Lost River Diamonds’ longevity in the marketplace and knowledge of coloured diamonds gained over that time is one of the supplier’s major assets. Founder and director James Lehman entered the coloured market in 1997 after believing coloured stones, rather than whites, were the “future” in diamond and jewellery sales. “James started early and has been buying coloured diamonds for a long time so we have built up a really good knowledge on pink diamonds as well as other colours and sources,” Lost River Diamonds general manager Troy Reany explains. Reany says the company can track virtually any colour but it mainly stocks pinks, browns, yellows, oranges, greens and blues. While the majority of its supply comes from Australia – sourced from Western Australia’s Argyle mine and a small amount of pre-existing stock from the inactive Ellendale mine – the business is willing to go overseas for other colours. “We focus on trying to find Australian diamonds but there are lots of colours that don’t come from Australia so we do source diamonds from other countries – we buy for colour quality,” Reany comments. Another side to the business is a coloured diamond finished jewellery range, which is designed in-house. “We find that a large majority of retailers will accept the jewellery because it is a finished piece,” Reany says, adding, “If jewellers are busy making their own pieces, a lot of people like the finished range because they can just sell it. Of course, there are many that prefer to make their own pieces using our loose stones too.” He adds coloured stones provide a point of difference for stores and if they are in the window display they entice people inside. Interesting fact: It takes more than a year to collect 50–60 pink diamonds out of the millions of stones produced annually by Argyle. |