Sidney Garber Celebrates 80 Years With Strong Growth and New Jewelry Designs

When Brooke Garber Neidich took over Sidney Garber, the jewelry house her father founded in 1946, she inherited a legacy that needed more than creative direction.

“First, I’m proud that there is a business,” she said, reflecting on the company’s 80th anniversary. “When I took over, the jewelry was beautiful, but the business wasn’t too pretty.”

Neidich assumed leadership in 2009 following her father’s death and set about changing that, pairing her creative vision with a more disciplined approach to operations. She assembled a performance-driven executive team, introduced designs that gave the house a more distinct identity and turned the business profitable.

“I was happy with that rigor; it didn’t thwart my creativity at all. In fact, I think it helped me focus,” she said.

The balance between creativity and commercial discipline has become central to how Neidich runs the company. Rather than treating the two as competing interests, she has found that a more structured business allows her to concentrate on design. It is an approach that has helped the house maintain its independence while establishing a more recognizable identity in the fine jewelry market.

Eight decades after its founding, Sidney Garber remains an independent American fine jewelry house, one that has found fresh momentum in a market increasingly dominated by large luxury groups.

Since 2022, the company has recorded 58 percent organic growth across existing doors, while average order value has increased 36 percent over the past three years. New customers account for one-third of the business.

The brand operates boutiques in New York and Chicago, where it began, alongside e-commerce and distribution through 21 wholesale points of sale. Its core bestsellers account for 35 percent of sales, including the Rolling Bracelet, which alone represents 13 percent. The company is also looking to build brand awareness internationally, extending its reach while keeping its independently owned structure intact.

For Neidich, growth has not come at the expense of the intimacy that defines the house. Some of its craftspeople have worked with Sidney Garber for decades; others are the children of artisans who worked with her father. Those relationships have helped preserve a continuity of craftsmanship even as the business has evolved.

“This is a family jewelry house with families creating our pieces and families buying them. It’s so intimate,” she said.

Neidich still spends time behind the counter, maintaining relationships with clients and an understanding of the pieces they collect. That familiarity extends beyond the transaction. The team often knows a customer’s personal history with the house, including which pieces they own and which might mark an upcoming birthday or milestone.

“Every piece of jewelry, box, ribbon and message comes from a human being. You can tell the difference — and that’s really important to us,” she said.

For the anniversary, Neidich has introduced 26 designs inspired by the house’s eight-decade history, priced from $3,900 to $69,000. Among them are limited-edition vintage yellow gold Tubogas necklaces and bracelets, produced in editions of four and three, respectively, each individually numbered.

Rather than approaching the anniversary as a comprehensive exercise in revisiting the archives, Neidich has drawn on pieces with personal significance, including designs she remembers wearing and others she wished she still owned. The result connects the house’s history with her own experience of jewelry as something deeply personal.

Among the designs is the Cadeau Bracelet, inspired by a piece her father gave her in her 20s that she subsequently lost.

“It really bothered me that I’d lost that bracelet — it kind of haunted me,” she recalled. “And then a lightbulb went off, and I thought, ‘I could make it again. Why didn’t I think of that sooner?’”

After completing the new design, she came across a photograph of herself with her father, the original bracelet visible on her wrist. The discovery brought an unexpected sense of continuity to the project, linking a new piece of jewelry to a memory she had carried for decades.

The anniversary assortment also reinterprets the house’s Rolling motif in earrings and revisits its tassel designs, connecting familiar signatures with new expressions. “For our 80th anniversary, I brought back to what I loved, what I missed, what I enjoyed wearing,” Neidich said. “It really is like wish fulfillment.”

Her approach to design has long favored jewelry that becomes part of a woman’s daily wardrobe rather than something reserved for special occasions. Even the house’s diamond Rope necklaces, set with 53 carats across 2,490 stones, are conceived with ease of wear in mind.

“Why wait for a special occasion? Why treat your jewelry as if it’s untouchable and unapproachable?” she said. “It’s meant to be worn and loved.”

That philosophy informs the construction of her pieces as much as their appearance. Neidich favors lightweight designs, movement and minimal clasps, allowing jewelry to sit comfortably against the body. The idea is that even substantial pieces should feel intuitive to wear, rather than requiring an occasion or a particular wardrobe.

It has helped establish Sidney Garber’s enduring signatures as pieces women buy for themselves, collect and eventually pass down. For Neidich, the emotional life of jewelry is inseparable from its everyday use, with pieces acquiring meaning through the people and moments associated with them.

Since the business became profitable under her leadership, Neidich has donated its profits to charitable causes, a commitment spanning more than 12 years. Her priorities include the arts, gun violence prevention, children’s mental health and women’s reproductive rights. It is a philanthropic model that gives the company’s commercial success a purpose beyond growth alone.

As Sidney Garber enters its ninth decade, Neidich is less concerned with defining the next 80 years than with continuing the work that has brought the business this far.

“If I’m creative, open, correct and thoughtful, the business will continue,” she said. “That’s my goal.”