Word: diamonded
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...biggest miners, dealers and a marketing organization they finance called the Tanzanite Foundation are gearing up to try out some of the strategies that worked in South Africa on other markets, beginning in London and New York City. The timing is good: in the wake of the film Blood Diamond, jewelry consumers are asking more questions about origin, which is easier to trace for tanzanite than diamonds and other gems. Also the tanzanite industry has been eager to position itself as modern miners, environmentally responsible and energetic in helping finance schools, roads and water management for surrounding communities. Jewelry-design...
Nunn and his teams decided a comprehensive mine-to-magazine approach was needed, and they found a blueprint in their own backyard in South Africa at the De Beers diamond company. Several current best-selling books look at how trends are spawned and spread, and debate continues over whether one could completely engineer the next Big Thing. The answer is yes: De Beers...
Faced with a glut of diamonds in South Africa that risked destroying prices, De Beers in 1890 organized a cartel to control supply, which was further tightened in 1925. Beginning in 1938, the company commissioned a series of clever promotions in the U.S. to convince consumers that diamonds were rare (they were not), that they symbolized romantic love (a copywriter's concoction) and that they should never be sold, further limiting the number in circulation. The pinnacle of this campaign was the advertising tagline introduced in 1948: "A diamond is forever." It was used to cement the role...
...purply blue, and personally I find it more appealing than sapphire," says London jewelry designer Stephen Webster, who first worked with it in the early 1980s in Los Angeles. (But he warns that it is more fragile than some stones: 6.5 on the hardness scale, compared with 10 for diamond and 9 for sapphire.) "I'm looking at a piece right now, and it's flashing red. It is very exotic. In top-end jewelry now, the client is way over branded luxury goods. They are looking for limited availability or one of a kind," he says...
...move, TanzaniteOne switched to a "sightholder" selling system in which all the better production is reserved for six preselected clients who buy at a price fixed by TanzaniteOne. The move appears to have helped stabilize prices, which is reassuring for retailers and final consumers, but it smacks of the diamond cartel. However, there are important differences, argues Ian Harebottle, who replaced Nunn, still the largest shareholder, as chief executive at TanzaniteOne last May. TanzaniteOne controls only 35% of tanzanite, compared with De Beers' historic 70% market share. In 2005, TanzaniteOne's sales totaled $41.1 million. "We don't want...