So DeBeers went into business the same year as Jack the Ripper - 1888........my old MI6 friend told me years ago that a Borman who was a Nazi had married into the diamond cartel family - if this was same cartel...... So we see now why Diamonds are a girl's best friend - but hey, that market is a little shakey - see why Africa dies and the same old cartel at work - if they want to stop wars they stop diamonds from being sold in Africa and yet in the Holy Land for over 2,000 years they have been fighting - yet now they have billions of dollars in diamonds to sell - we got a new "cartel" in the making? Tunneling in Israel - like Jesse Jackson and his friends said when opening the new shopping center to be "people are tired of having Christ shoved down their throats:...... Now is the time to get sick.....and wonder who is stealing what, but now we know why Africa is dying. Wonder if Jack the Ripper was Rhodes Scholar? Saba Now I have a huge emerald an saphire ring (2) bought in what was once Persia and by today'[s standards are worth quite a big......each weigh 5 carats and I never wore them until I found out how much they were worth...always disliked jewellry. I see now ancient Persia must be loaded withds of rubies, diamonds, saphires, etc, etc, etc...Natural resources belong to the people? Back: http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,4877,00.htmlJune 11, 1999 A Web Site Is Forever DeBeers, the South Africa-based diamond cartel, is adding a clever new service to its Web site that could strengthen its distribution in North America. By Jacob Ward DeBeers, the world's dominant supplier of diamonds, is launching a Web site this week to help diamond buyers design their own engagement rings. Founded in 1888 and headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa, DeBeers has aggressively marketed the diamond engagement ring in an effort to boost diamond sales. It's tempting to say that the company's new Web site, which shows customers designs by a few manufacturers and directs them to retailers, is little more than a cute marketing gimmick. But the company's history suggests it's something more than that. The DeBeers diamond cartel, controlled by Chairman Nicholas Oppenheimer and his family, once controlled upwards of 75 percent of the world's diamond production. In other words, three-quarters of the stones in display cases and on fingers around the United States were either mined, processed or distributed by DeBeers. Of late, however, the cartel has been slipping. DeBeers' market share has dropped to about 50 percent. Observers attribute the company's decline to decisions made by the operators of mines in the Congo, Australia, Brazil, Venezuela, Canada and Russia. Mines in those countries have terminated, refused or renegotiated their contracts with DeBeers, opting instead to market diamonds independently. DeBeers' diamonds arrive in the United States via a labyrinth of intermediaries, in part to avoid getting snared by Justice Department antitrust lawyers scrutinizing DeBeers' dominance of the diamond market. Diamonds are unearthed, processed, polished and then shipped to London, where brokers buy them from DeBeers, carry them to the U.S. and sell them to jewelry manufacturers, who then set the diamonds in rings and sell them to retailers. All that happens without DeBeers ever technically doing business in the United States. DeBeers' concern about antitrust law stretches back more than 50 years. During World War II, the U.S. government voiced antitrust concerns about the company after rumors surfaced that it was colluding with Axis powers. While the rumors were deemed false, antitrust heat on DeBeers intensified, and the company pulled up stakes in the U.S. The company's only recent antitrust trouble was a Justice Department indictment against General Electric in 1994 for conspiring with DeBeers to raise industrial diamond prices. DeBeers and other international witnesses refused to testify, and the case was thrown out. [billions of dollars in diamonds in Israel being mined - is there some conspiracy involved here] The company's intermediaries, such as the brokers who stand between DeBeers and American retailers and manufacturers, keep DeBeers at a safe remove from Justice Department scrutiny. These brokers, called "site holders," travel 10 times a year to DeBeers' offices in London to receive their allotment of diamonds, which they then sell to manufacturers and retail clients around the country. When a certain diamond cut becomes too popular to maintain its value, DeBeers reduces the supply of gems of that type, which enables the company to control prices without money ever changing hands on U.S. soil. DeBeers keeps its hand in the U.S. diamond market via J. Walter Thompson, the New York-based ad agency owned by the London-based WPP Group. Thompson runs a variety of diamond-related services for DeBeers, including the Diamond Information Center, which was responsible for the latest Web push. Through Thompson, a request to speak with someone at DeBeers was declined. The recent Web initiative is a new section of the company's American site – Adiamondisforever.com – called Design Your Own Engagement Ring. At the site, users register to browse among 7,500 bands, settings and stones. When the lucky guy or gal finds the perfect combination of stone and setting, the specifications can be downloaded, printed and brought to a local jeweler who can fulfill the order. The printout includes a "source code," which identifies that the ring is made by a specific manufacturer. Joe Richardson, account supervisor at the Diamond Information Center, points out that participating manufacturers don't pay to be included. "All manufacturers are invited to participate as long as they can respond at a certain volume," he says. The manufacturers that will participate in the first iteration of the site are, for the most part, smaller companies. Because the ties between DeBeers, the brokers and the clients are kept private, there's no way to know how these players really relate to one another. "DeBeers won't say who their site holders are, and the site holders won't reveal who their manufacturing clients are," says Ren Miller, executive editor at Professional Jeweler, an industry trade magazine based in Philadelphia. Diamond retailers speak of the benign stability the monopoly brings to the industry and shudder to think what would happen if the business had a more free-market approach. "Without DeBeers, this would be chaos," says Doug Williams, who ran a diamond business for 25 years before opening Internet Diamonds, an online diamond retailer. "If I were offering a one-karat diamond for $7,000, which would be a very fair price, and suddenly someone else shoots it out for $6,500, and I didn't know where that diamond came from, I'd be scrambling to re-source." Michael Kay, creative director at London Gold, a Phoenix-area diamond retailer, puts it more simply. "Everyone has got the same banana," he says. "And there isn't a whole lot of dollar differences between each store." On the other hand, price stability does nothing for bargain hunters. "They call it supporting prices," says Miller. "Consumers would call it keeping prices high." [my note - the feds should call it violation of anti trust laws andor price fixing - why they get Bill Gates and let this garbage into our ports????] All of this comes at a time when DeBeers has been making an effort to increase awareness of its brand. In the U.S., the company has sunk enormous resources into its "A Diamond Is Forever" campaign – last year, DeBeers spent $68 million on advertising, according to Competitive Media Reporting. The campaign largely has been targeted at maintaining the appeal of diamonds to the American public without making explicit reference to the company. But recently, the DeBeers brand has been more consistently visible in its ads. The Web site is no different; it's complete with an enormous branded splash page and recurring logo. Richardson argues that the only reason that the DeBeers name is prominent is to aid consumers in distinguishing reputable diamond dealers from disreputable ones. "It doesn't hurt," he says, "with all the synthetics and diamond simulants out there." Whether the site is part of a brand-building program or not, it gives DeBeers, through the Diamond Information Center, the advantage of marketing on the Web to registered customers. "Once we figure out that someone's shopping for an engagement ring," says Bill Markel of Interactive8, the New York-based interactive agency that built the ring-selection application for the Diamond Information Center site, "we can get them thinking about buying diamonds for a significant other for other occasions." Close Window News | People | Companies | Research | Subject Index | Events | Magazine | Privacy policy Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Copyright© 2000 The Industry Standard
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