De Beers
By Feifei Fang
De Beers is a cartel of companies that dominate the diamond, diamond mining, diamond shops, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. De Beers is active in every category of industrial diamond mining: open-pit, underground, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea.Mining takes place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada.
The company was founded in 1888 by British businessman Cecil Rhodes, who was financed by South African diamond magnate Alfred Beit and the London-based N M Rothschild & Sons bank. In 1927, Ernest Oppenheimer a German immigrant to Britain who had earlier founded mining giant Anglo American plc with American financier J.P. Morgan, took over De Beers. He built and consolidated the company's global monopoly over the diamond industry until his retirement. During this time, he was involved in a number of controversies, including price fixing, antitrust behavior and an allegation of not releasing industrial diamonds for the US war effort during World War II.
De Beers Ad
10 of the most expensive diamond in the world
De Beers Aura
De Beer did a wonderful job on controlling the demands of diamonds in the market. One of the most successful marketing strategy is they created an image for each diamond ring as the symbol of love and commitment.
how diamond was revealed to the world
In 1869, The Star of South Africa, an 83.5 carat rough diamond, is discovered by a Griqua herdsman. It triggers the first diamond rush.
De Beers Sees Resurgent Diamond Demand in Modi’s India
De Beers First Introduced the 4Cs Concepts to the World in 1939
The De Beers Iris
The Forevermark---For you, Forever.
De Beers has introduced the Forevermark diamonds to markets in China, India, Japan, and the United States. All the Forevermarked diamonds are natural, untreated, and responsibly sourced. Forevermark diamonds have an icon and identification number inscribed on the table facet of the diamond. The inscription is about 0.05 µm deep and applied using an undisclosed De Beers technology developed in United Kingdom and Belgium.
The brand ambassador at De Beers demonstrated to me how they locate the identification of the diamond under the machine, which means every single client has a unit diamond with its assigned identification number which makes it is only "for you, forever".