Professional Jeweller: Focus on coloured diamonds for new research body

A new non-profit, independent organisation called The Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF) has launched aiming to promote fairtrade, ethics and transparency in the fancy coloured diamond retail, wholesale and mining industries.

 

The FCRF will focus on developing innovative research and digital tools to support the fancy diamond retail selling process for consumers, retailers and collections, as well as providing reliable data analysis for the whole supply chain.

The FCRF was initiated by Eden Rachminov, author of The Fancy Color Diamond Book and winner of the National Color Diamond Association (NCDIA) education award.

“The process and skills for evaluating fancy color diamonds are unique to this exceptional product. As a result there is a need to clarify misconceptions and to highlight the differences to evaluating colorless diamonds.”

Membership of the organization is open to retailers, auction houses, wholesale traders, manufacturers, financial institutions, mining companies and insurers.

THE FCRF INDEX

Fancy colour diamonds have outperformed key global asset indices since 2005, with pinks, yellows and blues increasing in value by 167% on average since January 2005.

In order to track these developments the FCRF has introduced its new Index tool, that collates thousands of fancy colour diamond transactions to produce practical pricing and sales data for the industry. This will be updated on a quarterly basis.

Overall, pink diamonds have shown the greatest growth in value according to the Index, with a 360% boost recorded in the past nine years. Blue diamonds have shown an equally impressive 161% in value.

STRUCTURE AND GOVERNANCE

Initiated by Eden Rachminov, the organisation is overseen by an advisory board comprised of representatives from across the industry, including Gelb Gemological Consulting principal Thomas Gelb and Dominion Diamond Marketing president James R. W. Pounds.

Boutique advisory and strategic venture firm, Isidor, has taken on the role of strategic advisor, while Kim Levy will handle marketing and Tracey Greenstein will direct the research and content development arm of the organisation.

Additionally, the Index will be independently evaluated for authenticity by accounting firm Citrin Cooperman, which checks for data integrity and consistency.