At Zozi Jewelry in Tel Aviv, the maker, the shop and the story sit within a few steps of one another. Zoar Asher turns travel memories and elemental symbols into pieces customers can wear with their own meanings.
The Santa Monica company spent decades doing the expensive, unglamorous work that online marketplaces usually push onto sellers. Its lesson is not simply to cut out the middleman - it is to replace the useful parts of the middleman without swallowing the maker's margin.