Diamond Dealers pulling their inventory from pricescope vendors

[Rhino]

Interestingly I''ve been seeing a few factories/diamond dealers (on the wholesale level) have been refraining from letting pricescope vendors from listing their inventories. Some have signed contracts with other sites offering their inventory "exclusively" to one website, other dealers because retails stores will simply not buy from them when someone sitting in their basement or house is offering their same inventory for single digit profit margins and if they want the business of the jewelry stores are in a position where they must pull their inventory from pricescope vendors (who generally always take on memo and do not purchase for stock). One of these vendors wrote me (with whom I''m a good friend of) and said "Pricescope (not the forum) is the worst thing to ever be available to the consumer. There is no confidence in their purchase because nobody sees the diamond, customer service is next to nothing, no long term business relationships are formed and we were losing accounts from stores all over the country because of it. We had multiple vendors listing our stones and their value was reduced to nothing as we could not pick up any accounts with good paying jewelry stores."

I''m seeing this shift take place. It doesn''t affect me as I''m a bricks and mortar store already but if things go the way I''ve been seeing pricescope may be going through some changes. Myself personally ... if a diamond dealer allows his goods to be listed on pricescope I rule them out as a company that I purchase for inventory from unless I have an exclusive or the stones are mine.

Just some observations.

Rhino

 

[pricescope]

Rhino, I disagree with you

Diamonds are becoming more and more commoditized despite of all the industry attempts to stop it.

First GIA with their grading, then Rapaport Report, then Internet...

People started to buy and sell diamonds via the web before Pricescope. Blue Nile sells diamonds that customers don't see but big manufacturers are happy to supply it.

I guess, many B&M stores complain about diamonds showing in the web or Pricescope, because it drives the prices down.

Indeed some suppliers prohibit their diamonds to be listed in the web and Pricescope in particularly for quite a while already.

Eventually consumers will vote with their money as always or BIG BROTHERS (who must not be named

) will control the sources and availability of the goods

 

[Rhino]

I hear ya Leo. I guess it's because I heard this from a few wholesalers within a fairly short time. Just allowing some brain spillage.

Rhino

 

[Rank Amateur]

hey Leonid

Is Rhino's assertion correct? Are these suppliers of any significant size?

 

[Rhino]

I don't think Leonid knows the exact suppliers but one of them who will not allow their diamonds to be listed on pricescope (whom I personally know) is a siteholder with DTC and are HUGE manufactures. Another is a fairly large supplier of triple ideal H&A's who cut off all pricescope vendors.

Rhino

 

[pricescope]

I was honored to speak to some of them. One was rude while another one rather polite.

Yes, some of them have big inventories. At the same time there are manufacturers and wholesalers who do not want their listings to show up in the web at all irrespectively to Pricescope.

 

[Garry H (Cut Nut)]

We are about to witness a wholesale change in wholesalers.

These big guys are frightened because they are loosing market share to tiny little Indian companies who have multiplied in size each year for the past several years.

Do you think the new cutters will worry too much as they enter the market now they have good sources of supply.

Here is the latest new sight holder from Rapaport and it includes some cutters who I know can produce exceptional quailty diamonds - but could not get regular supplies of good rough before:

The following firms have confirmed their sightholder status to Rapaport. This list cannot be confirmed by the DTC at this time.


--- NEW SIGHTHOLDERS:

D. Navinchandra & Co., India
Dynamic Diamond Corp, U.S.
E.M.A. Diamond Manufacturing Limited, Israel
R.T. Diamond Pvt. Ltd., India
Richold SA, Switzerland
S. Vinodkumar & Co., India
Shree Ramkrishna Export, India
Sundiamond BVBA, Belgium
Venus Jewel, India


--- VETERAN SIGHTHOLDERS:

A. Dalumi Diamonds Ltd., Israel
AMC Diamond Manufacturers, Belgium
A. Schwartz & Sons, Israel
Arjav Diamonds NV, Belgium
Asian Star Co. Ltd., India
Astra Diamond Manufacturers Ltd., Israel
B. Vijaykumar & Co., India
Bhavani Gems, India
Blue Star, India
C. Mahendra Exports, India
Classic Diamonds (India) Ltd., India
Dali Diamond, Belgium
De Toledo Diamonds Ltd., Israel
Digico Ltd. (Diminco-Gitanjali Group), Hong Kong
Dimexon Diamonds Ltd., India
E.F.D Diamonds, Israel
Espeka Israel, Israel
Eurostar Diamond Traders NV, Belgium
Fabrikant & Salant Ltd., Israel
Festdiam Cutting Works/SA Gem Distributors, South Africa
Fr. Jayam NV, Belgium
Hasenfeld-Stein, Inc, U.S.
Hindustan Diamond Company, India
J.B. Diamonds, India
Julius Klein Group, U.S., Israel, South Africa
K. Girdharlal, India
KGK Enterprises, India
K.P. Sanghvi Group, India
Karp Impex, India
L.I.D. Ltd., Israel
Lakhi Group, India
Laxmi Diamonds, India
Lili Diamonds, Israel
Livingstones, India
Lustre Diamonds Cutting Works, South Africa
M. Suresh & Co., India
Mahendra Brothers, India
Mohit Diamonds Impex Pvt. Ltd., India
Navin Gems, India
Overseas Diamonds NV, Belgium
P.D. Kothari & Co., India
Plucdiam Israel Ltd., Israel
Plucdiam India Ltd., India
Premier Gem Corp. (Group), Israel, U.S.
Rand Precision Cut Diamonds, South Africa
Ratilal Becharlal & Sons, India
Rosy Blue, Belgium
Rosy Blue (India) Pvt. Ltd., India
Sanghavi Export, India
Schachter & Namdar Polishing Works Ltd., Israel
Sheetal Manufacturing Co., India
Shrenuj & Company Ltd., India
Smolensk-Kristall, Russia
Star Diamond Group International, U.K.
Suashish Diamonds, India
Supergems NV, Belgium
Suresh Brothers, India
The Pluczenik Group, Belgium
Universal Pacific, U.S.
Yerushalmi Bros. Diamonds, Israel

 

[fire&ice]

Rhino, while your prices aren't the rock bottom, they are fair. You offer services that are pertinent to a diamond purchase. I believe people should pay for good service & piece of mind; so, my comments are not directed at you. And, I have been very fortunate to hook up w/ trusted smaller jeweler's.

That said, *many* of the jewelry stores do not have the customer's best interest at heart. I'm not talking about simply making a profit. I'm talking about pure rip off w/ ridiculous mark ups. From a consumers point of view, very few jeweler's I visited treated me w/ fairness. How can someone put the hard sell on a 3 carat crappy cut diamond rated as an E SI1 which visualy had body color & an inclusion in the table the size of a pin head (no exageration). All this was offered to me at the amazingly *great* price of $35,000.00. I could go on & on about my adventure. I was given the generous gift of 50K to spend on the diamond of my dreams. In no way was I going to spend that amount of money on a diamond. At this point in my search, I was beginning to think that it was going to take 50k to find a good stone. Rather than spending the money, I decided *not* to purchase such a ridiculous luxury item.....until I found the internet & subsequently pricescope.

I tell my tale because the diamond industry would *none* of my money had I remained on track w/ purchasing from a jewelry store. Just something *they* (the wholesaler) should think about before boycotting the very venue that lead to a sizable purchase from one of them.

 

[mike04456]

I think I'm with Leonid on this. Some manufacturers will pull their inventories but there are others only too happy to take their places. The Indian firms, as Garry points out, are a real threat. They have much lower overhead and a huge supply. Many of them are quite capable of producing super ideals and will do so if other manufacturers vacate the internet market.

Bottom line, there is a big demand for what pricescope offers, and someone is going to service it. These old-line manufacturers and retailers trying to fight the internet trend are just cutting their own throats in the long run.

 

[Hest88]

Excuses, excuses.

I remember when abebooks and the other large Internet used book search engines starting popping up. It really scared many used book dealers because it meant that consumers could do their own book searches and compare prices by themselves. No matter how they kicked and screamed, though, the technology wasn't going away.

We all know that diamonds, even the best cut H&A diamonds, are not as rare as they'd like us to believe. If some wholesalers refuse to let their diamonds be offered on Pricescope, there are plenty of others who will be smart enough to take their place. As Garry pointed out, there's a whole bunch of new sellers out there who are not programmed to think of the Internet as a bogeyman.

 

[Paul-Antwerp]

I think one should make a distinction between dealers, whether on Pricescope or not. Let us take the example of the ones who are listing stones on Pricescope.

Personally, I would not sell to some dealers on Pricescope, while I would love to sell to some others. Here is why, I am in business for the long run, and I want to build strong relationships with my dealers.

Because of this, I cannot afford to work with dealers, who are in the business for the short run. My dealers need to make a decent margin, and have to resist to selling too cheap. It is in nobody's interest to have a price-war between dealers on one and the same stone. Dealers that get into that game, are not of interest to me.

But dealers who have a long term view, and who wish to offer their customers a great service, are more than welcome, whether they are on Pricescope or not.

Live long,

Paul

 

[mike04456]

Paul, let's hope there are enough manufacturers willing to take that view of things rather than having knee-jerk reactions to the idea of selling diamonds over the internet. The fly-by-night brokers will price themselves out of business soon enough, and they are plenty of solid vendors out there.

What I find most troubling about the reaction of many in the industry to the internet trend is that it flies in the face of so many established conventions. The practice of bad-mouthing your competitors' goods and accusing them of ripping people off just to make a sale has been condemned as unethical for many, many years--when you're talking about competition between B&M jewelry stores. Yet, that seems to be standard behavior by many retailers when they get a customer coming into the store with an internet diamond for setting or just comparison. Leonid recently reported on a trade seminar at JCK Vegas where major industry figures actually advocated this tactic! You can bet that if that speaker had been talking about B&M store rather than the internet he would have been booed down by the audience.

I have seen some rational discussion of internet competition in a couple of trade magazines lately, so maybe there is hope.

 

[fire&ice]

The internet was bad mouthed to me as well. This jeweler even had a stone he said was purchased off the internet in his inventory. Of course, the stone was a piece of frozen spit. This was to warn "internet shoppers" of the kind of "goods" offered on the net.

Perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of "low margin"; but, that pendulum was waaaaaaaaaayyyy over to the other end before some competion on the net.