Welcome to the brave new world of buying diamonds
NO SEE, NO TOUCH, NO DISCREET SHOPS. ONLINE PURCHASE IS THE NEW TREND FOR STONES
n a tiny nondescript room, up a musty and yellowing staircase behind a Mexican restaurant in London’s Mayfair, a group of master craftsmen are painstakingly working on diamonds worth millions of pounds. The 77 Diamonds’ workshop — one of only a handful left in Britain, as 90 per cent of jewellery purchases here are made abroad — is alive with activity.
Stones of every size, colour and clarity are being set, mounted, buffed and shaped; the air tastes thick with gold filings and buzzes to the tune of myriad miniature drill bits. However, rather than ending up in a strobe-lit showroom, these diamonds will be couriered into the hands of an online shopper who may never have seen it in — or on — the flesh before purchase.
Welcome to the brave new world of diamond buying; and a growing breed of consumer who thinks nothing of spending six figures on the jewel to seal the deal, at the click of a mouse.
Largest online business
According to 77 Diamonds, Europe’s largest online diamond jeweller, business has never been brisker.
“This January was off the charts,” enthuses co-founder Tobias Kormind, a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley, who remortgaged his flat to launch the business in 2006 alongside Vadim Weinig, a former diamond polisher and risk manager. “We are ridiculously over target.”
The company boasts the biggest selection of diamonds of any website worldwide, and was last year reported to be on course to turn over £25 million (Dh128 million).
As well as off-the-peg rings, necklaces, earrings, cufflinks and bracelets, they offer a bespoke service where clients can click to design engagement and wedding rings or pendants, tweaking the stone’s shape, cut, colour and clarity, while windows pop up to ask whether you need help with the design, before a 360-degree video displays your final choice.
The aim was to compete with the world’s finest jewellery companies at a price that would blow them out of the water by cutting out the middleman wholesale market; buying direct from manufacturers; and cutters from all over the world and passing the savings on to consumers.
The result has been a business model that touts up to 76 per cent cheaper deals than high street stores such as Tiffany or Graff, and is part of a sea change in consumer spending habits on high-ticket jewellery. It is Kormind’s belief that