Important, emotional and harmonious branding helped to produce the De Beers diamond monopoly. When it was hovered in the 1990s by conflict diamonds and directors similar as Russia distributing diamonds outside the De Beers- controlled channel, De Beers again turned to imprinting to save the day. They dislocated themselves in a request they no longer control and are now more profitable with a 40 request share than when they had an 80 request share in the 1990s. Let me bring you into the picture.

 

De Beers engages in disquisition for diamonds, diamond mining, diamond trading and artificial diamond manufacture. Mining takes place in Botswana and Namibia (through its common- adventure hookups with the separate governments), as well as South Africa and Canada, in every order of artificial diamond mining open- hole, underground, large-scale alluvial, littoral and deep- ocean. The Diamond Trading Company, the rough-diamond deals and distribution arm of the De Beers Group, sorted, valued and vended about 80 of the world’s rough diamonds by value until the early 1990s.

These diamonds were also  brand distribution vended to the Diamond Trading Company Sightholders whose representatives travelled to London several times a time for the trade or Sight as it was called. Moment Sightholders ( now numbering only 79) are needed to misbehave with the De Beers’ stylish practice principles, which set out colorful objective norms of conduct in three main areas business, social and environmental liabilities. (I designed brandmarks for two of the Sightholders at the turn of the century and no citation was made of these noble norms; Mr$ and his rare appearances were the only standard I was reminded about.)

 

Get the picture? De Beers is big- veritably, veritably big! It’s well known for its monopolistic practices throughout the former century, when the company used its dominant position to manipulate the transnational diamond request by prevailing independent directors to join its single- channel monopoly and also submerging the request with diamonds analogous to those of directors who refused to join.

The company bought and squirreled the diamonds produced by other manufacturers in order to control prices through force. Ernest Oppenheimer stated” Firm tells us that the only way to increase the value of diamonds is to make them scarce, that’s to reduce product.” Now all that was left for the monopoly to come completely fledged was to increase consumer demand.

 

A diamond is a girl’s stylish friend

Consider this a diamond-the rarest and hardest natural mineral known-is worth no more that half its retail value. There’s no hard-and-fast rule for the pricing of polished diamonds, but professionals in the polished-diamond assiduity use a worldwide request price list, the Rapaport, grounded on the four Cs, which are carat, cut, colour and clarity, as a general guideline for assessing polished diamond prices. And a jeweller generally adds a 100 mark-up to the Rapaport quoted price. Piecemeal from artificial operations, diamonds have no other value except when polished for their perceived beauty, which we all know is in the eye of the beholder. This brings us to another aspect the power of emotion.

 

In 1999, I endured this first- hand while probing for diamonds ( just like the diamond diggers did at the turn of the century) along the Orange River, a gravestone’s gamble down from where the first diamond was plant in South Africa. There are no words to describe the feeling when you find your first diamond a flash of brilliant white light coming from among slate-black clay on the sorting table after days of backbreaking labour, recycling tons of clay. Your heart starts contending and you’re overcome by absolute joy and passions of intoxication! God chose you to find this diamond and you feel so blessed and special. Although it was only of one point of one carat and called”ice-white”, it might as well have been a 100-carat indefectible blue-white.

I was formerly told by a diamond diver in Port Nolloth on the remote Diamond Coast of the South African West Coast” Men arrive in aeroplanes and luxury buses looking for diamonds and leave looking for a lift home, left only with a brace of jeans and the shirt on their tails.”Wise words which add up the power that probing for diamonds holds for men.

 

 

Invisible But Brilliant Branding – Diamonds Are Forever But Monopolies Don’t Last