Former Bernie Robbins Owner Harvey Rovinsky Dies JCK

Harvey Rovinsky, who turned his family retail business into a nationally recognized premium jeweler and later made headlines when he gave away the company to employees, died on Jan. 28, following a cardiac event. He was 77.

Rovinsky was born in Philadelphia, the son of a watchmaker. After one year of college, he decided he “wasn’t cut out to be a student,” Bernie Robbins managing partner Gennifer Flaxman tells JCK.

At age 19, Rovinsky went to work at the appliance store owned by Bernie and Lorraine Rosenberg, parents of his then girlfriend, Madalyn. Three years later, he and “Maddy” were married.

With the appliance business shaky, the store added 10k gold and watches, then slowly shifted its focus to jewelry. In 1976, Bernie Robbins became a catalog showroom; when that craze ebbed, it became a mid-range jeweler, according to InStore. But its big turning point came in 1992, when Rovinsky decided to take Bernie Robbins high-end and associate it with well-known brands.

“The way that I believed we should grow and market was to link our name with Rolex, with David Yurman, with Cartier,” he reminisced to National Jeweler. “Then people would understand we were good at what we do.”

In 1994, Maddy left her job as a teacher and joined the business as its main buyer and “trendspotter.” The couple grew Bernie Robbins Jewelers into a prominent local and national brand, which at one point had eight stores in the Philadelphia area and New Jersey.

“Nobody needs jewelry,” Rovinsky told Instore in 2010. “We have to make it so they have a good time wearing it and buying it. People have to walk out feeling better than when they walked in.”

Flaxman says Rovinsky “always believed in going to extra mile to surprise the client. He would give them stunning flowers or fine champagne. Anything to surprise and celebrate.”

Repositioning as premium retailer sparked years of double-digit growth for Bernie Robbins. But the company hit a speed-bump following the 2008 recession, which caused it to close half its stores and lay off half its employees.

“I have a recession MBA,” Rovinsky remarked to the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2014. “That lesson will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

Bernie Robbins was inducted into National Jeweler’s Retailer Hall of Fame in 2022. That same year, NJ.com listed it as one of New Jersey’s Top Workplaces.

In 2023, Rovinsky made national news when he announced he was handing his remaining stores—debt-free, at no cost—to six longtime employees (including Flaxman).

“I had no succession plan,” he explained to JCK. “My daughter and son-in-law aren’t interested in running the business. I looked at people to buy it. There was nobody who I thought would be a good successor to Madalyn and me. I could close it, but if I closed it, I have 40 really fabulous people [who’d need jobs]. So there was three options: Close it, sell it, or do what I’m doing.

“Since, thank God, we’re financially okay, I figured I’d do something for these people who have worked with us for 30 years. We’re saying to them: ‘Here it is. Take it and run with it.’… We love these people. This is like a third generation taking over. Because even though they’re not family, they’re family.”

The handover was completed in March 2024. Rovinsky stayed on as a consultant until Jan. 1, 2025, when he announced he would truly retire.

Even after that, “he still came in twice a week,” Flaxman says. “He said he was done, but he wasn’t done. If one of us was working on a large sale, he still called us to say, ‘How’d that sale go?’”

Flaxman remembers her former boss as “the most tenacious person I’ve ever known…. He sent a letter to Rolex four times a year for eight years before he carried them. If he wanted something, he never stopped, until he was sure there was nothing he could do to get it.

“He was fanatical both to his biological family and his work family. We all sent our kids to college because of the guidance he gave us,” says Flaxman. “Even though he never finished college, he was the smartest person that I ever met. He read constantly. When he had eight stores, he bought several copies of every trade publication for every store. He believed every person should be educated about their industry.”

Rovinsky was also an active philanthropist, particularly for Jewish causes.

“He was extremely generous but also extremely shrewd,” Flaxman says. “That’s quite a combination.”

Rovinsky is survived by Maddy, his wife of 55 years; daughter Julia; and two grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, the family asks that contributions in his memory may be made to Chabad at the Shore, the Sara & Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center at Stockton University, or Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

Funeral arrangements can be seen here.

(Photo courtesy of Bernie Robbins Jewelers)