Diamond Inventory Aggregation

[DancingDiamonds]

Hello everyone!

I was wondering how companies such as Blue Nile and James Allen manage to keep such a large variety of stones on their website.

Based on their low inventory levels in their financial reports, I understand this has to be some sort of dropshipping model. I imagine they are connected to the inventory feeds of wholesalers / aggregators via API and automatically submit orders to those wholesales upon a successful website sale.

I have a couple questions around this model as I envisage exploring something similar (albeit on much smaller scale ):
1.) Where would one gain access to this inventory data? I found rapnet instant inventory on Google, but would love to hear whether there are more options available https://info.rapnet.com/instant-inventory
2.) How do these companies guarantee that they can actually procure the diamonds when they are not yet owning them? Are these diamonds automatically reserved upon purchase orders?
3.) How does the fulfillment work? I guess most of these loose diamonds sit somewhere in India - are they express shipped to the States after a successful purchase took place?

Any insights are hugely appreciated! Thanks a lot in advance.

 

[Karl_K]

Howdy,
PS is a consumer forum your questions would be better asked on a more trade orientated site.

 

[kenny]

Sounds to me like what you asking for is the diamond marketing equivalent of Coca Cola's recipe.

I'd imagine it's Tip Top Secret.