I came across an interesting press release from the International Diamond Manufacturers Association (IDMA) this week calling for the international diamond manufacturing community to restructure diamond financing. They are worried because while demand for rough diamonds remains greater than the rough supply, the same cannot be said for consumer demand for polished diamonds, particularly in the US.

Stores are closing or having a hard time turning a profit, and the focus is on lower prices and lower quality. The supply of diamonds going to retailers will decrease, but for now consumers have not yet returned to retail stores. Nevertheless IDMA are calling for retailers to pay their suppliers fair prices, necessitating keeping their prices up for consumers. Said Moti Ganz, the president of IDMA:

“Consumers can still buy three pieces of diamond jewelry for the price of one Louis Vuitton bag. The price of diamonds today should be at least 200 percent more than their price in the 1990s. Just look where gold and platinum are and look where we are!”

Should we ask ourselves why the price of diamonds has not kept pace? Actually that’s the wrong question–there is no direct link between the price of rough diamonds (based on the internal considerations of the diamond industry) and the price of polished diamonds (dictated by the consumer of diamonds and diamond jewellery, a population that was forgotten by the industry).

In my view, luxury retailers must first understand why someone goes out and buys a diamond in the first place. In my PhD research, I found that luxury shoppers are looking to express themselves and connect with how they see the world. The better a retailer can help the luxury purchaser understand her goals and connect authentically to her values and personal qualities, the more successful the retailer will be. Walking out of the store, the lucky woman or man should feel empowered, special and unique, respected and feeling free.

Providing the right service doesn’t come easily. A jeweller should be able to detect first who the client is. A Theta woman seeks diamond to help her be ‘truly her’ in a world where most things are temporary and dependent on social setting and circumstance. A Lambda woman wants a diamond that helps her to be unique and genuine; her diamond is unlike any other diamond on the planet, an individual selection that will make her exceptional. As for price, do not underestimate yourself. If you fell confused, the only reason is that the offer of the diamond was not done correctly. When the luxury customer is presented with the right offer, he or she knows exactly what the value of it should be.

Following these values for many years we found that we can properly help the luxury customer, and together with our colleagues we were very successful doing so in the last 25 years. However, the diamond industry failed in respecting the need for luxury and tries to turn the luxury consumer into a diamond dealer when the effort should be done in the other direction.

We hope that we have enough practical knowledge to start offering the luxury consumer what he or she wants. We are aware that this practical knowledge is in the hands of very few people, yet the entire world could appreciate this freedom of expression and choice. Recently we started an initiative that will bring our message to the luxury customer and enable him or her to properly purchase his or her special and unique diamond that can fit only her or him. We will need your help to check our luxury hypotheses and to see whether what we say is really convincing you. In the coming days we will address you again and ask you to be our ambassadors to help us spread our important luxury message. Stay tuned!

Last August a team of diamond thieves stole 1,500 diamonds (in 43 jewelry pieces) worth £40 million from Graff Diamonds on New Bond Street in London. This week four of the thieves were found guilty of carrying out the raid, but the diamonds still haven’t been recovered. The two gunmen who had entered Graff Diamonds had handed off a black bag containing the stolen pieces to a motorcycle rider in a concealing helmet, who rode for two blocks then disappeared on foot in Green Park.

There isn’t much hope for finding the gems any time soon. Ivy Cutler, a diamond grader at the Gemological Institute of America, said

“I have spoken with Scotland Yard and the Flying Squad and we have them marked in our system. Sometimes pieces come back very quickly, sometimes it takes years. The criminals involved in this are extremely clever, unfortunately. I think they have probably changed hands many times and possibly been moved between countries. We can only hope the diamonds eventually turn up when an innocent buyer asks for their authenticity to be checked.”

The stolen diamonds were all certified and should be recognizable, but it’s possible that the diamonds have now been recut or falsely recertified. It will be interesting to see if any reappear, or if Graff would publicise their reappearance — my guess is probably not on both counts.

Diamonds from Marange fields in Zimbabwe have been all over the news of late. Diamonds from Zimbabwe are not currently certified by the Kimberley Process (which works to stop the trade in diamonds that finance conflict), and the Zimbabwean military has been accused of seizing control of these fields and organizing smuggling operations. There’s currently an export ban on Zimbabwean diamonds because they aren’t certified conflict-free, and this week the ban was upheld by Kimberley Process members, but Zimbabwe is now considering exporting diamonds anyway.

It’s a difficult situation, because if these diamonds were sourced ethically and formally allowed to be exported, they could greatly benefit Zimbabwe’s economy and put its diamond production efforts on par with Botswana. And while it appears that efforts are being made to improve the situation, Kimberley Process members weren’t confident that the sourcing of the diamonds met its standards because the fields remain under control of the Zimbabwean military, which is accused of committing human rights abuses in addition to smuggling the diamonds out of Zimbabwe.

A subgroup of the Kimberley Process is meeting next month to try to reach a compromise on Zimbabwe; we’ll have to wait and see if this impasse can be resolved.

Chaim Even-Zohar’s latest memo reveals the diamond industry in despair. At the moment Diamonds are not being sold to the market of consumer and what we see is inter-trading only. Banks do not see new money coming in, and while they hail the fact that debt went down by 20%, how much was due to real sales and how much was due to squeezing the empty pockets of the industry? The cancer has reached the producers, who act irresponsibly and pour billions of dollars into the market with the only short-term goal of survival. Alrosa lost half a billion dollars this year and De Beers struggles to finance its debt. All in all, somewhere along the line the industry forgot the consumer.

We all know the truth about diamonds for investment (short answer: they’re not), but the new trend that big players want to establish just shows their level of despair, trying to play on the world’s ignorance. This is not the first time that the trade, championed by De Beers, has done so. The world has believed that “all diamonds come from De Beers” and if you do not have a De Beers diamond, something is wrong with your diamond. I do not blame De Beers for not correcting this perception, but they were happy with this ignorance. What we see now, this attempt to attract investors, is something really dangerous. This raises some painful memories. During the heydays of the diamond boom before 1980, a Belgian worker decided to buy some diamonds for investment. When he came to us some ten years later with his parcel, we looked at it and literally had tears in our eyes. Here was a hard worker with a permanent layer of dirt under his nails and who had bought diamonds with full faith that his purchase was a good value that would appreciate. In actuality if he got 5% of his investment, he would have been lucky.

This was not an isolated case–I have a personal example: When my uncle left our company in 1975, he took, as part his compensation, a few parcels of polished goods that were estimated well below market price. When he tried to sell these goods twenty years later, he hardly recovered his investment even after repolishing and regrading many of the goods.

We also can’t forget the $1 trillion of goods at market price that are in the hands of consumers — these goods will be worth much less when consumers try to dispose of them. Jewellers pay about a third less on average for the same goods when going to their suppliers. When they buy from the consumer market, they pay a lot less for several reasons: they have to pay cash, the goods won’t always sell easily, and sourcing from the consumer market is not always steady.

On top of this, the jewellers’ market is very narrow and quite often they will try to move it up the supply chain to their supplier or supplier’s supplier, reducing the value they can offer even further. If the market tries to market diamonds for investment, they are literally cheating the market. Most of the goods that will be sold will fetch only a fraction of the investment when they are resold, even without any more mining. And even extraordinary large and special diamonds, which might have been a good investment in the past, won’t be a good investment if many of them are sold later on at lost or close to par.

Diamonds and chocolate both carry connotations of indulgence and luxury, although each in very different ways, and they are not usually consumed simultaneously. Mervis Diamond Importers is looking to change this by inviting their customers to an out of the ordinarily shopping experience on the 22nd of July. They offer an evening where customers can drizzle fresh fruit in a diamond topped chocolate fountain and sip chocolate martinis while pursuing a selection of diamonds at reduced prices.

This is an interesting gimmick, which should offer distinctiveness and help generate interest in a slow market. However, positioning an event as an upscale luxury experience, while simultaneously marketing it as a chance to bargain hunt at reduced prices might be counteractive due to the inconsistent messages it sends out.

Photo by *spud* via Flickr

Janusian Thinking is derived from the concept of paradox.

Janus, the Greek god of doors and gates and beginnings and endings, was most often depicted with as man with two heads, each facing in opposite directions.

The obvious benefit of such a dual perspective – and the underlying power of Janusian thinking – is that it provides the ability to consider multiple perspectives simultaneously. Failure to do this results in decision-making paralysis, depression or in wasted effort, pursuing false goals.

Variants of Janusian thinking are applied in contemporary contexts to military planning, corporate strategy, and academic analysis.

Janusian thinking can be a valuable tool in everyday life. Our modern existence requires us to weigh complex, competing phenomena concurrently and make decisions we can stick by, despite having incomplete information.

In this blog I often apply the concepts of Janusian thinking to luxury marketing and to the behaviour of the diamond industry, but it offers us many more valuable insights into human behaviour. Mastering Janusian thinking holds the key  to moving beyond personal and institutional blockages and becoming a committed, purposeful leader.

In my PhD I offered descriptions of two predominant ‘worldviews’, which I termed Theta and Lambda.

People tend to prefer one of these two Theta or Lambda worldviews in their pursuit of life purpose, and thus also in the pattern of their purchasing decisions.

The Theta-Lambda worldview is particularly applicable to one’s consumption of luxury products as this category of goods and services aims to tap into our desire to reflect externally what we see as our internally derived identity.

While we can only see the world from one perspective, we can strive to respect and understand that there may be a different perspective, thus also respecting the person who has adopted that viewpoint.

Handling this apparent paradox – of holding one view to be true while allowing for another valid perspective to exist – is the key to achieving a rich and full interpretation of the world.

Recently Martin Rappaport likened the diamond industry’s current trouble to flying a plane in freefall: a knee-jerk reaction to pull the nose up (fighting external forces) will inevitably fail, whereas pushing the nose down and eventually getting lift (going with the flow) will allow you to recover.

My problem with this analogy is that it’s already too late. What do you do when you are too close to the ground and there is no air left to lift you up? That is unfortunately the case with the diamond trade; there is no cash left and many companies are de-facto bankrupt.

Even for companies that can afford it, I don’t think slashing prices will help. It is a well known phenomenon in luxury that when prices go below a certain level, demand shrinks. Lower your prices and you will send away the few who are still willing to buy a diamond.

It seems that we are dealing with an autistic industry that is totally disconnected from the reality out there. The real market for diamonds, consumer and otherwise, is not running by the theories that many experts are putting out right now. If the industry really wants to start doing something that works, they’ll need to examine their consumer base and rethink their marketing.

More discouraging news for the diamond industry:

While lower production will start building a floor under prices, we see little prospect of any significant improvement until well into 2009 and expect more juniors to cut back or leave the sector.

said Des Kilalea, analyst at RBC Capital Markets. 

He’s saying that pricing and demand will likely get worse for diamond producers before they get better. While certainly discouraging, we have to remember that the diamond industry is not in as dire straits as the financial sector or the American automakers. We know we can expect at least a 10% decline in demand for diamonds. Mining companies are claiming that the their costs of production are too high with current prices–and they certainly aren’t going to get a government bailout. Will this be enough to motivate the industry to truly embrace the changes I think it needs? I truly hope so.

De Beers new emphasis on “enduring value” is achieving widespread coverage.  Many in the trade, like JCK magazine, really WANT to believe the message!

Reading through the hopeful message of De Beers, it is easy to find many rational arguments that diamond prices are sound, but the truth is, the arguments are flawed.

The first of the arguments is that diamonds are of “enduring value”. I simply do not know what enduring value means here, given that we all know that diamonds are not a viable form of investment and never have been.

The second argument is that it is better to buy now because the supply of diamonds is limited – as existing mines are depleting or even depleted and no big mines are on the horizon.  The industry has been spinning this yarn for years when it wasn’t true.  So how can we expect consumers to believe us now?

It will be particularly interesting to see how this particular argument helps in convincing a retail customer who stands in front of display-case after display-case overflowing with diamond jewellery; not to mention the immensity of the diamond jewellery overhang, lying dormant in domestic jewellery boxes.

The final argument DTC makes is that among really affluent buyers, price is not an issue. I do not know who these affluent people are and what their weight might be among diamond buyers. Data shows that since the mid 1980’s the “sweet point” of diamond purchases simply did not change. In the US, with its social multi-layered demography, most of the diamonds sold are in the range between $2000-4000 while in Japan this “sweet point” still hovers around $2000.  For diamonds, sold as commodities, price does matter!

Of course this could all change if we reverse the tide of the 1980s and return to first principles.  Diamonds are luxury, pure and simple. They must be sold as such.

The one thing we know about luxury is that it is ultimately irrational (the subject of my PhD – thankfully now completed!).  Luxury is a fine example of the fact that that the value for money is NOT what we seek. When we ask people for a definition of luxury we usually get two answers.

First, we hear that luxury is expensiveness and second, we hear that luxury is unnecessary (or superfluous). In this sense, diamonds are, in principle, the pinnacle of luxury – as they are, quite literally of no use whatsoever.  When it comes to valuation, saying that luxury is unnecessary opens the door to premium and unbounded, personalised pricing – the antithesis of commodities.

Instead of recognising and embracing the irrational consumer, since the 1980s,  De Beers has adopted a rational line, looking to “educate the customer”.

This is still the producers’ strategy – at the expense of the industry , which simply has to follow the leader’s line.

However, as these ‘rational’ arguments will never convince any serious customer, we have seen and will continue to see a lower proportion of people interested in diamonds.  Other luxury offers, by contrast remains resolutely irrational – and many categories are indeed relatively resilient to economic considerations. Purchasing of luxury is ultimately an irrational activity.

Of course it is just possible that during the coming six weeks American customers will storm the jewellery stores and clear up everything still in their vaults delivering a knock-out blow to the recession.

My feeling, though, is that we are looking less at a boxing match and more at a game of Russian roulette that may well send the final blow to the de-facto bankrupt industry.  Doubling up the Christmas ad spend and pleading with consumers to value ‘their commodities’ at heavily inflated prices is a very big gamble indeed.

I propose the following short prescription for the diamond industry’s long-term recovery:

First and foremost:

A true leader must emerge from deep within the industry at the level of primary production.

(2) This leader must have the ability, confidence and commitment to squeeze supply when necessary.

(3) This leader must recognize and solve the question of “enduring value” at the retail jeweler level.

(4) Retail jewelers must be trained and retrained on true luxury and understand it inside and out. This goes far beyond anything attempted by the industry to date. It is the cornerstone to the health of the industry medium and long term. Isaac speaks to this when he mentions irrational purchases.

DeBeers had the formula right prior to the 1980’s, but steered off course…they need a map and they need to learn to read the signs

(5) The practice of ‘Memo’ing goods, except in the instance of a 10 days special request for an established client must be relegated to the past.

(6) Jewelers must gravitate to partner suppliers who can work effectively with them to eliminate bottlenecks in supply.

No diamond should sit in a jewelers inventory for extended periods of time.

(7) Primary polishers must invest their profits (which means they must first have some profits) into their business to improve infrastructure (equipment) and train a new generation of diamond polishers. If a business is profitable then good business practice will lead those who survive to take these steps independently. Those who refuse to move forward with innovation will eventually close their doors.

(8) Consumers should be allowed to rediscover the hidden value of diamonds – The essence of self expression. Being able to express in action what one can not express in words.

Forget the 4C’s. Forget about diamonds as an investment. Diamonds are a symbol of the irrational – LOVE.

(9) Bank debt must be reduced significantly. There will always be a necessity to work with others money, but it is out of control.

In my view the industry debt is most likely 5-7 times more than is healthy.

(10) Banks must be enabled regain confidence in the price of rough and the downstream distribution (this is once again a a function of strong leadership and even political guarantees by governments whose revenue depends on the diamond industry’s health).