- Joined
- Sep 2, 2002
- Messages
- 2,859
I have long looked at this ''Who''s who''-section of PS, and wondered whether I wanted to write about me here.
Honestly, I never felt the need nor a drive to do this, so I just let it pass by. In the past weeks however, I am noticing that a lot of people here, regulars as well as newcomers, have an incorrect impression of my person and our company. As such, it might be interesting to put things in perspective, and explain where I come from and where I hope to be going to.
My origins are very humble, really, with my mother being a mother-at-home and my father being a coalminer until around my birth, when he was able to start working in the new plant of Ford Motor Company in the Belgian rural area of Limburg. So, I grew up in this community of workers, of which many were immigrants, and I really enjoyed this.
As a student, I combined my studies in Business Administration with competitive cycling, up to the point that at the end of my studies, I could choose between a contract as a professional cyclist, or a career based upon my degrees. I chose to stop cycling, but I must say that I still have the impression that I learned probably more from life and business, while riding races than in University.
After an initial job in a shipyard, where I learned a lot, but where I saw no long-term future, I happened to be looking out for a new job-challenge, and I was traveling the country (luckily a small country) to find an interesting career-move. It was near the end of 1989, that I was hired by a diamond-cutting company with factories in Sri Lanka and China. At first, I was not over-enthousiastic about the diamond-industry, but after a few weeks, I seemed to get the hang of it, and I really enjoyed the way in which I was allowed to learn about every aspect of the business.
To cut a long story short, I have worked for about 12 years for three different companies in our business, and I had the opportunity to keep on learning. And somewhere around the change of the millennium, I was also researching the Internet to find out more details about how our business works, and what is important, especially to consumers.
In this way, I found very interesting sites, like that of NiceIce, Garry Holloway, GoodOldGold, and of course also very interesting forums, with a lot of technical discussion. I entered these forums reluctantly, at first mostly asking for education, while at the same time bringing background-stories about our industry. Gradually, I started to realise however, the potential of my increasing knowledge, in the sense that I seemed to notice an growing market in the U.S. for what we called super-ideals, and I knew that we could combine the talents to produce these efficiently, up to the point of us designing special tools to ease the production-process.
As an employee, I proposed this project to my employer of the time, but he did not want to go into this venture. And at that point in time, I took the dramatic decision of trying it on my own.
So, together with my partner, we started Infinity Diamonds, first trying out on re-cuts, and gradually going into starting from rough parcels. And I think that we can say that we succeeded in three parts of our venture. First, we managed to immediately bring the desired quality of cut. Second, we managed to sell our production. Third, we even managed to adapt our venture, to also cut the newly graded AGS-0 princess-cuts.
Unfortunately, not everything is a success, and I must say that we had hoped to attract more capital to our business, so that we could grow our production. And since we failed in this, a lot of our income still has to come from consultancy to other diamond companies in Antwerp.
I think that this suffices as a small introduction to myself. Of course, many of you already know me for a long time, but few people know our background.
Live long,
Honestly, I never felt the need nor a drive to do this, so I just let it pass by. In the past weeks however, I am noticing that a lot of people here, regulars as well as newcomers, have an incorrect impression of my person and our company. As such, it might be interesting to put things in perspective, and explain where I come from and where I hope to be going to.
My origins are very humble, really, with my mother being a mother-at-home and my father being a coalminer until around my birth, when he was able to start working in the new plant of Ford Motor Company in the Belgian rural area of Limburg. So, I grew up in this community of workers, of which many were immigrants, and I really enjoyed this.
As a student, I combined my studies in Business Administration with competitive cycling, up to the point that at the end of my studies, I could choose between a contract as a professional cyclist, or a career based upon my degrees. I chose to stop cycling, but I must say that I still have the impression that I learned probably more from life and business, while riding races than in University.
After an initial job in a shipyard, where I learned a lot, but where I saw no long-term future, I happened to be looking out for a new job-challenge, and I was traveling the country (luckily a small country) to find an interesting career-move. It was near the end of 1989, that I was hired by a diamond-cutting company with factories in Sri Lanka and China. At first, I was not over-enthousiastic about the diamond-industry, but after a few weeks, I seemed to get the hang of it, and I really enjoyed the way in which I was allowed to learn about every aspect of the business.
To cut a long story short, I have worked for about 12 years for three different companies in our business, and I had the opportunity to keep on learning. And somewhere around the change of the millennium, I was also researching the Internet to find out more details about how our business works, and what is important, especially to consumers.
In this way, I found very interesting sites, like that of NiceIce, Garry Holloway, GoodOldGold, and of course also very interesting forums, with a lot of technical discussion. I entered these forums reluctantly, at first mostly asking for education, while at the same time bringing background-stories about our industry. Gradually, I started to realise however, the potential of my increasing knowledge, in the sense that I seemed to notice an growing market in the U.S. for what we called super-ideals, and I knew that we could combine the talents to produce these efficiently, up to the point of us designing special tools to ease the production-process.
As an employee, I proposed this project to my employer of the time, but he did not want to go into this venture. And at that point in time, I took the dramatic decision of trying it on my own.
So, together with my partner, we started Infinity Diamonds, first trying out on re-cuts, and gradually going into starting from rough parcels. And I think that we can say that we succeeded in three parts of our venture. First, we managed to immediately bring the desired quality of cut. Second, we managed to sell our production. Third, we even managed to adapt our venture, to also cut the newly graded AGS-0 princess-cuts.
Unfortunately, not everything is a success, and I must say that we had hoped to attract more capital to our business, so that we could grow our production. And since we failed in this, a lot of our income still has to come from consultancy to other diamond companies in Antwerp.
I think that this suffices as a small introduction to myself. Of course, many of you already know me for a long time, but few people know our background.
Live long,
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