The Tamar Time and Shine Edmonton stand is a second visit worth making, because most buyers who have stopped there stopped at the silver, and silver is the one part of the book that has repriced against them.
Two men run the company. Mashiah Papismado opened it in 2006, his son Simon joined in 2008, and the pair still answer the phone at 620 Cathcart in Montreal. The address is a jewellery building, shared floor by floor with diamond dealers and trade suppliers. That is where a house this size belongs, and part of why it has never needed to grow.
Who runs Tamar, and why a two person wholesaler is worth the page
The structure, rather than the size. Tamar carries 925 sterling silver, stainless steel and tungsten on a single account, and those three metals sit in genuinely different price universes. Silver tracks spot. Steel is priced industrially and barely moves. Tungsten behaves in much the same way.
Very few Canadian wholesalers span that range. Houses grow by going deeper into one metal, adding collections, weights and finishes within a material they already know. Going sideways across three, by contrast, means three sets of suppliers, three quality standards and three kinds of customer. Tamar did it in 2006, before there was any advantage in it, and then simply stayed there.
The company is candid about the trade off. Its own material states that it is smaller than its competitors, and that the compensation is being hands on and responsive. In practice, anyone who has bought from a second generation family supplier knows the shape of that promise. The person who picks up the phone can approve the exception, adjust the order, or take the return. Free freight also starts at $500. The catalogue runs to 273 products behind a trade login, which marks a house that is not selling direct alongside the stores it supplies.
What does a three metal account save a jewellery retailer
Run the arithmetic on freight, because it is the part nobody prices.
For instance, take a store placing $1,200 of reorder spread evenly across silver, steel and tungsten. On that account it is therefore a single $1,200 order. It clears the $500 threshold, ships free, arrives once, and produces one invoice and one receiving task.
Split the same $1,200 across three specialist suppliers and it becomes three orders of $400. As a result, none clears a $500 threshold. At $25 to $40 a shipment into Alberta, that is $75 to $120 of freight on identical goods. Call it six to ten per cent added before a single piece sells. The carrier rates are illustrative and every buyer should substitute their own. The threshold is Tamar’s published figure.
Then count what never appears on an invoice. Three sets of terms. Three reorder cycles to track. Three receiving events. Three people to call when a size is wrong, two of whom do not know the store.
Where the show discount actually ranks
The floor offer sits underneath all of that: ten per cent off silver and steel on orders written at the show, with silver chains carved out and tungsten included. The carve out is the informative part. Chain is weight driven and priced close to spot, so the spread on it is thin in a good year and almost nothing in this one. A supplier who excludes it knows their own margins, and would rather keep an offer honest than publish a number they claw back elsewhere.
Which settles the ranking. The discount lands once, on a single order. By comparison, the freight and administration saving recurs on every order of the year.
There is an honest counterweight. A single account is also a single point of failure, and two people cannot be in two provinces at once. If a size is out, no second source is waiting. Even so, that does not argue for spreading the business across more suppliers. It argues for knowing exactly who is on the other end of the phone, which is a thing done standing up rather than by email.
What changed around silver in 2026
The metal moved once, hard, and the rest of the year follows from it. Silver’s annual average rose forty two per cent in 2025. It reached a record above $121 an ounce on 29 January 2026, traded near $65 in August, and still sits well above where it stood a year earlier. Meanwhile, global silver jewellery fabrication fell eight per cent in 2025, with North America down seven and Europe down ten. The Silver Institute forecasts double digit losses in jewellery and silverware for 2026.
Then in February, Pandora began selling platinum plated jewellery, piloting across thirty Northern European stores. Chief executive Berta de Pablos-Barbier framed the move as navigating new raw material costs. A company buying by the tonne, with hedging desks no independent will ever access, has engineered part of its way out of the metal. By contrast, the independent store cannot hedge. It can only decide what else the case is allowed to hold.
| Metal | What it answers at the counter | How it behaves on price | Category evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sterling silver | Gift and self purchase | Tracks spot. Annual average up forty two per cent in 2025 | Global fabrication down eight per cent in 2025, double digit losses forecast for 2026 |
| Stainless steel | Men’s chain wall and fashion | Industrial pricing. Does not track spot | Absorbs demand as precious metals reprice |
| Tungsten | Bridal, when a gold price stalls the sale | Does not track spot | Fastest growing wedding band material at 7.6 per cent compound annual growth to 2033 |
Sources: The Silver Institute, World Silver Survey 2026; Grand View Research, US men’s metal wedding bands market.
Where the Canadian numbers stop
No Canadian body publishes silver’s share of jewellery unit volume, average silver ticket, or store level turns. Instead, the nearest usable figures are American. The Silver Institute’s retailer survey put silver at thirty one per cent of jewellery unit volume in 2024, up from twenty eight per cent in 2022, with eighty three per cent of retailers calling the category essential. Canadian jewellers describe the same pattern at every show in this country. Nobody here measures it, and the gap is worth naming rather than filling with a borrowed number.
Tamar Time and Shine Edmonton: what is on the stand
Sterling silver covers gift and self purchase. Halo sets with ruby, blue opal and emerald coloured stones, Tree of Life pendants and matching sets. Twisted eternity bands, four ring stackable groups, channel set and pavé huggies. Triple infinity bracelets run in two and three tone finishes.
Stainless steel is a men’s wall from one supplier. The link programme runs curb, figaro, franco, singapore, oval box, paperclip and coffee bean, from 1.2mm to 15mm, in steel, gold colour, black and two tone. Alongside them sit banded rings set with black stones.
Tungsten covers bridal at a number a young couple will agree to. Polished bands with matte centres, carbon fibre inlays, hammered black finishes with gold lines, ceramic and tungsten combinations, and meteorite inlay.
That third group is doing something the trade has been slow to write about, because it is unglamorous. Non precious wedding bands are forecast to grow at 4.6 per cent compound annually to 2033. Precious metals still hold fifty three per cent of that market, so this is a question of direction rather than share. At the counter it plays out simply. A bridal desk that can answer a gold question only with a gold price loses the customer who flinched. A desk that can instead put a hammered black band with a meteorite inlay in front of that same customer keeps the sale in the building.
The book, in the metal
A spread from the current Tamar catalogue across all three material groups. Product photography courtesy of Tamar.
Sterling silver
Stainless steel
Tungsten
What to settle at the booth rather than work out later
- The reorder window at current spot. A house that reprices weekly and one that holds a quarter are different suppliers, and the difference only shows up on the second order.
- The full link and finish range, priced. Blackened and gold coloured steel do not turn at the same rate in every province. Take their read on the West, then weigh it against the floor at home.
- Tungsten sizing and exchange policy. Otherwise, bridal without a clean size exchange becomes a returns problem by February.
- Whether the freight threshold covers reorders into Alberta. Montreal to the Prairies is worth confirming face to face.
- The distributor programme. Tamar runs one, and for a multi store group or a rep carrying lines, that conversation is worth more than anything on the order form.
Weight in the hand and the quality of a setting decide whether a piece sells at retail, and neither survives a thumbnail. That is the whole case for walking a floor instead of a website.
When and where is Time and Shine Edmonton 2026
Time and Shine runs Sunday 16 and Monday 17 August 2026 at the Edmonton Expo Centre, 7515 118 Avenue NW. Registration is free for verified members of the trade, with no membership or affiliation requirement, and parking is free. Roughly eighty companies are moving inventory into the building, and the full list sits in the Time & Shine 2026 official exhibitor directory.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Tamar and where is the company based?
A family run wholesale house founded in Montreal in 2006 by Mashiah Papismado, with his son Simon joining in 2008. It works from 620 Cathcart and supplies the Canadian trade only.
Why is Tamar worth a stop for a buyer who has seen the booth before
Earlier visits were almost always silver visits, and silver has repriced hard since. The steel and tungsten sitting on the same account are priced industrially and have not moved with spot, which makes them the part of the book that now answers a customer a metal price has stalled.
Does Tamar sell direct to consumers?
No. Pricing and the catalogue are restricted to verified trade, and the company runs a distributor programme for multi store groups and representatives carrying lines.
Sources: Tamar; The Silver Institute, World Silver Survey 2026; The Silver Institute retailer survey; Pandora; Grand View Research.
Author: Olivier Felicio
Olivier Felicio is the founder and publisher of Canadian Jeweller Magazine, Canada's jewellery business publication since 1879. He writes on retail strategy, market data, trade policy and the commercial side of the Canadian jewellery and watch trade, and hosts Time and Shine, Canada's jewellery buying event. Contact: olivier@canadianjeweller.com.
