Diamond Dealers Looking for Millennials

Although the global diamond industry has rebounded from a slump in 2016, dealers remain anxious about the future, as the generation born late in the last century, also known as millennials, don’t yet know that diamonds are forever.

“One of the greatest challenges is trying to make diamonds relevant to the millennials, which is actually the new generation who we must appeal to, who don’t know a diamond is forever, didn’t grow up with that,” Sharon Gefen, Public Relations Director for the Israel Diamond Institute, told Reuters at Monday’s opening of the sixth International Diamond Week in Ramat Gan.

Some 400 buyers from 30 countries were participating in this year’s organized dazzlement, observed Gefen.

The event, held at the Israel Diamond Exchange, became the temporary home for, among other attractions, a replica of the Russian Imperial Crown, displayed by Alrosa, the world’s largest producer of rough diamonds.

For engagement ring shoppers, it is worth noting that the replica, which contains 4,800 diamonds and over 1,000 carats, is worth $20 million.

Together with Anglo American’s unit De Beers, Alrosa produces about half the world’s rough diamonds.

An Alrosa auction during the week will offer 108 boxes of rough diamonds of 11 to 199 carats and white and colored polished diamonds of 10 to over 80 carats, the International Diamond Week said.

Diamonds account for about 20 percent of all Israeli industrial exports.