How Armen Norendzayan Started Silver Palace in the LA Jewelry District

Silver Palace Inc. was founded in 1996 in Los Angeles's Jewelry District — the dense stretch of Hill Street and Broadway that's been the West Coast's wholesale jewelry hub for generations. Every wholesale trade has a version of this story: someone who knows the product decides the buyers around them deserve a better, more straightforward source for it.

Armen set out to build something different: organized inventory, dependable ordering, and consistent quality — instead of whatever happened to be in a vendor's bag that week.

Birthstone baby charms were one of Silver Palace's first product lines. They're small, personal pieces that live or die on consistency — exactly the standard Armen was trying to build the business around. The company also moved early into domestic production of wholesale toe rings, made in the US instead of imported. That line got an unusual early boost: a nail polish company built a promotion around it, bundling a toe ring with its product and pushing Silver Palace's designs well beyond the usual jewelry-trade audience.

Alec Norendzayan now serves as Vice President, carrying that same standard into how the company runs today.

30 Years of Genuine .925 Sterling Silver

The single throughline across three decades in business is the hallmark. Every piece of solid sterling silver Silver Palace has ever sold carries a .925 stamp, confirming 92.5% pure silver. That stamp is the difference between a supplier a retailer can build a reputation on, and one that quietly costs them customers.

That distinction matters more in wholesale jewelry than in almost any other resale category. When a retailer sells a piece as sterling silver, they're making a claim to their own customer. If the supplier behind them was loose with that claim — plated jewelry sold as solid, purity mislabeled — the retailer is the one who has to answer for it. Thirty years of the same standard means thirty years of retailers not having to worry about that risk when they order from Silver Palace.

This wasn't a policy Silver Palace added once counterfeit jewelry became a bigger industry conversation. It was the standard from the first year. Three decades of consistency is a much harder claim to fake than a quality statement written last quarter.

From Sterling Silver to Gold and Moissanite: How the Catalog Grew

Silver Palace started as a sterling silver specialist, and sterling silver is still the core of the business. But the catalog today spans 14K gold, gold-plated jewelry, moissanite, and lab-grown diamond pieces — now totaling more than 25,000 designs.

Each addition came after sterling silver was already established, not alongside it. And each one waited until the same authenticity standard could apply to the new category. That expansion wasn't about chasing every trend — it was about giving independent jewelry retailers and resellers a reason to place one order instead of managing four suppliers.

The wholesale gold jewelry collection and wholesale moissanite jewelry collection exist today for a simple reason: retailers who trusted Silver Palace for sterling silver started asking whether the same standard applied to gold and diamond alternatives. It does.

What 30 Years in Business Means for Wholesale Buyers Today

Longevity in a wholesale supplier isn't nostalgia. It's a practical signal. Industry guidance on choosing a wholesale jewelry partner keeps coming back to the same few questions: Is the product genuinely what it's labeled as? Is the pricing clear? Can the supplier actually deliver when a bestseller needs restocking?

Three decades in one specialty is what turns the answer to all three into "yes, consistently" — instead of just "yes, so far."

None of that is new because the company turned 30. It's the same approach Silver Palace has taken since 1996; the milestone is just a reason to say it plainly. For a fuller picture of what to check before committing to a wholesale jewelry supplier, see the wholesale supplier guide.

What's Next for Silver Palace

Thirty years in, the plan isn't to slow down. It's to keep growing in the directions that have already proven to work. Silver Palace is staying rooted in the local LA Jewelry District relationships that built the company, while pushing further into online wholesale — reaching retailers and resellers who'll never walk into the showroom but still need the same verified .925 standard.

On the product side, that means growing the 14K gold and lab-grown diamond lines further. Those are the two categories with the most room left to expand inside the same authenticity standard.

The throughline across all of it is simple: bring the same care a customer gets at a retail counter to every wholesale order — whether it's a $200 first-time order or a $5,000 repeat buy. That's the standard Armen started with in 1996, applied to a bigger catalog and a wider set of buyers.