De Beers Group is getting into the recycled diamond business and testing the waters with a newly created initiative.
Based in New York City, International Institute of Diamond Valuation (IIDV) operates with a small number of retailers. The program—which started last month and is slated to run into the beginning of 2015—is designed to provide better insight on the scale of consumer re-selling activity and the experience of doing so, particularly as it relates to the lasting value benefit of diamond ownership.
“The practice of consumers looking to sell back their diamonds isn’t new,” says Tom Montgomery, De Beers Group’s senior vice-president of strategic initiatives.
“For the vast majority of people, a diamond is something they keep hold of forever and never look to sell. However, for reasons such as death, divorce, or financial distress, some people will always look to re-sell their diamonds. Some retailers have expressed reservations, however, about how the current re-selling experience could impact consumers’ views on diamond equity in the long term. We believe the only way to gain a true understanding of diamond re-selling activity by consumers is to run this small-scale program to assess how re-selling has developed, how it might evolve, and how it impacts upon consumer perceptions of diamonds.”
For a closer look at the recycled diamond market, see “Street-mined: Making sense of off-the-street diamonds” in the August 2014 issue of Jewellery Business.
