Diehl To Leave U.S. Mint for Dot.Com Company

The writing is now on the wall. US Mint Director Philip N. Diehl has been named as president of Zale.com and a senior vice president of Zale Corporation.

The announcement was made March 23 in Dallas. Diehl will lead the development of Zale Corporation’s Web-based business. This is to include site development, online sales, marketing, fulfillment and customer relationship management for all company brands. The brands named are all jewelry-related, not coins.

Diehl will be leaving quite a legacy at the Mint. He re-engineered many business processes at the 208-year-old agency of the U.S. Treasury Department during his administration. We’ve all read about increased sales at the Mint, but most people don’t realize that Diehl’s management led to a quadrupling of annual revenues since 1997.

Under Diehl’s leadership, profits for the Mint increased six-fold during the same period. Diehl helped to create and implement USMint.gov, the online retail business of the Mint. This online retail venture began in April 1999; online sales have doubled every quarter since it was established. Sales totaled $26.3 million in the quarter ending December 31, 1999.

Diehl was also a guiding force who should take credit for the popular 50 State Quarters program and the new golden-color Sacagawea dollar coin. He was involved in assuring each program was approved by Congress, assisted in product development and in the marketing launches of each new coin.

It is now estimated half of all Americans are collecting the Statehood quarter dollar coins from pocket change. Unit sales have tripled to more than $6 billion annually. The Sacagawea dollar is proving to be just as popular. The Mint is currently two months into the program and is projecting sales of an astonishing $2 billion a year.

Diehl has been around the government for a long time. Prior to serving as Mint director, he served U.S. Treasury secretary and Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr. in a number of roles, including chief of staff at the Treasury Department, staff director of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Bentsen's legislative director. Mr. Diehl previously served as Vice-President of Regulatory Affairs for the International Telecharge, Inc. of Dallas and director of telephone regulation for the Texas Public Utility Commission.

Diehl, who is from Texas, is also chairman of the Federal Advisory Committee on Customer Satisfaction, a group of public and private sector leaders appointed by Vice-President Al Gore to drive improvements in customer service and customer care in federal agencies.

Actually, Diehl is the sort of person who perhaps should have stayed somewhere within the coin collecting community. Zale Corporation President and CEO Beryl Raff said, “Philip Diehl's experience fits Zale Corporation's overall e-commerce strategy. His background in e-tailing, order fulfillment and customer care, coupled with his marketing expertise and success in new product development, will enable Zale Corporation to enhance the Company's online business.”

Zales has about 1,350 specialty retail jewelry stores. This may seem like small potatoes to someone who is putting quarters and dollar coins into the pockets of virtually every person in the United States.

The US Mint has had a lot of directors since it was established in 1793. Many of them were bureaucrats who did little or nothing beyond interfere with production and collect fat paychecks. Philip Diehl will genuinely be missed.

Click here for a related story about Diehl's probable replacement as U.S. Mint Director.

Richard Giedroyc is a numismatic writer, researcher, auction cataloger and coin dealer. He has been in the hobby and business most of his life, now having more than three decades experience in this fascinating hobby field. During this time Giedroyc has been the owner of Paris Bergman Galleries, owner of Classical Coin Newsletter, international editor of Coin World and owner of Giedroyc-Anderson Interesting World Coins. He is currently a numismatic consultant. He has written more than 2,000 byline numismatic stories and contributed to several coin catalogs.