You’ve Got Someone Who Wants To Be More Than Just Friends In The Diamond Business

by Mallory Ortberg · February 12, 2015

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At Shane Co., you’ve got someone who wants to be more than just friends in the diamond business. At Shane Co., you’ve got someone who knows you. Someone who’s been watching you come into the diamond business for years with people who don’t deserve you.

Only the diamonds deserve you. None of the others have.

You’ve got someone in the diamond business who would hold you the way our unique pavé platinum setting holds our princess-cut stone, a steal at just $575. The others who came in here with you didn’t even deserve to lift the Round Diamond Tennis Bracelet in 14k Yellow Gold to your perfect wrist. It was an insult to beauty, that they were allowed to touch your hands or any of our multi-colored sapphires.

There’s someone in the diamond business, someone who might be closer to you than you think. Someone who is prepared to leave the diamond business behind, if you were willing to take a chance and start over with a new life in a new town with a new name and a sack of untraceable diamonds.

At Shane Co., there’s someone who understands you in a way you didn’t know you could be understood. There’s someone at Shane Co. – someone who you might just see now as a clerk at an affordable jewelry chain, but who with a little time and patience could be so much more – who’s seen you try on our exquisite purple amethyst Forever Yours bracelet for only $99, an unbeatable deal, and knows just what you’re capable of.

You’ve got someone in the diamond business who already knows your ring size. Someone whose love will never tarnish, never bend, never break, just like our 6mm Cultured Freshwater Pearl Endless Strand.

There’s someone who hasn’t been able to stop thinking about you in the diamond business. Someone who aches for you in the diamond business. Someone who can’t keep a up the pretense of being in a normal relationship in the diamond business because Rebecca is nothing compared to you. There’s someone who would rather go to Jared‘s than spend another minute trying to make love to Rebecca with a head and a heart full of you.

Jared’s doesn’t offer the same warranty and breadth of options as Shane Co. Your friend in the diamond business – you’ll never find them at Jared’s. There’s nothing there for you. Your friend is at Shane Co.

You’ve got someone in the diamond business who’s wasted a lot of time already not speaking up. Someone who’s been your diamond friend for years, and is ready for to finally be your diamond something more.

 

Mallory is an Editor of The Toast.


57 Comments

  2. SarcasticFringehead +41

    So here’s a question: is Tom Shane immortal, or did he just force people to have, like, voice surgery to sound exactly like him to preserve continuity in his radio ads? Does he have an army of Tom Shanes wandering around?

  3. Lizzie_Sidds +80

    IN CUPERTINO, SAN MATEO, NOVATO, AND WALNUT CREEK

    OPEN WEEKDAYS TIL EIGHT, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY TIL FIVE

    ONLINE AT SHANECO DOT COM

    I haven’t lived in the Bay Area in a decade send help

    1. sarah_jay +19

      I lived in San Jose for 20 years and now live in Salt Lake City. About a year after I moved here I started hearing radio commercials for a store here in the valley!

      Also, I have a hard time buying something from someone who seems bored by their product. This is the same reason I can’t like Coldplay. Chris Martin sounds so bored singing the song, why should I be excited to listen to it?

      1. SarcasticFringehead +13

        Isn’t it jarring when there’s a different store address than the one you’re used to? I grew up listening to the Colorado ads, and now when I hear the Seattle ones it freaks me out a little.

        1. rusty_spatula +10

          Not sure which was more traumatizing when I left Colorado: learning that the Shane Co isn’t local, or that Hyland Hills isn’t the only Water World.

        3. gripyfish +7

          Up until today, I legitimately thought Shane Co was only in the Portland metro area and now I don’t know what to do.

          1. elsajeni +6

            I feel a weird fondness toward the Portland Shane Co. because its radio ad was one of the first times after moving to Portland that I heard a location described (Highway 217, across from the Washington Square Mall) and KNEW WHERE IT WAS.

          2. AllonsyAllonso +6

            I was wondering how Mallory could know about an Atlanta jewelry store. So I understand your confusion.

      1. Lizzie_Sidds +4

        I don’t think I know those ones! The only one I still remember is Shaneco, thank all the elder gods.

        1. betsymurgatroyd +3

          Possibly before your time. Feel free to check the Cal Worthington archive referred to by bcs below (above?) so you can share the earworm I now have.

          1. RuncibleSpoon +2

            growing up in LA means I have a deep fondness for Cal Worthington, even if those ads never ever actually worked on me, because I’ve never had the slighted inclination to buy a car from him/them. I just love him and wish I could go hang out at his petting zoo dealership.

      2. bonncat +9

        Oh man, that song. Those commercials. The Cal Worthington archive is one of the places on the net that I sometimes go to when I want to give myself the heebie-jeebies, late at night.

        That said, when I was six years old it made perfect sense that people should buy a car from a cowboy with a large animal menagerie.

        1. betsymurgatroyd +10

          My little sister always thought they were saying “Pussy Cow” rather than Go See Cal and didn’t understand what the hell a Pussy Cow was. Imagine my delight when I found out this was not an uncommon translation. Also, I never understood what a Cow Palace was for the longest time, but I know my sister thought it had something to do with a Pussy Cow.

        2. RuncibleSpoon +4

          I loved those commercials, but my parents also were showing me a lot of Monty Python, so my lock on what was normal and realistic on television might have been a little off.

      1. J_M

        Hearing his voice in my head right now!!!

        (And this intersection is also familiar from every traffic report ever)

    4. JenV +3

      It’s been like 20 years and I can still perfectly remember Robert Stack’s dulcet tones giving me the toll-free number to call at the end of Unsolved Mysteries. Those brain cells are burned in permanently.

  4. hugpunch +72

    Ugh, this is what I get for storing all my wealth not in banks but in precious gems. Just because my gemstones are loose doesn’t mean I am, Shane and Co.

  6. patakhi +17

    Oh god, I know 0 things about jewelry and thought that this commercial was unique to my Midwestern city. Glad to hear that plenty more Americans have suffered through it.

  7. picool +9

    So I had no idea this was a chain store? I just knew there was one at State St and 7200 South, open weekdays ’til 8:00, Saturdays until 5:00, closed Sundays. I learned something today, then.

    1. kimmiegirl +4

      At the corner of Hurstbourne and Taylorsville Road. Open Monday through Friday til 8:00, Saturday and Sunday til 5:00. Online at Shaneco.com. WHY did I also think they were local? Tom Shane doesn’t sound like anyone from any part of Kentucky.

  8. deleted7410012 +10

    i could only read this entirely in tom shane’s monotone nasal voice, which is TERRIBLE WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS.

  9. ppyajunebug +11

    Literally all I can think about is last night’s Broad City and Abbi looking at her own nose ring, going “I love diamonds” in her Judy Garland voice and then swallowing it.

  10. JGlo +13

    Just off Arapahoe Rd at Emporia St 1/2 mile east of I-25. And in Westminster off the Boulder Turnpike at 104th. Open Monday through Friday till 8, Saturday and Sunday till 5.

      1. JGlo

        Ah well, I haven’t lived in Denver in 5 years. That pitch was burned into my brain during middle school from hours of listening to KTCL or KBPI.

  11. cait0716 +15

    Finding out that Shane Co was a national chain and not a small, local business was a really rude awakening for me when I moved out of my hometown.

  13. literaltrousersnake +12

    Spence Diamonds Canada has nothing on your friend at Shane Co. Spence with the popped collar. That car. They know nothing, those Canadian lumberjacks, those Molson-swigging goons with their indelicate fondness for rose-cut stones from the North.

  14. coloredlights +13

    I’m cracking up at everyone who thought Shane Co was a local business. Somehow I absolutely never got that impression and thought that they couldn’t be anything BUT a giant chain with commercials like that! (96th St and Hague Rd, just east of I-69.)

    1. deniseeliza +2

      Hahaha oh man I didn’t know Shane Co was a chain, either! Probably because I grew up in a place without one and then moved to the other side of the country. I have no idea what’s what here 😛

  15. extrayarn +15

    Is this where I admit I have no idea what y’all are talking about? This must not be a thing in my part of PA.

    1. ramina +5

      NJ here – I did some googling and it looks like the closest one to our vicinity is in Nashville.

    2. SarcasticFringehead +6

      The main thing is that the same bored-sounding, nasally guy (or someone he has forced through eldritch arts to have the same voice as him) has been doing their ads for at least 40 years.

  16. S. Pebbletush +17

    I recently went on a date with someone who said that she wished she had someone in her life for whom she could buy a diamond ring, because she really wants to go and buy a ring from the nice guy from Shane Co. I got the impression that she thought about going to Cupertino, San Mateo, or Walnut Creek and having a really nice chat with her friend in the diamond business.

    Needless to say, I did not continue dating this person.

  17. redheadedwolf +12

    This is what I always expect when I see one of the advert articles on The Toast’s homepage.

      1. redheadedwolf +5

        I’ve been thinking of starting a tumblr just to post the titles of the Toast’s sponsored links. They can stand alone as writing prompts, from a Toast frame of mind.

  18. Sunshine +7

    I’ve never heard of these ads (wrong side of the Atlantic), but I don’t need to, I just love the subtext becoming text .

  19. J_M +5

    Wondering what Paul from the Diamond Center thinks about all this.

    I suspect he would not approve. Paul, and his moustache, understand boundaries.

  21. Draycat Meowfloy +3

    In Minnetonka at 394 and Hopkins Crossroad and in Woodbury at I94 and Radio Drive. Open weekdays till 8. Saturday and Sunday till 5. Online. At shaneco dot com.

    I can also do the National American University jingle despite not having heard that for YEARS

    1. Natalie

      I-94 AND RADIO DRIVE!!

      I completely forgot about these ads until you said (typed?) that. Then it all came flooding back.

  22. RuncibleSpoon

    these feels kind of like those "a puppy is not just for Christmas" campaigns.

    I mean, c'mon guys, a spouse is not just for Valentine's Day

  23. Abigail +2

    Here’s something wild: We do NOT have Shane Co where I live, but we DO have a local jeweler who has (apparently) stolen the slogan “You’ve got a friend in the diamond business.” They advertise at the movie theater and sing it to a little jingle. So I was very confused about how Mallory knew about the slogan of a jewelery store that only has two locations in southeast Michigan.