, in addition to saving the paper.

One of the main advantages of the website is that the price of gold varies every day. A jeweler can go on our website and put in an order for, let's say, three inches of 14k green gold wire and get an exact price based on the current price of gold and a delivery date. And our labor costs remain consistent. For a jeweler who needs to complete a job, they need to know the exact cost of materials and we can provide that. 

Your website mentions the Harmony Brand. Can you describe what that is?

Our Harmony Brand came about thanks to Toby Pomeroy who is an ethical metalsmith in California. He asked me if I could provide him with purely recycled metals. At that time, I had to say no. About 80% of our gold at that time was recycled but the other 20% could come from bullion which is mined gold. I said to him that I would try and segregate the material to be able to guarantee that the gold was 100% recycled. We did that for him and then a couple of other jewelers asked for it as well. 

About a year into this, we wondered what it might take to take the whole company to 100% recycled gold since we only had 20% to go. We decided not to buy any bullion or suspect gold. Recycled jewelry metal only. That was the start of our Harmony recycled brand in the year 2008.

There are many people who offer recycled gold or silver, but I think that to this day we are the only ones who offer all four metals (platinum, gold, silver, and palladium) completely recycled. 

Is there a difference in the cost of labor for Harmony Brand metals and non-recycled gold?

No. We have now done this for so long that we live it every day, so there is no additional cost.  

How do you process metal to create recycled products?

We are fortunate that we have a refinery that we can take in enough material to make all of our products. 

We do still take in some bullion and other gold but sell it separately from the Harmony Brand. It is not blended with our recycled product. 

Can you explain the difference between a refinery and a mill?

We operate as three divisions which are refining, mill product, and jewelry. Refinery will take in jewelry scrap that is silver, platinum, gold, or palladium and make it into the pure metal. We then send the pure gold metal to our mill division and they re-alloy it into standard 10, 14, 18, and 22 karats and yellow, white, pink, and green colors. From these options, we make 30,000 different products all in Richmond.

How is your commitment to environmentalism reflected in your procedures?

Our refinery is the greenest in the U.S. We use 80% less chemicals than most other refiners. Our water treatment facility ensures that no wastewater is discharged into the environment and we use scrubbers to clean our emissions.

Why haven't other refineries taken the same steps to reduce pollution?

It was expensive. We chose sometime in the 1990s to do it. The cost means that you have to want to do this to make it happen. That's what separates us from others.

Beyond fashioning finished pieces, you also offer casting services to customers who are not able to mold gold themselves. Your website says that you can create molds and help with CAD/CAM processing. 

Yes. One of the nice things for jewelers is that we can be their on-demand manufacturer. This really helps jewelers who are looking to cut their costs. We will cast a piece. Finish it. Take it all the way to setting it and send it to them. Some people have repeat orders so we can save the molds. Since we are totally in the U.S., we can be proactive and quick. 

Some people just need us to cast and they will finish and set the piece themselves. But we can finish the piece and set the stones. We can find gems or reuse ones already owned by the client. 

Wow! So that means that you can help jewelers at any step in the creation process.

We can. What makes us different is that we have a full-fledged refinery. Full-fledged mill products which include rolling, wire drawing, and casting. We die strike our settings which is superior to casting. We have every type of manufacturing that you can imagine. 

We also have a full tool room to support die striking and metal mold capability. And we have a diamond department to sort stones and bring in customers' stones to set. 

This is a good point to pivot and discuss diamonds. You offer recycled stones. Can you talk about that part of the business?

We first started working with diamonds only recently in about the last fifteen years and it was a natural, customer-driven evolution. We were offering anniversary bands and were asked to sell them finished with the diamonds set. So again, we started with just a few customers. As the demand increased, we hired a diamond manager and developed the department organically. We accomplished this by doing three or four acquisitions. 

Where do your recycled diamonds come from?

Scrap jewelry. We can do a chemical stone removal which is mostly for diamonds. We will take jewelry and chemically dissolve the metal, and filter out the diamonds and other gems. Some gems like opal and pearl can't survive this process but sapphires and some others will be fine. However, jewelers are usually most interested in recovering diamonds specifically. Especially little melee diamonds that are hard to manually pick out of a mounting. 

Is the dissolved metal recoverable?

Definitely! Everything is recoverable and we will pay the jeweler for the metal.

When a jeweler sends in items with gems, do they ever not want the gems sent back?

Absolutely. The jeweler has a choice. When it comes to diamonds, we can either send the gems back to them or send them to our diamond room and we can sort them and sell them. That becomes part of our recycled diamond brand. 

Are you at all concerned that some of those diamonds sent to you may be synthetic?

We have a diamond tester to check if the stones are natural or not. To separate CZs we just heat them and they will cloud up. We offer these diamond testing services to jewelers who can send in items to be analyzed. We typically take in gems from jewelry but we can process, say, a parcel of melee, and grade and sort it. If the jeweler wants a formal grading certificate, they can send those stones to a laboratory. 

Can you speak about the recycled diamond auctions that you hold?

It is a super cool feature. We can sell the diamonds from scrap jewelry or jewelers can send us stones that have been sitting in their cases for a long time. We have our auctions every other week and typically offer a couple hundred diamonds and a couple hundred viewers who are bidding. Often the diamonds sell for more than an old-school diamond dealer would offer. So it is a much better way for jewelers to get a good price for their stones. We typically sell at least 80% of the diamonds that are listed. Anything that is not sold can either be rolled into the next auction or returned to the jeweler. If the jeweler doesn't want to wait the two weeks until the next auction, we can always buy the stones ourselves.

Is there a minimum size for the diamonds you put up for auction?

Our minimum size is a half-carat. Anything smaller than that we will make an offer to buy and absorb it into our inventory. 

Let's talk about the colored gemstones on your site. You offer American sapphires, Brazilian tourmaline, and what you list as "African treasures". How do those gems fit into your mission of sustainability?

We are metals people. When we went into diamonds, we wondered how we could be different from everybody else. Our first step was the recycled diamond auctions. And now lab-grown diamonds are an environmentally friendly option, especially for young people. There are ten to twenty suppliers who we trust to have what we need. We buy directly from manufacturers and distributors. We sell a lot of that as an alternative to mined diamonds.

We decided that we were not just going to list colored gems, we're going to tell the story behind each gem and the mines. The American sapphires from Montana were our first step. We have picked up the African gems from many different mines and we tell the story of each of those mines. A lot of them are mined by women. We talk about the village and, when possible, will trace gems back to the individual miner. These are really cool stories that a jeweler can tell their client when they sell that gem. 

The Brazilian gems are the same. Gems come from a family-owned mine called the Cruzeiro and we know both the family and their miners. The mine was actually abandoned and they took it over a few decades ago. Now the whole village relies on the tourmaline they uncover. They run a very clean operation. Again, that is a great story. 

So, my main mission was, first, that gems have to come from environmentally responsible operations. Secondly, the business must directly benefit the people involved. That is how we approach gems. And that is how we are looking to grow our gems business. Not quickly. One mine at a time that we feel good about and want to support. 

Looking to the future, what do you want Hoover & Strong to accomplish in the coming years. 

We are always working on something new. There is a book called "Good to Great" by James C. Collins which I give to all of our new managers. It talks about shooting bullets as opposed to cannon balls. What that means is that it is better to take small steps with lesser financial investment than sinking, say, a million dollars into a single venture and risk losing all of it. This process creates new directions for the company. 

Specifically, we are currently working on artisanal fair-mined gold. That is the effort to ensure responsibility and good environmental practices with small-scale mining throughout the whole world. There are actually five million small-scale gold miners around the globe. Many work in single-family units. The challenge associated with fair mined gold is that the miners charge a premium. When you are dealing with a record high $2,600 for an ounce of gold, that additional five percent for fair mined product becomes a tough sell for a jeweler. In my opinion, that is why fair-mined gold has not been as successful as you might expect in the United States. There are a few small jewelers who buy fair-mined gold from us, but I have never been able to move that needle more than five or ten percent. If I can figure out a way to do with artisanal gold mining what I did with recycled gold, which is to provide it with little to no premium over mined gold, then the buyer has the choice.

We are also always looking for possible new acquisitions. We have done four, and are looking at another one. And also new product opportunities. 

What motivates me today is that I am blessed with two children in the business. They have been working with me for over eight years. I have rotated them through customer service and marketing. Dani, our Customer Experience and Marketing Manager, has been in charge of our Microsoft conversion for the past year. TD has been managing refining and recently moved into sales. They are the fifth generation.

Lastly, I wanted to talk about the scholarships that you offer to the children of employees. This is very much in keeping with your commitment to the future. 

At age 94, my dad George is still working for the company. He is a big believer in the future and has put 15+ kids through school. His children. My children. Aunt's and uncle's children. Friend's children. To continue this mission, we started a scholarship fund at least ten years ago and will pick a child of an employee who needs help with paying for college. We usually do one or two students per year and take them through either a two-year program or a four-year program.