Q6. Who do you want to be like? For example:
Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels or Graff?
ND: We are very lucky because we have the Eden Roc
brand in our name, Eden Rocks, and Spencer’s family
owns the Eden Roc Group. We are stand alone. It’s
going to be a collective piece. This isn’t Cartier, isn’t
Boucheron, and isn’t De Beers. It is a stand only
piece. We can get one of the hotels, or call to set up
a meeting. We are so down to earth. I don’t want
a stuffy place with bullet proof glass. We can meet
people in the pub, their house, or in our office.
SM: It’s a different take on how diamonds are sold.
Prior to meeting Neil, I would have assumed when
I got engaged, I would go to Tiffany, Cartier, or
whatever. If you struggled to afford that, then you’d
go to a shop where some guy tells you that’s the best
diamond you can buy. It’s all same old, same old stuff.
We are looking to provide a more personal way of
doing business in which every single client will deal
with Neil or myself directly, and you end up knowing
that you will get a bespoke and cool one-off piece
with a stone that is comparable to the big boys.
Q7. According to the GIA - the perfect colour
is D to Z. Why is it so important to be within
that range?
it disappears. I’d much rather have a 4 or 5 carat
which is much further down the alphabet where
everyone goes, “Wow, that’s a lovely ring.”, and it gets
noticed.
ND: I can walk into a room and see a ‘D’ diamond
ring quite quickly. However, most colour that
women wear these days flood into the diamonds and
anything surrounding it, so people don’t even see it.
Q8: Are your customers price conscious?
ND: I call the perfect colour D to I. Because D is
where the diamond starts and it is the whitest stone.
If you drop it in a glass of water, it will disappear. We,
as a business, haven’t sold any diamonds below the
letter J. With 18 or 19 years of trading previously, and
now with Eden Rocks, I have only sold anything up
to from H to I. People are shopping around more.
There’s more information and people don’t want to
spend thousands of pounds generally on a D colour
diamond. You can have a 4 carat or 5 carat centre
stone and it might be and I to J colour. It’s bang for
buck. If you’re a Russian businessman and you say
to us that you want a D colour diamond, there’s not
going to be any issues. We have that stone, or we
can source it. Most of our clients’ work is requested
between F to I. Basically, it stands for price! ND: Everyone is now. It’s a very different market.
SM: For a flawless E colour, or even buying a 1 carat
flawless D colour. What will you be looking at, in
particular, price wise? ND: Our two suppliers are the same suppliers that
supply the major brands such as Cartier, De Beers,
and Bourcheron. We are all buying it at the same
price, but our overhead is less.
ND: You will be looking at $35k to $45k USD.
SM: If you dropped that diamond in a glass of water,
SM: We have kind of two markets that we are tapped
into. The first is my ‘social media’ following which I
have amassed, and those people are price conscious
and they are young and go work to earn a living, so
buying a diamond for them is a ‘once in a lifetime
thing’. Whereas, the clients of Eden Roc have larger
budgets and want far better things. We are very
flexible and fluid at what we sell. If a billionaire asks
- find me this - then, we will have it by the end of the
week. What anyone needs, we can get. But, having
said that in the same breath, if a young and loved up
23 year old says, “I have a couple of grand. Can I buy
a ring of my dreams? Can you do it?” Of course, we
can.
SM: The other day I saw in a famous shop window
a pair of diamond stud earrings that were priced at