Lani Garfield
Raju Mehta
El Paseo Jewelers in Palm Desert offers customers quality jewelry and custom pieces with the added peace of mind that they are helping to employ local artisans.
Raju Mehta, owner of El Paseo Jewelers, told Desert Magazine he has been in the jewelry business for 46 years since he was a teenager growing up in India. In 1982, he came to the U.S., where he was able to work up from selling jewelry in a retail store to having his own business in Los Angeles employing 200 people.
In downtown Los Angeles, Mehta started by selling loose diamonds and manufacturing jewelry. In 1998, he bought a jewelry store from a customer, and as more-and-more jewelry manufacturing moved to China in the mid-2000s, he made a decision not to follow the crowd, but to once again forge his own path.
By 2007, Mehta's primary focus was El Paseo Jewelers, which moved to its current Palm Desert location in 2015.
"Our business here has gotten much bigger than what we expected it to be, so we just concentrate on this one now," he said.
To this day, most of the jewelry sold at El Paseo is still manufactured in Los Angeles, Mehta said. Having his own operation enables him to literally remove any middlemen and to continue to employ people in Los Angeles creating jewelry for his customers.
"We do a lot of custom orders," Mehta said. "We can pretty much do everything."
If a customer can imagine it, his artisans can create it, Mehta said.
For custom pieces, an initial draft is created of what the customer wants in consultation with El Paseo staff, Mehta said. That design goes to the artisan, who works out how to turn that concept into jewelry.
The final design from the artisan is provided to the customer, so they can give approval. Yet, even once the final piece is created, Mehta still insists on customer satisfaction.
"If they don't like it, we'll redo it," he said.
And if the customer still isn't satisfied, they can get a refund.
"We believe big-time in customer service," Mehta said. "We have the best customer service in The Valley."
In fact, El Paseo Jewelers offer a number of services at no cost, such as appraisals, small repairs, as well as cleaning and polishing.
Keeping most of the manufacturing local isn't the only way that Mehta shows his commitment to the community. He also is very committed to working with local charities, he said.
"We are part of about 30 different charities," Mehta said. "As we have grown from a small store to probably the leading store in the Valley, we believe that success comes with responsibility."
