Third-generation Manhattan store mines profits selling rare gems and minerals

By ELIZABETH LAZAROWITZ 
DAILY NEWS BUSINESS WRITER

Saturday, August 2nd 2008, 4:00 AM

Handschuh/News

Rhodochrosite crystals

 

Handschuh/News Crystallized gold on quartz

To the untrained eye, it's just a sparkly, midnight blue rock, not much bigger or heavier than a softball.

To Dennis Tanjeloff, it's a rare chunk of the copper mineral azurite dug out of an Arizona mine - and worth a hefty $65,000.

"In this business, size doesn't matter. A million dollars could fit in your palm," said Tanjeloff, 40, owner of Astro Gallery of Gems. The company, which sells minerals, jewelry and fossils, was founded by his Argentine grandfather almost 50 years ago.

Through the years, the shop has catered to clients like Salvador Dali and Shirley MacLaine. The quirky, 10,000-square-foot showroom at Madison Ave. and 34th St. draws collectors, tourists and curious kids who gawk at amethyst clusters and fossils of bugs that died more than 200 million years ago.

By the time Tanjeloff was 6, his grandfather, Julio, was toting him along on buying trips around the world, sparking an early fascination with minerals. "I love the exploration of it, the beauty of it and the business of it," Dennis Tanjeloff said.

After becoming Astro president in 1996, he plans to expand the 16-employee business by opening small galleries in malls nationwide.

The business has taken previous stabs at expansion. In the 1970s, Julio, who made a fortune in mining and real estate before coming to the U.S., bought a couple of New York specialty stores: Georg Jensen and Rosenthal Studio-Haus. He also made a run at reviving bargain department store S. Klein before running into financial problems and having to pare down to his core business.

When Julio died in 1988, Dennis dropped out of college to join his father Edgar, now 66, in running Astro. Dennis' brother, Marc, 30, has also since joined the business.

In the 1990s, the Tanjeloffs hoped to expand Astro and Dennis briefly ran a boutique in Bloomingdale's flagship store on 59th St.

Edgar, however, wanted to branch into Web retailing. By 2000, Astro was selling on its own site and through eBay. While Dennis was initially skeptical, the bet panned out.

The company now gets about $2.5 million of its revenues from Internet sales and, since 2000, overall revenues have about doubled to around $7 million a year.

"It made us global," Dennis Tanjeloff said. "We found collectors and appreciators all over the world."

Beyond the Web, Astro does a steady business with interior designers. The showroom recently boasted a 3-foot-wide, 100-pound, crystal quartz bound for a home in Southampton, L.I. Price tag: $27,000.

But Tanjeloff has made his mark by putting more of the business' focus on courting serious collectors looking for unique, top-quality, specimens.

Eight years ago, Tanjeloff teamed up with Marc Weill, son of former Citigroup Chairman Sandy Weill, who initially was shopping for decorative pieces for his swimming pool and soon was investing in six-figure rocks.

"As his taste grew, so did his budget," said Tanjeloff, who helped Weill acquire a rare, 1,000-pound specimen of stibnite, a massive cluster of blue-gray spikes Weill donated to the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Frequent geopolitical and economic shifts make obtaining choice mineral samples a tough business, said Tanjeloff, whose store boasts items from 80 countries.

Astro has built relationships with dealers worldwide so it can be first in line when there's a new discovery or when a rare piece is going on the market, Tanjeloff said.

Many of the new finds come from mining companies that, in the course of digging up materials they're targeting - gems like rubies or commodities like copper - come across the rare pockets of crystallized minerals collectors seek.

 The dollar's recent slide has made the business even harder, driving up the cost of merchandise, and some international dealers are demanding payment in euros, Tanjeloff said.

Still, he thinks the time is right for a full retail rollout, given declining retail real estate prices around the country. At home on the Upper East Side, Tanjeloff displays about 400 mineral samples, including a $75,000 piece of scolecite that he describes as a white burst of fireworks.

"I do what I preach," he said.