PORT ANGELES — Weisfield Jewelers on First Street closed Sunday after about 50 years in Port Angeles.
Linda Demoss, store manager, said the Weisfield location employed five people. She said she wasn’t authorized to make any further comment.
Company representatives could not be reached for comment.
The building owner, Lisa DelGuzzi, said that Weisfield’s lease expires Friday.
She didn’t know the business was closing until Dec. 22.
“We were kind of batting around a new lease,” she said.
DelGuzzi said Weisfield had been located at 121 W. First St. since the 1950s.
Another Port Angeles jewelry store, The Clay Bezel, also was set to close by the end of this month. The store at 216 E. Fifth St., first opened about 40 years ago and is closing because of the owner’s retirement.
“It certainly is consistent with nationwide trends,” said Russ Veenema, Port Angeles Regional Chamber of Commerce executive director, of the closures.
“People are tending to shy away from non-essential items.”
Weisfield Jewellers has 21 stores in the western United States, according to its Web site, tinyurl.com/ylngzha, with nine in Washington state, five each in California and Arizona and one each in Oregon and Colorado.
It is a division of the Akron, Ohio-based Sterling Jewelers, Inc., which acquired Weisfield Inc. in 1989, when Weisfield included 90 stores.
Sterling, which operates more than 1,400 stores throughout the nation, is the U.S. operations of the international Signet Jewelers Ltd.
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Reporter Tom Callis can be reached at 360-417-3532 or at tom.callis@peninsuladailynews.com.
