A Diamond is Forever with Your Diamonds

If you are in the market for diamonds, engagement rings, tennis bracelets or any custom jewellery etc, it’s worth taking note of the following: 

Visser du Plessis of Your Diamonds (previously known as Diamond Investment Brokers), has been a household name in this industry throughout South Africa, but especially Gauteng, since the late 1980s.

Visser’s first statement initially shocked me.“If I have an unhappy client, it’s his/her fault".  Then he explained “If a client is unhappy, however small the complaint might be, I cannot fix it if I’m not told. It is company policy that we will rather lose money before we have one single unhappy client”. Having experienced bad service myself, once the money has left my wallet, I appreciated this approach.

Secondly, Visser informed me that Your Diamonds is probably the only jewelery company that gives an unconditional money back guarantee for a limited period. “Talk is cheap and I don’t want anyone to blindly trust what we say. They can compare our prices, quality and workmanship after the fact and at no risk to their pocket”  

View their engagement rings for sale here and the wedding rings here

Probably the biggest benefit to the client is that this company spends a lot of time to ‘buy their profit’. Du Plessis explained that he always pre-fixes the selling price at a below market level. This brings in more clients, but in order to make profit, he now has to source his stock at better prices. Never will Your Diamonds take the easy route and just add on to the price when they pay more.  

You can’t charge less than the market if you didn’t pay less

For an even better deal, Du Plessis negotiates the following with every client -  If they promise to post a review, the client immediately gets an even better price. This places the responsibility squarely on Your Diamonds to perform.

If they do well, then the client’s testimonial becomes part of their advertising campaign.   

With the discount, the client effectively gets paid for his part in this campaign.  If they don’t perform, then Your Diamonds have actually pre-paid for a negative comment. This is the sort of pressure they thrive on. You do everything better than the rest, or you lose business and you pay for it.

When Visser started this business while still a student, he gambled with a principle decision and it worked. He explained that the characteristic of a low turnover business is that profit margins have to be higher, whereas high turnover businesses operate on low profit margins. Du Plessis decided to enter a low turnover business and operate on the principles of a high turnover business. It was a risky approach to make extremely low profit margins in a low turnover industry. It took him a few years, but the low-price diamond story spread, and it eventually paid off.

Why did it work?

In the days before digital marketing, word of mouth was extremely important. Loyal clients became the advertising campaign. Even though Your Diamonds generated small profit margins, they established a huge client base which more than made up for the lack in margins. 

Currently Your Diamonds serve clients all over South Africa and the world.  Their diamonds are all laboratory certified.  Whether you have a design or not, they help you from A to Z and make sure you receive a bespoke piece of jewellery.  They are also one of the biggest buyers of second hand jewellery.