UNI Diamonds CEO Mahiar Borhanjoo joins Jewellery Outlook Editor David Brough in a complimentary Jewellery Outlook webinar on Wednesday April 21, 2021 to present his views on how the global polished diamond trade is changing and what the future will bring.
Please click below to watch the replay:
Mahiar, in the following interview with David Brough, explains how UNI Diamonds has introduced a transparent and explainable pricing system to the global trade in polished diamonds.
What does UNI Diamonds offer to the global diamonds trade that is new and competitive?
Uni is an ecosystem. There is no other company in our industry that provides a true end-to-end solution for retail and wholesale companies.
In times when getting to various countries to buy diamonds is not possible, we provide our partners with the ability to pick the diamonds they want, and allow them to QC (quality control) the goods in their own offices and buy what they want and send back what they do not need.
Everything on our platform is truly live. If the diamond is not available because it is being shown to someone, it won’t exist on our platform.
So to have more than 2 billion dollars of live inventory allows us to show what is truly available and for sale.
In addition to this we feel that our customers as well as well as our diamond providers must know what the true value for each diamond is.
Given the availability of the data in our platform, we can amalgamate the data and show current industry diamond prices, availability and trends of diamond categories, how prices are moving in each area and where the deals are …
Such a powerful analytics tool allow our partners to make the right decision on what to buy and when they can maximise the value of their purchasing power.
We round all this up with our partnership with Malca-Amit to ensure the diamonds that are ordered are transported safely to every city around the world.
So you can consider us to be the “Amazon” of the diamond industry; allowing our customers to buy what they want, when they want it and ensure they are satisfied with the value of what they purchase. No one else can provide all this.
Add this to financing we provide into the industry, the UNI calculator to allow our partners to know what true market prices are and our retailer app that allows our retail partners to work with consumers knowing what they order will get to their retail stores, allows them to minimise having to work with many vendors and move to UNI to have the benefit of working with more than 120 top manufacturers and wholesalers around the world from one platform.
Our customers’ satisfaction and our technology lead method for providing services for our partners are what make us stand out from any other company in this industry.
What technologies does UNI provide in order to deliver a comprehensive real-time inventory and an accurate diamond price guide?
We are connected live with all our partners which gives us the advantage of knowing what is truly available at any given time. Our pricing amalgamation tool and AI pricing allow our partners to know the prices of what they are purchasing and how these prices are trending.
Our partnership with Malca-Amit allows us to get the diamonds to our customers with 100% confidence that it will be in their offices or retail stores when they need it.
What is unique and special about UNI’s Diamond Price Guide, compared to other price guides on the market?
Our price guidance report is based on what the industry dictates. It is not a feel or a sense or searches as we know all those can be easily manipulated. It is reality and it is by the market.
By our partners who are selling these diamonds every day. What is important to note is that we do not show how much prices should go up or down, but we show how the prices have moved on a monthly and quarterly basis.
It is time for transparency in our industry. We should decide our market’s prices and it should be based on data and nothing else and it should be transparent and explainable. The industry deserves this. We all deserve this.
What logistics does UNI offer for the transport of diamonds and how do you guarantee safe and fully insured transactions?
We are very blessed to have the largest logistics company in our industry to be our partner in all our customers’ logistics needs.
From the moment the diamond comes into our hands, they are managed, stored and insured by Malca-Amit, even though we also insure the diamond.
This means not only you have the guarantee from UNI that your diamonds are managed and taken care of with absolute care, but they are going to be moved from the diamond owner to the diamond buyer with “precision care” to ensure every diamond is taken care of and protected by UNI and Malca-Amit.
Just like Amazon, you’ll know where the diamond is and when it will get to you.
This provides confidence as well as a worry-free assurance that we hold diamonds at a higher standard and manage each diamond with the care it deserves.
What diamond financing does UNI offer?
Our financing is based on the true value of each diamond we evaluate. When we receive diamonds for evaluation, we look at the true market value for those diamonds and provide 50% upfront financing for those diamonds.
But in addition to this, we also help our partners sell these diamonds downstream utilising our systems and customer base.
Each diamond receives a full evaluation with the best in market photography and videography and a unique identifier that can allow the diamond to be tracked through its everlasting life.
This unique approach allows us to really be able to create something unique above and beyond financing for the diamonds that are provided to us.
