“Conflict diamonds, also known as "blood" diamonds, are rough diamonds used by rebel movements or their allies to finance armed conflict aimed at undermining legitimate governments.” This definition was from the website http://www.kimberleyprocess.com:8080/site/?name=faq .
Conflict diamonds are estimated to make up about 4% of the world’s diamond production. Three countries where many conflict diamonds are sourced from are Sierra Leone, the Congo and Angola, all in diamond-rich West and Central Africa.
It is suspected that Osama bin Laden’s supporters may have used conflict diamonds to raise money to finance their terrorist activities.
If you purchase a conflict diamond then you are perpetuating these terrible actions and the vicious cycle.
The best way to avoid purchasing a conflict diamond is by getting proof from your shortlisted retailers that their diamonds are conflictfree and were traded under the auspices of the Kimberley Process.
“The Kimberley Process is an international certification scheme that regulates the trade in rough diamonds. Its aim is to prevent the trade in conflict diamonds, while helping to protect the legitimate trade in rough diamonds.” This explanation was taken from the website http://www.kimberleyprocess.com:8080/site/?name=faq .
Online retailers who trade in “clean” Kimberley Process sourced diamonds would hopefully display the logo in Figure 14. Further information about this can be found at the Amnesty International site http://www.amnestyusa.org/diamonds/index.do
The public awareness of blood diamonds is set to increase markedly with news that Leonardo di Caprio will star in a movie in 2006 called “The Blood Diamond”, set in Sierra Leone in 999.
The next C is the choice of category of diamond retailer that you purchase the diamond from.
The main categories of merchant are:
International Jewellery Brand with UK stores(s)
National Jewellery Chain
Independent High Street Retailer
Online Diamond Merchant
Independent Diamond Merchant
Diamond Jewellery Designer
Each of the different types has advantages and disadvantages.
International Luxury Brand with UK store(s)
These are the world’s most exclusive luxury jewellery brands that command a premium price. Customers are then able to say that they own a branded piece.
You are probably not familiar with these brands at all, but it is highly likely that your girlfriend/fiancée is.
Locations:
London is definitely the best place to find famous brand jewellers’ stores. Within London these brands tend to congregate together in these localities:
New Bond Street
Old Bond Street
Harrod’s, Knightsbridge
Selfridges, Oxford Street
Knightsbridge area
These brands employ the very best designers and use excellent quality diamonds to create spectacular rings.
My fiancée Louise actually visited New Bond Street initially to get a feel for the type of ring that she wanted and she was particularly impressed with the Tiffany and De Beers styles.
What she, I and you won’t be impressed with are the exorbitant prices that these brands command. They have been built around the concept of exclusivity and are aimed squarely at the upper end of the market.
While you can narrow down the search to a particular setting and size of diamond by visiting a national jewellery chain store, the famous brands offer their own particular designs of settings that national chains will not carry. If your fiancée/girlfriend wants a special design for her ring then famous brand stores could be the place to find it. Once she has found the design that she likes you can get the design replicated by a craftsman and pay far less doing it this way. Be careful about infringing copyright laws if you do decide to go down this route.
If London is a convenient travelling distance from your home, then a trip in to see these brand stores would be an excellent step. If getting to London is difficult or would eat into your ring budget then their websites tend to showcase their designs superbly.
Pros:
Absolutely beautiful jewellery, which can expand the mind as to what is possible for a diamond engagement ring.
Staff tend to be highly trained and willing to spend more time educating prospects who walk in.
Jewellery bought from these brands is usually very exclusive and hence likely to not be found on many other fiancées fingers.
As these are premium brands, you can be fairly certain that you are not going to be scammed (although always buy a diamond ring that has an independent laboratory report).
Cons:
These stores are unlikely to hold loose diamonds, meaning that most will already be set. If you are thinking of purchasing one of these branded pieces this will limit your flexibility on the type of setting if you find a particular diamond you like, and vice versa.
Potentially difficult to get to as most only have stores in London.
Extremely expensive due to the fact that they are a luxury brand and charge a hefty premium.
Unless you are smartly attired don’t expect a massive amount of attention from sales assistants. These stores often get “rubber-neckers” and tourists who have no intention of purchasing, and subsequently a sales assistant will try to quickly qualify whether you are really in the market for a piece using whatever signals are available.
National Jewellery Chain
These are the familiar national companies that advertise extensively in national media and have a store in most cities and main towns.
Examples include:
Beaverbrooks www.beaverbrooks.co.uk
H Samuels www.hsamuel.co.uk
Ernest Jones www.ernestjones.co.uk
Locations:
Two great ways of searching online for local stores are:
These stores are fairy common on the High Streets of most towns and cities. This makes them an excellent first stop when venturing out on your first browsing mission.
Staff will be moderately trained but you will have at least as much knowledge as them (if not more) after you have read this e-Book. Remember that these are sales assistants and will attempt to sell you a piece of their jewellery. Be sure to read all of this e-Book as it details persuasion techniques that these assistants are likely to use on you, and the methods to counter their tactics.
These stores will also use fairly standard High Street “Sale Ends Soon” type promotions and it is important not to be suckered into a purchase because of one of these seemingly “great deal going quickly” campaigns.
There are large profit margins that get added at each stage of the diamond supply chain, and one of your aims is to either avoid or to whittle down as many of these profit margins as possible.
Pros:
Fairly common in most towns so a good first stop in your diamond viewing adventures.
Should have access to a fairly large range of different rings so you can get a good idea of what your girlfriend/fiancée likes by visiting a few of these stores.
Nationally recognised brands you can trust not to sell you a fake diamond.
Cons:
Staff are only moderately trained and you probably won’t learn anything new from them.
As they have set prices on most pieces it is much harder to negotiate on their jewellery.
Like the famous brand companies, most of the diamonds will already be mounted in a setting. This limits your flexibility around customising settings.
They cater for the mass market so they are unlikely to have many creative designs.
Independent High Street Retailer
These tend to be the family-owned stores that may have been retailing for many years in your local town or city.
Their main areas of strength are that they offer easily-trusted, personalised service which they use to survive competitively next to the national jewellery chain stores. They will probably have strong links with local jewellery makers so can be a good option for having a customised setting produced.
Locations:
Two great ways of searching online for local stores are:
These stores are another good place to start your initial viewing of rings because they will be close to where you live and should provide a fairly high level of service and knowledge.
Pros:
Should be fairly close to where you live so easy to get to. A good place to start ring browsing.
Stay in business using personalised service, gaining highlevels of trust and getting repeat business so you should be well treated in these stores.
Cons:
Probably not as price-competitive as the national chain stores.
May not have breadth of range of rings that national chain stores do.
Online Diamond Merchant
A fairly new phenomenon in the diamond retailing industry is that of online sales. Many national chain jewellers and independent high street retailers have websites that their jewellery can be purchased from. There are also online retailers who have either very limited or no “bricks-n-mortar” stores at all.
I conducted a survey of friends and acquaintances in April 2005 called “Purchasing Diamond Jewellery over the Internet”. A resounding 86% of the 92 respondents said that they would NOT purchase diamond jewellery over the internet. Common reasons for this were:
Worries about the authenticity of the diamond
Not being able to look and touch jewellery over the Internet
Worries about the safe shipment of the diamond
Purchasing goods and services over the internet is something many people have now done, but for high value and emotionally charged items such as a diamond engagement ring it would not appear to be a very good medium to retail through exclusively.
However, the cost savings of buying through the internet can be considerable. An online merchant can avoid the high overheads of maintaining a shop in a High Street location and does not have to carry as much stock as a traditional jeweller. Adding to this is the fact that most online merchants actually reduce their profit margins so as to be an even more attractive proposition over the bricks-nmortar retailers. This price reduction can be anywhere between 30% and 50%!
Other well known online retailers selling diamond engagement rings are:
Amazon www.amazon.com
In 2004 Amazon US began to sell diamond jewellery through its website, a move which gave all online diamond merchants a lot more credibility. While Amazon UK hasn’t offered diamond jewellery yet, it is possible to purchase from the US site.
The site does have some great research tools, and has a really nice Build Your Own Ring function.
eBay www.eBay.co.uk
One of the most popular websites in the world, you will find anything you can possibly think of on eBay, including diamond engagement rings. I am not an expert user of eBay so am not in a great position to advise purchasing from there. I’d advise you to research this link http://pages.ebay.co.uk/help/tp/ia/protection_for_buyers.html
thoroughly so that you are completely aware of what you need to do before and after purchasing an item of jewellery from eBay. Following these guidelines will go along way to avoid being defrauded.
There is also a US book called “Buying & Selling Jewelry on eBay (Buying & Selling on eBay)” by Stacey King Gordon available on Amazon which looks like a good resource.
Froogle www.google.co.uk/froogle
This is the shopping channel of Google. I haven’t used this before either, and when I searched it for "diamond engagement rings” there were only 227 confirmed results. But if it’s anything like Google then watch this space as it will no doubt grow quickly.
Pros
An excellent source of high-quality information about diamonds.
Very price-competitive.
Usually have many excellent tools, such as price comparators and build-your-own-ring functions.
If you pay by credit card you are covered for fraud by your credit card issuer.
Cons
Unable to see and touch the ring before it is delivered.
Difficult to associate a salesperson with the purchase if anything is to go wrong with the purchase.
Don’t get personalised service (could be a plus if you want to avoid any hard-sell type tactics).
Independent Diamond Merchant
An independent diamond merchant is an individual or company that buys diamonds directly from a diamond exchange, such as the London Diamond Bourse (bourse is French for market). They may also buy or trade diamonds with other diamond merchants. A diamond merchant may also be called a diamond broker or a
diamond trader.
Typically, independent diamond merchants will only have a very small shop or simply an office, and deal on a one-on-one basis with their customers.
These two factors explain the large cost savings that can be made by purchasing from a diamond merchant. They are closer to the start of the supply chain and so a manufacturer and retailer store haven’t added their margin into the price equation, and they do not need to hold large amounts of diamond stock, or employ many staff, nor have the other overheads of running a retail store. Like the online diamond retailer price reductions of 30% to 50% can be achieved compared to buying from the High Street!
Typically, the diamond merchant will source the loose diamond for you and he/she will have that diamond set into a ring by a goldsmith that they have a supplier relationship with.
They could at your instruction, work with a designer to merge your perfect diamond with the perfect setting. This will of course be more expensive than using a stock setting provided by a goldsmith.
Hatton Garden, London
One of the best places in the UK to find independent diamond merchants is Hatton Garden in London. This is in fact where the diamond merchant who sold Lou and I her engagement ring has his small office.
The site www.hatton-garden.net gives a good history of the place and also lists many of the jewellers and merchants that have premises there.
Once you have done your research (remember to read this e-Book in its entirety) on the internet and in local stores and narrowed your search to a rough combination of the four Cs, I would highly recommend a trip to London to visit the Hatton Garden area.
At that point you will need to have contacted a handful of diamond merchants prior to the trip to organise viewings of a selection of diamonds from each.
But don’t be pressured into purchasing there and then just because you are only there for a day or two.
Pros
Diamond merchants usually have expert knowledge about diamonds.
Very personalised service – often you deal directly with the merchant.
Very price competitive, as they cut out parts of the supply chain and don’t have overheads of running a store(s).
Cons
Might be difficult to get to as many of them are in London.
Don’t have stock on hand so go there already having asked them to source a selection of stones for you.
Diamond Jewellery Designer
A jewellery designer will generally not source the diamond for you; they will leave that up to an independent diamond merchant. What they will do is bring to fruition the diamond engagement ring in your mind's eye.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find a good directory of jewellery designers for the UK. By searching Google I compiled a list which can be found in Appendix 17.2.
Pros
Generally unique pieces, so no one else will have a ring like it.
No matter how garish or unusual your design, he/she will produce what you want.
Cons
More expensive as the exclusivity carries a price.
You will need to source the diamond separately before getting it set by the designer.
Overseas Merchant
While I am sure it is possible to get a good deal by going to one of the major international diamond trading hubs such as Antwerp, or New York’s Diamond District, it is debatable whether that deal is so good that it covers the cost of a trip to one of these destinations.
I would speculate that any UK independent diamond merchant or online diamond retailer would be able to match most overseas prices.
My advice would be to proceed with caution. At least if you purchase from the UK, you are covered by the Consumer Protection Act of this country.
Pros
Potential savings to be made.
Cons
Having to travel a long distance to get to these destinations.
Difficult recourse if you are defrauded.
Friend's Recommendation
This avenue is actually one of my favourite’s because this is how I came to initially find out about Daniel, the diamond merchant who sold me Lou’s engagement ring. He initially sold an engagement ring to one of my best mates who then recommended him to another of my best mates, and then he to me. I have now recommended many of my other friends to Daniel also.
A good price, good service, no pressure to buy, and trust in the retailer are all factors which play a part in the purchasing decision and it is usually these factors that get mentioned when someone gives you a word-of-mouth recommendation.
Because we are in a time when the buyer is spoiled for choice for retailers who can fulfil his/her needs, a friend’s opinion can be a real time-saver.
Pros
Cuts out all the legwork of having to vet a merchant/retailer for trust, experience, authenticity.
Cons
Blindly following advice without doing any research will mean you don’t minimise your spend/maximise your diamond. Find out how much research your friend actually did first.
