diamond marketing

[Edward Bristol]

This is a well done report on the history of diamonds:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/4575/#.Tqyqddo_Muw.mailto

 

[cookies]

This is very educational. Thank you Ed.

 

[denverappraiser]

I’m not a huge fan of David Epstein’s writing and to me it’s a bit like reading a Tom Clancey novel. It’s full of interesting facts that are spun to weave a compelling story that leads to a predetermined conclusion. In this case it's that there’s a vast scam lead by DeBeers Consolidated mines that's been going on for a bit over a century. I find this ‘DeBeers is the root of all evil’ theory to be getting a little old. He says in his book that the biggest fear of DeBeers is the arrival of serious competition and that this will crash the market. Guess what? He wrote this in the 90’s when DeBeers had a 70% market share in the diamond mining business. They’re down to 40% and it’s still dropping. Alrosa and BHP Billiton, among others, are eating their lunch. Canada and Australia are now among the top producing countries. 40% worldwide market share in ANYTHING is nothing to sneeze at but it’s not the global puppet master that he’s describing either.

USA is quickly becoming a source country as much as a destination country because of all of the resales that he forecasts will drive the market to zero if they ever happen. They’re happening, and the market is going up, not down.

It does make for interesting reading and it is a pretty compelling story of an extraordinarily clever and successful marketing campaign but the apocalyptic conclusions for the market are a bit over the top. If anything the miracle of marketing to the Japanese is being repeated in spades with the miracle of marketing to the Chinese.