In 195 1, De Beers Group shouted out the well-known saying that "a diamond lasts forever, and an eternal one". Concise and profound advertising words quickly touched the hearts of girls, so that the current proposal is equivalent to a diamond ring in material terms. However, when we look at the history of diamonds, we find that the price of diamonds can be sold at today's price, which is completely textbook-style marketing techniques. De Beers Group sells not diamonds, but love.
Diamonds originated in India and can be traced back to the fourth century BC. At that time, people only used diamonds as tools to polish stones. Before 1869, the output of diamonds was still very low, which was no different from the prices of other precious stones. But in 1870, a farmer completely changed the status quo. He found a huge diamond mine from several children. The largest diamond mine is Kimberly Diamond Mine, which can accommodate 5000 miners, and the depth reaches 1 100 meters. Until the mine was hollowed out and closed, this mine alone produced a full 3 tons of diamonds!
Before the discovery of diamond pits, the world only dug no more than 20 kilograms in India and Brazil every year. This huge discovery completely subverted the diamond market. In order to prevent the price of diamonds from plummeting, Cecil, a diamond investor, and his brother bought De Beers Farm in South Africa, and established De Beers Company on 1888, and also won the mining rights of other mines in an attempt to monopolize the diamond industry.
But it wasn't long before scientists invented artificial diamonds. Using hydrogen and methane as raw materials, carbon atoms are extracted from plasma by chemical vapor deposition at high temperature and high pressure, and the generated carbon atoms are arranged and piled up in order to cultivate a complete diamond. Its color, clarity and size far exceed that of natural diamonds, and it began to rapidly devour market share. De Beers immediately obtained the patent and production technology of synthetic diamonds, and in its heyday, it mastered 85% of the global market share.
When other diamond dealers intended to sell at a lower price, De Beers deliberately put more diamonds on the market, which quickly lowered the price of diamonds and crushed competitors. De Beers has also set an industry standard, which requires that diamonds from all over the world should be managed by London institutions, and only more than 100 designated diamond cutting companies can buy them, and the market price is determined by themselves. The concept of carat is also put forward, 1 carat = 0.2g. It can be said that the market is completely monopolized.
After monopoly, how to sell diamonds to people who have no demand? The answer is to tell a beautiful love story. In the movie Titanic, the diamond in the heart of the sea invisibly exports values, and the diamond symbolizes love. Many stars and upper-class people will send diamond rings to express their love when they propose. With the celebrity effect, embarrassed men began to follow suit. Some snack packages also have diamond proposal patterns, including some novelists inserting diamond rings and love stories in their works, which convey to us that diamonds are necessary for marriage proposal from all aspects of life.
There is a situation beyond De Beers' control, that is, rebels in war-torn countries in Africa exploit their own diamonds and export them to other countries in exchange for fighting funds such as guns and ammunition. Many peacemakers call for not importing diamonds from war-torn countries, because these are "blood diamonds". The United Nations also adopted the Kimberley Process agreement to curb the diamond trade in war-torn countries. This agreement also happened to save De Beers and avoid the proliferation of diamonds. Judging from the current total amount of diamonds, everyone in the world can get 20 grams of diamonds. If you open the market, diamonds are the price of cabbage. However, De Beers, together with other diamond companies, maintains the market price, taking only a small part every year and making easy profits in the form of a long stream of water.
Unlike other gold jewelry, diamonds are not easy to sell in the second-hand market. Large reserves, non-preservation, inflated prices, do not have the characteristics of hard currency like gold. Who else likes second-hand love? All the gold on the earth is the product of supernova explosion in the universe. In order to make gold, humans need to bombard mercury with fast neutron emitters, which will decay into gold 197 through electron capture, but the cost is much higher than the price of gold itself, so the total amount of gold in the world is very stable. In contrast, diamond prices are monopolized and then hyped, which is a textbook-like marketing "scam".