De Beers argues that these troubles vindicate the work of the cartel, or the “singlechannel marketing” system, as the company prefers to call it. “My belief”, says Nicky Oppenheimer, “is that if the Australians had signed a contract with us, the fall in prices that one has seen at the lower end would not have taken place links of london sale.” A cautionary tale: quit, and suffer the muscle of De Beers. Stay, and the fantastic illusion is sustained. De Beers’s executives, naturally, deny that there is an illusion at all. “I don’t think it is a bubble that can be burst,” declares Mr Oppenheimer. But they rely on curiously circular logic De Beers insists that it does not keep diamond prices artificially high links of london charms. Diamonds, goes the argument, are special: they have a mystique tracing back to times of Indian maharajas and Arabian princes; they are the hardest substance on earth; and “they simply sparkle more”. In which case, why do diamonds need De Beers and the cso? Ah, comes the reply, we need to maintain price stability in order to support the mystique.
At the end of the day, this is no longer a matter of logic but of faith. Spending any length of time with De Beers managers can feel like a visit to a religious sect links of london. Nobody questions their conviction. Only true believers remain in the temple of the faithful. One former De Beers man recalls a video shown in the 198os as part of his initiation into the firm; at the end, six words of baptism appeared on the screen: “Now you are one of us.” The company’s executives exude a missionary zeal. They even speak inadvertently in evangelical terms. “We have the fervour of the converted,” jokes Mr Oppenheimer links of london on sale.
Such manipulation of the market-De Beers prefers to call it “management” or “stabilisation”-does not mean that no diamonds are genuinely scarce links of london sale. “Fancies”, or unusually coloured diamonds, in such shades as pink or purple, can be extremely rare and fetch huge prices. Small, plain diamonds, however, are in fact not all that scarce. Their reputation for rarity comes in no small part from man, not nature links of london charms.
Anybody who doubts that the diamond cartel has sustained a remarkable illusion need look no farther than the recent troubles at the bottom end of the market. Argyle mine, Australia’s diamond producer, used to sell its stones via the cso Links of London sweetie. It digs out more diamonds than anybody else in the world, but the quality of its stones is poor. By value, it turns out just 5% of the world’s total. In July 1996, grumbling that the cso was not giving it a fair deal, Argyle quit. Since then, and also thanks to the continued leakage of low-quality Russian diamonds, the price of low-quality diamonds has done the unthinkable and collapsed. One Antwerp dealer says that, on the open market, the price of such gemstones has plunged to just over a third of what they fetched before the Australians pulled out links of london silver.
The system today works in much the same way as it did when Cecil Rhodes first hatched his plans for a diamond empire a century ago. He observed that, uncontrolled, the industry dug out too many diamonds, flooded the market and prompted a collapse in prices. Apart from low-quality industrial diamonds, the stones had no practical use that would help prop up their price links of london sale.
The answer was to support prices artificially by seizing control of all the mines. In 1888 Rhodes founded De Beers Consolidated Mines, merging two of the biggest mines in South Africa (De Beers and Kimberley links of london items) From there, he went on buying up the country’s diamond mines until he controlled 9o% of the world’s gemstones, most of them extracted by pitifully paid African workers under fierce surveillance. From that point, market control derived from a monopolist’s rule-book: when times are bad, hold back diamonds to support the price; when times are good, release the gems and clean up links of london charms.
More or less the same principle, institutionalised by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, who set up the cso in 1934, is followed today. De Beers varies its stocks of diamonds, and forces its partners to hold theirs back too, depending on market conditions. In 1977, for instance, a boom year, it held just $253m of the stones Links of London friendship. By June this year, however, a turbulent time for the industry, the diamond stocks stashed away in the De Beers safes were worth a staggering $4.-billion-a treasure trove made possible by the company’s financial strength.
The allure of diamonds rests on one illusion above all: that “a diamond is forever”. That clever marketing slogan, first invented in 1947 by De Beers’s American advertising men and still used today, sells two dreams in one: that diamonds bring eternal love and romance, and that diamonds never lose their value links of london sale.
Like magic, the dream has come true. Unlike such other precious commodities as gold, whose price has yo-yoed over the years, the average price of diamonds has maintained a relentless upward creep links of london charms. Between 1986 and 6, average prices of diamonds grew by so%. Again like magic, this took place despite the fact that over the same period more and more diamonds flowed onto the market How?
The answer lies in the little brown boxes handed out in Charterhouse Street. Through such allocations, De Beers controls the supply of about three-quarters of the world’s rough (uncut) diamonds via its marketing arm, the Central Selling Organisation (cso discount links of london). It mines half the world’s diamonds itself, in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. The rest it sucks into its system through contracts made with other diamond producers, and by dispatching its buyers, whose clipped British accents and pressed cotton shirts mark them out as the sort who might otherwise be employed by Her Majesty’s secret service, to vacuum up diamonds that seep onto the market in such places as Angola and Congo-Kinshasa links of london outlet store.
Not to discuss the price: this they have already fixed, based on their reading of the market “and on our intelligence links of london sale“. This time, the decision is about which stones to give out-big ones, small ones, clear ones, pink ones-and in what combination. The result is parcelled up secretly into little brown boxes, sealed with tape, and handed out to the brokers when they fly into London. A broker inspects his box, and can reject it altogether; but he cannot start quibbling about the selection he has got links of london charms.
Welcome to the mad world of De Beers, where James Bond meets the Wild West and manages to turn the raw, lawless frontier world of diamond digging and dealing into the most smoothly manipulated business in the world-”all”, as Lord Randolph Churchill famously observed when he visited the South African diamond mines in the 189os links of london on sale, “for the vanity of woman” (and, today, of man). It is not merely gems that De Beers is selling, but symbols, myths, magic As a worldwide dealer in enchanting illusions, Disney has nothing on De Beers: for the preciousness of the diamond is not a fact but a triumph of modem marketing links of london bracelets. A cartel’s best friend
Far from the mayhem in Africa, on the other side of the world, a helicopter lands on the roof of a building in Charterhouse Street, on the edge of the City of London links of london silver. It elects a man in a suit, Nick Oppenheimer, soon to be chairman of the De Beers empire that his grandfather, Sir Ernest, built into an international company and a global cartel. From the roof he descends to his hushed, wood-panelled offices, to preside over an operation of which the Soviets would have been proud links of london sale.
Every five weeks, his men meet in this building to sell to diamond brokers the precious stones that De Beers has gathered from the world’s diamond mines links of london. Here the visitor finds no free-for-all scramble. This is an exquisitely controlled, polite operation. Each broker has already placed his orders for the stones on behalf of his clients, the cutters and polishers. The men from De Beers meet for an entire day to discuss who should get what links of london charms.
From the hermetically sealed calm of this office, the men from De Beers are on a mission to impose order on the chaos of the Angolan diamond fields Links of London friendship. So far, they have had to keep running just to stay still. In the diamond valleys of the remote north-east, UNITA guerrillas still control many of the richest diamond deposits. There, garimpeiros (illegal diamond diggers Links of London sweetie) and army officers, buccaneers and foreign fortunehunters compete for a patch, scraping at the ground with tin cans and fingernails, or plunging underwater from wooden canoes to dig out the gems from the gravel beds of the Cuango river links of london sale.
It is a modem-day vision of the 1870s diamond rush at Kimberley South Africa. There are no rules. Guns are rife, and for hire. Murders, ambushes and kidnappings are common. “It’s like the Wild West,” says one buyer. Last year, De Beers spent some $i5m each week mopping up Angolan diamonds, mostly in Antwerp, no questions asked. Recently, De Beers’s man in Luanda was shot and wounded by armed robbers while driving in the diamond area with a huge stack of cash links of london charms.
THE entrance to the local office of De Beers, the world’s diamond barons, in the Angolan capital of Luanda is hidden in an unmarked shady passage off a foulsmelling street links of london outlet store. Outside, litter clogs the gutters and battered, low-slung cars honk their horns at hawkers of peanuts, pineapples and bright plastic rucksacks. Inside the passage, the lift broke down long ago. To reach the office you must climb seven dark flights of narrow steps, which stink of stale urine links of london sale.
And then, upstairs, a bright new world unfurls. Behind thick steel doors, and watched by security cameras, is harmony in black leather and chrome A receptionist speaks through bullet-proof glass via a telephone system links of london items. She accepts business cards through an electronically operated slot in the counter. At the touch of a button, she unlocks what looks like a decompression cell to admit the visitor to the waiting room, a chamber which is also overlooked by video cameras links of london charms.
It is not merely diamonds that De Beers sells, but symbols, myths, magic. As a worldwide dealer in enchanting illusions, Disney has nothing on De Beers: for the preciousness of the diamond is not a fact but a triumph of modern marketing links of london sale. The allure of diamonds rests on one illusion above all: that “a diamond is forever”. This clever marketing slogan, first invented in 1947 by De Beer’s American advertising men and still used today, sells two dreams in one: that diamonds bring eternal love and romance, and that diamonds never lose their value discount links of london. De Beers controls the supply of about 3/4 of the world’s uncut diamonds via its marketing arm, the Central Selling Organization links of london charms. It mines 1/2 the world’s diamonds itself in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. The rest it sucks into its system through contracts made with other diamond producers, and by dispatching its buyers to vacuum up diamonds that seep onto the market in such places as Angola and Congo-Kinshasa links of london bracelets.
In Canada, 85 percent of brides still land a diamond engagement ring from their betrothed. In fact, this country boasts the highest diamond-ownership rates in the world — four out of five women own one. Women are taking a greater role in choosing their rock, too. Barbara Kovacs links of london, vice-president, Canada, for Tiffany & Co., says 70 percent of engagement ring purchases are now bride-and-groom decisions.
Their top picks? Round, brilliant-cut diamond solitaires. And although Tiffany & Co.’s classic, six-prong setting has been a bestseller for more than a century, the New York-based company plans to introduce a new diamond cut to the market this year links of london on sale. According to Laura Hall, general manager of merchandising for Peoples Jewellers Corporation, the princess (square), marquise (elliptical shape with pointed ends) and pear cuts are the ranking favourites.
But regardless of cut, size doesn’t necessarily matter. “We’re seeing a trend to better quality diamonds, whereas a few years ago it was the bigger, the better,” explains Hart links of london sale.
Current fashion covets the clean look of platinum, although white gold and two-toned bands are also popular links of london charms.
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