The truth about bling

The city of Antwerp (a city in the Flemish part of Belgium) is known mostly for two things. The first is its fashion industry, which I thought was odd as I’d never heard of Antwerp in relation to fashion. The second, is for diamonds. And fact, in Antwerp there is an entire street dedicated to dealers, wholesalers and jewelers of those precious little stones (the picture below). There is also a Diamond Museum. A sucker for education and learning of any kind, I went to the museum and learned about the diamond trade, from finding them in the ground to sticking it in a ring. Therefore, I give you the Top 5 Things You Never Knew About Diamonds.


5. Diamonds, eh? For some countries like Sierra Leone and the Congo, diamonds are a pretty old business. But it’s fairly new in Canada. In fact, we are the newest entry into the diamond business with the discovery of diamonds nestled in the Northwest Territories in the late 1990s.

4. That’s some good advertising. Diamonds aren’t exactly a necessity, but they’ve been selling pretty well for the last few decades (2004 sales were worth $5.7 billion). Part of this is because diamonds are oh so pretty but part of this is advertising. In 2001, De Beer’s diamond marketing campaign, “A Diamond is Forever,” was voted the best advertising slogan of the twentieth century by Advertising Age. Created in 1947 by Frances Gerety, a young copywriter, legend has it that she came up the slogan in a dream.

3. Antwerp is kind of a big deal. Indeed, this little city in quiet little Belgium is quite an important hub for diamonds. It is estimated that 80% of all diamonds pass through Antwerp at some point. The Antwerp diamond sector itself brings in about $39 billion each year and the diamond trade is responsible for the 8% of Belgian exports and employs about 30,000 people directly or indirectly.

2. Hard up. Diamonds may be a girl’s best friend but they can be a metalworker’s best friend too. In fact 80 per cent of mined diamonds (or about 100 million carats a year) are unsuitable for gem use. So industry takes them. They’re mostly used in cutting, drilling or polishing. But researchers are looking at hi-tech applications of diamonds. Because of their conductivity (electrical and heat), they can also be used in semiconductors. These diamonds are called industrial diamonds.

1. What’s in a name? De Beers is a big player in diamonds—it's responsible for 40% (by value) of world diamond production. They’re involved in almost every process of diamond production, refining and distribution. Most people think there is a DeBeers family like the Rockefellers, Trumps, Loblaws or Gates that started the company and still own a part of it . Well, you’d be wrong. The DeBeers were brothers that owned land in Kimberley, South Africa, an area rich in diamonds in the nineteenth century. It was actually Cecil Rhodes (huge racist, founder of Rhodesia—which later became Zambia and Zimbabwe—and the Rhodes Scholarship) who bought the land and started the company. To be fair, a family has run De Beers for a long part of its history (the Oppenheimers, led by patriarch Ernest, bought the company in 1926 and held it until it went private in 2001). It just wasn’t the De Beers.