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ATTLEBORO - Unlike the decision of the L.G. Balfour Co. to cut its ties with the Attleboro area in 1996, no one seems to have seen the sudden exit of jewelry and ring-maker Jostens coming.

"It's a shame," said Attleboro Area Chamber of Commerce President Jack Lank, who said he was surprised at the company's announcement so close to the holidays. "The timing couldn't have been worse."

The Minneapolis-based company's decision to shut down its plant with the loss of 177 full-and part-time workers also came as a surprise to most city officials, including Mayor Kevin Dumas.

Some, including Attleboro Redevelopment Authority chief Michael Milanowski, couldn't resist leveling a parting shot at the departing firm by suggesting the Boston Red Sox move their championship ring business to another company.

This week's grim news came in the form of a terse, four-paragraph news release in which the Josten's chairman thanked the firm's Attleboro employees for their "many contributions." The news bulletin came 11 years to the day The Sun Chronicle reported the impending loss of Jostens' larger competitor, L.G. Balfour, to Austin, Texas.

That move ended local production and the jobs of 460 local employees.

The closing, which followed a long decline in the company's fortunes and work force, took few people totally by surprise.

Like word of the Jostens' closing, Balfour's decision to abandon the company's roots and workers met with its share of bitterness and economic suffering.

But long before the Jostens' announcement, business and economic experts say, the die was cast for a process that should not have been a surprise: The jewelry industry that once was Attleboro's identity and led to its rise as a regional manufacturing center, is slowly being eaten away by high costs and competition from a global economy.

And with few exceptions, the erosion shows no signs of slowing.

"The effect of competition from Asia is nothing new," said one local company owner. "We saw it coming 20 years ago."

The results, not only in Attleboro, but in other jewelry centers in the Northeast, has been devastating and progressive.

"We've seen some of the customers we supplied who used to have 1,200 or 1,400 people shrink down to about 40," said Dana Titus of jewelry findings maker Triad Inc. of Norton.

Many of the products once made in America are now manufactured more cheaply in China, Titus said, except for those whose buyers require a high level of quality, fast turn-arounds and superior service. Besides foreign competitors, industry experts cite other difficulties: manufacturing costs in New England, spotty acceptance of efficiency-improving technology and uneven trade policies that place American exports at a disadvantage.

Over the past six years, employment in the jewelry industry in Bristol County - read, the Attleboros - has declined steadily, said Elliot Weiner, labor market analyst for the Massachusetts Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

From 2001 to 2006, the number of workers in the main jewelry manufacturing category declined from about 1,900 to just over 1,200.

Rhode Island, with its larger number of jewelry-related businesses and employees, lost even more jobs during that period.

Among jewelry firms that have remained in America, the challenge of overseas competition has intensified the need to cut costs and improve efficiency.

In Jostens' case, observers say, consolidating ring-manufacturing operations and moving to a state where labor costs are comparatively lower than Massachusetts was logical - if controversial.

According to the company's news release, Jostens will be able to take advantage of economies of scale, enhanced technology and improved work flow efficiency. The company even plans to expand its plant in Denton, Texas, once the closing of the Attleboro plant is complete.

"It's less costly to run a manufacturing facility in Texas than it is in Massachusetts," said Dennis Dion of ring and recognition products manufacturer E.A. Dion of North Attleboro. "That's the bottom line."

Dion said his company probably could make more money with a similar move, but has no interest in doing so.

"This is home to us," he said.

To many in Attleboro, the announcement that Jostens plans to close its plant in early February seems like a bad movie - the kind in which the protagonist awakens each morning to relive an endlessly repeating series of events. Like comedian Bill Murray in "Groundhog Day," they have seen it all before.

In December of 1996 the new owners of L.G. Balfour, once the keystone of the class ring industry and Attleboro's jewelry-centered economy, announced they would move all manufacturing operations to Texas as well as Mexico. Within a year the bulk of the company's ring-making operation had been transported to Austin, including some relocated workers from Attleboro.

Jostens, which had begun making class and commemorative rings in Attleboro in 1962 quickly followed suit.

However in Jostens' case, the plan to cut costs and increase efficiency was flawed. By 1999, scarcely two years after moving production to Mexico, the company returned production to its Attleboro plant, citing insurmountable training difficulties and high turnover among its Mexican employees.

The Jostens statement said the company anticipates no such problems when it moves its operations to Texas.

"The Denton, Texas, location began operations in 1970 and has realized significant quality and productivity gains over the past years," the release said, "which now enable it to adapt and accommodate the volume that would have otherwise been produced in Attleboro."

In the 1990s, displaced workers from the Attleboro plants qualified for special retraining funds and up to a year's worth of jobless benefits under a federal law designed to help American workers whose jobs are transported overseas.

Things probably won't be the same this time. Massachusetts law provides for up to 30 weeks of unemployment compensation.

However, the state's Labor and Workforce Development team plans to use "every available state and federal resource" to aid Jostens employees, spokeswoman Linnea Walsh said.

That will include health care assistance for qualified workers, as well as help in finding new jobs. The state, in cooperation with the Attleboro chamber and Jostens, is planning to hold a job fair in an attempt to place laid-off workers.

Regardless of the reason, the continuing downsizing of the jewelry industry in the Attleboros and adjacent cities promises to reshape the economy and America's role in the making of jewels and gems.

As recently as 2003, said Joseph Szocik of the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership, fully one-third of the jewelry industry in the United States was located within the "Attleboro Corridor."

But here as elsewhere, the jewelry industry faced a plethora of challenges: globalization, retirement of an increasing number of skilled artisans and the difficulty of implementing continuous improvements to enable businesses to equal or surpass foreign competitors.

While some firms adapted, some failed to grasp the urgency of the need to change. Others simply waited too long and went out of business.

"The challenge of this environment is that you don't have the time to make improvements that you think," said Szocik, who for several years ran a network of jewelry firms in the Attleboro area to promote modernization and competitive practices.

Some companies went out of business, while others merged and still others transformed themselves.

E. A. Dion is one of the latter.

With origins as an advertising and promotional specialties company, Dion now designs, makes or markets a wide variety of products from high-dollar corporate and commemorative rings to recognition products.

Rather than try to manufacture every item it sells competitively in the United States, Dion said, the company outsources lower-value parts to foreign makers while making high-value products and pieces at home.

Other companies that had manufacturing roots have transitioned to marketers rather than makers of jewelry items, said Curt Ley, temporary CEO of the Manufacturing Jewelers and Silversmiths of America.

Still others have become consolidators of varied jewelry manufacturers and supply-chain companies.

Cookson America, owner of ring-maker Masters of Design, is currently revamping the former Swank factory complex on Pearl Street where the company eventually plans to locate hundreds of workers from existing operations elsewhere.

While the state of jewelry in the Jewelry City may be less than ideal, some feel globalization and high local operating costs are not a death sentence.

Low-cost countries like China might currently enjoy a huge advantage in labor cost, however that advantage could moderate as wages and living conditions in developing countries rise.

And some see this year's concerns about lead-tainted products from China as a reminder that price need not be the only consideration when placing an order abroad.

"We've had a lot of people in manufacturing saying they've gotten orders back that formerly went to China on account of this," said the chamber's Lank.

For those who remain behind in Attleboro's jewelry industry, the disappearance of Jostens' is a dour reminder of what can happen to business and jobs in today's superheated competition. And for many, it may make a challenging environment even more challenging.

"I hate to see them go," Dion said of Jostens, adding the loss of its jobs will narrow an already scarce pool of talent to fill specialized jobs in his industry.

"It'll probably make it that much more difficult to do business," he said.