Fortunoff jewelry website opens

The Fortunoff jewelry brand has launched its e-commerce site in time for the holidays, taking a crucial step toward the goal of opening a brick-and-mortar store.

"We fully intend to get back into brick-and-mortar and jewelry," said David Fortunoff, who, with his sister, Esther, formed a partnership with jewelry wholesaler Clover II to revive the Fortunoff jewelry brand. "This is really just a sneak peek of the collection we're assembling, which includes items that our customers expect from us and some new things to surprise people."

Fortunoff Fine Jewelry opened its online store quietly on Nov. 18, inviting former customers by e-mail to browse its collection. The company has received many letters from excited former customers of the old Fortunoff company, Fortunoff said. The site is offering free shipping on orders of $200 or more, a promotion that has proved quite popular, he added.

Fortunoff Fine Jewelry (for tunoffjewelry.com), which plans to open a store on Long Island within six months, has been focusing much of its energy on launching the e-commerce site in time for the holidays, he said.

"We're still very small, so it's taken our full resources," Fortunoff said. "We knew we couldn't get a brick-and-mortar store open for Christmas, but we didn't want to disappoint our customers and not be in the market at all."

Family-run and -owned for many decades, the old Fortunoff retail chain - with its flagship store at The Source mall in Westbury - was sold twice to private equity firms and twice filed for bankruptcy before closing last year. Members of the founding family, however, purchased all of the intellectual property of Fortunoff, including the brand name and related trademarks, last year.