Helzberg Diamonds

Helzberg Diamonds is a Kansas City-born specialty jewelry retailer founded in 1915 by Russian immigrant Morris Helzberg. Built over three generations of the Helzberg family into a national chain, the company is best remembered for its 1967 “I Am Loved” button campaign and for its 1995 sale to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, which followed a chance street encounter in New York between Barnett Helzberg Jr. and Buffett. Helzberg remains a Berkshire subsidiary, headquartered in North Kansas City, Missouri, with roughly 210 stores across 36 states.

Founding

Morris Helzberg, a Russian immigrant, opened the first Helzberg jewelry store in Kansas City in 1915.¹² Sources differ on whether the original shop sat on the Missouri or the Kansas side of the metro: Wikipedia places the founding in Kansas City, Kansas, while company-history accounts and the firm’s own corporate address tie its origins to the Missouri side.¹²

Not long after the store opened, Morris suffered a disabling stroke, and responsibility for the young business fell to his son, Barnett Helzberg Sr., who is reported to have taken over operations at the age of 14.²³ The family had five children involved in the enterprise during its early years.²

Growth and the Helzberg family

Under Barnett Helzberg Sr., the company grew from a single storefront into a regional jeweler through the middle decades of the 20th century. The leadership baton passed to the third generation in 1963, when Barnett Sr. became chairman of the board and his son Barnett Helzberg Jr. assumed day-to-day control of operations.¹³ Barnett Jr. succeeded his father as chairman in 1988.¹

Through the postwar decades and especially under Barnett Jr., Helzberg expanded well beyond the Kansas City area, opening mall-based stores across the country and building one of the larger specialty-jewelry chains in the United States.²³ The store on the Country Club Plaza remained the company’s signature hometown retail location, and Helzberg has long carried a presence in downtown Kansas City dating to its earliest years.

”I Am Loved” campaign

In 1967, Barnett Helzberg Jr.—then in his thirties—conceived the company’s most enduring piece of marketing: a small pin-back button reading “I Am Loved.”⁴⁵ By company lore, the idea came to him after he proposed to his fiancée, Shirley Bush, and wanted a way to let anyone share that feeling.⁴

Helzberg produced 50,000 buttons for the 1967 debut; they sold out quickly, and the slogan soon appeared on everything from drinking glasses to golf balls.⁴⁵ Over the life of the promotion the company gave away an estimated 18 million buttons.⁴ The campaign reached far beyond jewelry advertising: hospitals handed the buttons to homesick young patients, and they found their way to soldiers serving in Vietnam.⁴ Helzberg eventually printed the slogan in languages including French, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Japanese, Italian, German, Hebrew, Chinese, and Portuguese,⁴ and the company has periodically revived the “I Am Loved” theme in later marketing.⁵

Berkshire Hathaway acquisition

In 1995, Barnett Helzberg Jr. sold the company to Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.¹² The widely repeated origin of the deal is a chance encounter: by the family’s account, Barnett Jr. recognized Buffett on a New York City sidewalk—near the Plaza Hotel, by some tellings—introduced himself, and raised the idea of Berkshire acquiring Helzberg, which led to the transaction the following year.²⁶

The purchase price was not publicly disclosed.² Consistent with Berkshire’s operating-company approach, the acquisition preserved the Helzberg brand, its retail identity, and its Kansas City-area headquarters.²⁶

Today

Helzberg Diamonds continues to operate as a wholly owned Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary. It is headquartered at 1825 Swift Avenue in North Kansas City, Missouri, and operates roughly 210 stores across 36 U.S. states.¹ Brad Hampton became chief executive in 2022, succeeding Beryl Raff.¹

Legacy

Helzberg’s story knits together several threads of Kansas City’s commercial history: an immigrant-founded family business, a multi-generation succession, a piece of marketing that escaped its commercial origins to become broadly recognized, and a hometown company folded into one of the most prominent investment conglomerates in the country while keeping its headquarters in the metro. Its continuity in Kansas City since 1915 places it among the area’s long-running consumer brands alongside Hallmark Cards, H&R Block, and others.

For Registry purposes, Helzberg presents a Tier 3 case: its Berkshire Hathaway corporate parentage requires transparent disclosure even though the headquarters and brand remain Kansas City-rooted. See Boulevard Brewing for a parallel corporate-parent disclosure approach.

Sites in KC associated with Helzberg Diamonds

• Helzberg Diamonds corporate headquarters, 1825 Swift Avenue, North Kansas City, MO
• Country Club Plaza — the company’s signature hometown retail location
• Various other Helzberg retail locations across the Kansas City metropolitan area

Sources

Footnotes

1. “Helzberg Diamonds,” Wikipedia — founding (1915, Morris Helzberg), family succession (Barnett Sr. and Jr., 1963/1988), 1995 Berkshire Hathaway sale, North Kansas City headquarters, ~210 stores in 36 states, CEO succession. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷

2. “History of Helzberg Diamonds,” FundingUniverse — Morris Helzberg as Russian immigrant, his disabling stroke, founding tied to 1825 Swift, Kansas City, MO, undisclosed acquisition price, and the chance-meeting account of the Berkshire deal. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹

3. Encyclopedia.com / company-history profiles of Helzberg Diamonds — leadership tenures and 20th-century expansion. ↩ ↩² ↩³

4. “Helzberg Diamonds Launches ‘I Am Loved’ Campaign,” JCK; and Helzberg “I Am Loved” history — 1967 origin, Shirley Bush anecdote, 50,000-button debut, ~18 million buttons, Vietnam and hospital distribution, multilingual printings. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

5. Helzberg Diamonds, “I Am Loved: The iconic history of a collection,” helzberg.com; PR Newswire relaunch announcement — campaign history and later revivals. ↩ ↩² ↩³

6. Barnett C. Helzberg Jr., What I Learned Before I Sold to Warren Buffett — first-person account of the New York street meeting and the 1995 sale. ↩ ↩²