Ben Bridge Brand Guidelines: A 1912 Seattle Watchmaker’s Store Inside Berkshire Hathaway

A watchmaker’s store in downtown Seattle.

Ben Bridge began as someone else’s shop. In 1912 a watchmaker, Samuel Silverman, opened a jewellery store in downtown Seattle, according to the company history in the International Directory of Company Histories (St. James Press, 2004); English Wikipedia gives the same start. In 1922 his son-in-law, Ben Bridge, joined him as a partner, the same year he married Silverman’s daughter, Sally. In 1927 Bridge bought his father-in-law’s interest and renamed the business Ben Bridge Jeweler.

The 1930s were hard. The International Directory says the economic conditions of the decade nearly forced Bridge into bankruptcy, that suppliers pressed for payment, and that he eventually paid his creditors in full, with interest. His grandson Ed Bridge told National Jeweler in August 2003 that Ben “never wanted to owe anybody again,” and the same history ties that experience to the cautious pace of growth the family kept for decades. It also describes a long-standing rule of promoting only from within, applied to family members as well as staff.

A second store came in 1950, in Bremerton, across Puget Sound. In 1955 Ben Bridge handed the business to his sons, Herb and Bob Bridge; the International Directory, quoting Ed Bridge in National Jeweler, says he laid his keys on the table at a family meeting and left the running of the company to them.

Early in the 1960s the brothers ran the jewellery departments of J.C. Penney’s stores around Seattle, at the department-store chain’s request, and the same history says this taught them how a multi-store business and a shopping mall worked. They opened a store at Southcenter Mall, between Seattle and Tacoma, in 1968, and had six stores when the next generation joined at the end of the 1970s.

From six stores to the western malls.

The third generation of Bridges in management, cousins Ed and Jon Bridge, took on the finances and the merchandising from 1978 and 1981. The chain opened in Portland, Oregon, in 1980, its debut outside Washington, and entered California in 1982 with a store in San Mateo. The International Directory counts seven stores in 1980 and 39 in 1990, with 20 of them in California, and says daily management passed to Ed and Jon Bridge in September 1990. By then the stores reached Washington, Oregon, California, Alaska and Hawaii.

Growth stayed deliberate. The same history quotes Ed Bridge telling the Puget Sound Business Journal in July 1992 that the chain’s challenge in the decade would be “saying ‘No’” to sites, and it records 56 stores in nine states in 1998 and 62 stores in 11 states by the end of the 1990s. Most were in shopping malls.

The sale to Berkshire Hathaway followed. In December 1999 Ed Bridge telephoned Warren Buffett to ask whether he would be interested in buying the company, according to the International Directory, which says the family had weighed questions of succession and estate planning and had considered a public listing. The deal was completed in May 2000, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer having reported the agreement on 19 May. Berkshire already owned two jewellers, Borsheim’s in Omaha and Helzberg Diamonds, and the Bridges stayed in charge.

Brand-building inside the stores began soon after. In 2002 the chain started selling a Ben Bridge Signature diamond, followed by a Canadian diamond line called Ikuma, the International Directory says; by 2003 it counted 71 stores in 11 western states, eight of them in Texas. Ed Bridge told National Jeweler in 2003 that the two names he most wanted to promote were the store’s and the sales associate’s.

Design and documentation.

Jewellery chains in North America and Asia sell much of the same thing — engagement rings, wedding bands, gold chains and gifts — but they present it through the places they trade. In the United States and Canada the typical store sits in a shopping mall, often beside rival banners owned by the same group; in Hong Kong, mainland China and India, the chains’ own store pages often show gold jewellery at long counters and bridal sets as a category of their own.

Advertising carries much of the identity. American chains have long built their brands on television campaigns and on credit offers for buyers paying in instalments, and in recent years their campaigns have widened from engagement and anniversaries to everyday wear and self-purchase, as the trade press reports. Asian chains publish campaigns tied to weddings and festivals, and some name their collections after the occasion, the material or the craft rather than after a designer.

Ownership is often more complicated than the shop sign suggests. Several North American names that began as family businesses now belong to listed groups or to holding companies, and some have changed hands more than once, through mergers, takeovers and restructurings. Several Asian chains are listed on a stock exchange, and their corporate pages name the founders and the controlling shareholders alongside the listing.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand: who founded it, where and when, who owns it now, how it has presented itself in its stores and campaigns, and what rests only on the company’s own word. Store counts are given with the date of the source that reports them.

Five generations, then a group.

The family kept the top job after the sale. In November 2017 Lisa Bridge, Ed Bridge’s daughter, became president and chief operating officer, National Jeweler reported, and the trade paper called her the first woman to hold the presidency in the company’s history. A certified gemologist, she had run the chain’s staff education and had launched the Lisa Bridge Collection of her own designs in 2015. JCK reported that she took over from her father as chief executive in 2019, the fifth generation of the family to lead the business.

The chain has become smaller and more focused on the upper end of the market. In August 2025 JCK described Ben Bridge as a 34-store chain that had once had more than 90 locations, and as catering to the high end, in contrast to Helzberg’s mall stores. National Jeweler reported that Ben Bridge had sold its Pandora division and reworked its own stores. In July 2025 it bought Olympic Manufacturing, a family-owned jewellery repair and manufacturing business founded in 1975 in Bellevue, Washington, which had worked with Ben Bridge for more than 30 years; National Jeweler reported that its services include CAD design, casting, laser repair and engraving, and that it would also serve other independent jewellers.

The biggest change came weeks later. In August 2025 Berkshire Hathaway formed the BH Jewelry Group, bringing Ben Bridge and Helzberg under one management led by Helzberg’s chief executive, JCK and National Jeweler reported. Lisa Bridge stepped down as chief executive, and the company’s finance chief became interim brand president. A Helzberg spokesperson told JCK that each chain would keep its own name, experience and customers.

For a design guide, Ben Bridge shows how a family jeweller can keep its founder’s name above the door through a century of growth, a sale to a conglomerate and a regrouping. Compare Helzberg Diamonds, its sister chain in the BH Jewelry Group, and Jared, another American jeweller aimed at a higher-spending customer. For this guide we use a slate, a soft brass and a pearl white with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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