Background: Fonder Diamond
“ Fonder Diamond is not a traditional diamond company and was established as a disrupter to the diamond industry. By heavily adopting internet and mobile technology for marketing and operation, we operate at a much higher efficiency than traditional jewelers. “
Brief History of Fonder Diamond
Fonder Diamond was registered in Singapore at the beginning of 2016, engaging itself in the business of diamonds, custom-made engagement rings and wedding rings, as well as other diamond jewellery. Tracing back as early as 2014, Founder George Chen, together with Adam Pyrah has already begun the preparation of the business.
Prior to Fonder Diamond, George has been involved in the trading of diamonds, especially for huge value investment-grade diamonds for many years. He noticed a change in buyer’s purchasing behaviour, where most consumers would conduct their online research before visiting a jewellery shop to make their purchase — a trend that would soon affect the age-old diamond industry.
To ride this wave, George personally invested more than $2 million into Fonder Diamond whereby customers are able to access extensive information about the diamonds online before coming to our showroom and buying these diamonds at a much competitive rate.
Fonder Diamond has been proven a profitable and viable business model since its first month of operation. As of March 2018, the current average annual turnover in one showroom in Singapore is around $2.5-$3 million and is projected at $4–5 million for the next year.
Business Model of Fonder Diamond
The diamond industry lags far behind in terms of online adoption compared to most of other retail sectors. Most consumers prefer to visit brick and mortar stores to buy diamond jewellery as the online information and selection is still lacking. Furthermore, consumers are still sceptical and concerned about the lack of customer service or the quality of diamonds when dealing with an online store. Therefore, to get the best deal, the buying process is usually time-consuming and tedious, with the consumer having to visit store after store.
Although there may be a handful of branded online retailers, such as Blue Nile in US, their insufficiency lies in a lack of physical showrooms. Most consumers are not equipped with an adequate knowledge on diamonds, and are thus concerned that they might make a pricey mistake in buying diamond online. As a result, many prefer to speak to a trustable diamond and physically assess diamonds of various grades for comparison before coming to a decision.
A gap exists between the current industry practice and consumers’ needs.
In order to address this gap and the changes in customers’ purchasing behaviour, Fonder Diamond seeks to bridge that gap via 3-prong approach:
i. Website with extensive diamond information and jewellery info. www.fonderdiamond.com
ii. Showroom in every city.
Diamond expert at showroom must be knowledgeable and trustable.
iii. Marketing online
Via social media, new media, search engine etc.
Fonder Diamond’s Business Model has been proven profitable since the first month of the business.
EXPANDING MODEL
To unlock the highly scalable potential of the business model, Fonder Diamond is ready to scale up globally and plans to build showrooms in every major city in the world through:
1) Direct investment
2) Partnership
3) Franchise
Core Competitive Edge
“ By heavily adopting technology for marketing and operation, and streamlining our procurement chain, we are able to provide better-priced diamonds. Because of our advances in technology, we are able to pick out the most beautiful one among millions of diamonds within seconds by ‘Fonder Light Performance’, a tool we invented. ”
- Best Online Diamonds Ordering System in the world
Fonder Diamond boasts itself of having built the best diamonds online order system in the world, it can be reflected from the following a few aspects:
a) Over 100,000 diamonds database from very reputable suppliers. Fonder Diamond works with more than 20 major diamond-cutting factories in the world, which usually have a good reputation as well as offering a good price of diamonds
b) More Information than any online diamond inventory websites
In our diamond detail page there are some information which are not even stated on GIA certificate, but it is very important when you are choosing a diamond.
i) BGM
“BGM” describes three important evaluations for any stone, which stands for Brown or Green shade (undesirable tinges) and Milky (cloudy) appearance. Diamonds with BGM characteristics will have dull and dead appearances.
BGM is the beauty killer for a diamond, but unfortunately it is not even stated on a GIA certificate. We always educate our customers to avoid a diamond with BGM, even though it is a bit cheaper.
On almost every online retailers’ website, you will realise such vital information is missing, but not so for Fonder Diamond.
From the screenshot below you can see how to find the BGM information of a diamond from our website.
ii. 360 View Videos
We have many high resolution 360 view videos where customers are able to assess the clarity of the diamonds.
iii. Light Performance Score
This is Fonder Diamond’s proprietary grading system that assesses a diamond’s light performance. More of this will be explained in the section of “Fonder Light Performance.”
c) Real-time Updated Database
We developed facilities to enable our database to be synchronized with factories every day.
2. Fonder Light Performance
A Bad Experience
We have often heard many stories where customers feel shortchanged when they buy diamonds purely based on the GIA certificates. When they receive their diamonds, they look so dull that they look like fake diamonds.
What is the problem? The problem is that not only customers, but many diamond retailers do not know exactly how to determine the true beauty of a diamond! Needless to say, they would not know what factors and how these factors affect the beauty of a diamond.
To resolve the issue and help customers find a truly beautiful diamond, Fonder Diamond has developed its proprietary “Fonder Light Performance” — a theoretical grading system that assesses the diamond’s Brillance, Fire, Sparkle and Light Symmetry of a diamond; the true determinants of a diamond’s beauty.
Fonder Light Performance
To describe the beauty of a diamond, it’s usually by Brilliance, Fire, Sparkle, Symmetry. The following diagram gives an illustration for the concept.
Fonder Light Performance Score: Based on Machine Learning, Big Data Mining, and Artificial Neural Network technology, Fonder Diamond developed a system to analyse every diamond in our database by its colour, clarity, cut, symmetry and shape (table, depth, crown angle, pavilion angle) and to generate a score for each of them. This score is called Fonder Light Performance Score.
Good shape measurement: As shown in the diamond profile below (seen on every GIA certificate), a good combination of the shape measurement (table, depth, crown angel and pavilion angle) is very important to the beauty of a diamond.
From diagram below (the diamond detail page), you can find the light performance score. Through this information, our customers can easily identify beautiful diamonds among hundreds and thousands of diamonds based on our light performance score.
Future of Fonder Diamond
1) 1,000 Showrooms
Fonder Diamond has a highly scalable business model. Having established our core competitive edge into our operational structure and streamlined the diamond procurement chain through our online inventory system, our next aim is to set up at least 1,000 profitable showrooms in different cities of the world.
With Fonder Diamond growing globally, the scale effect will become evident in our diamond cost and marketing efficiency, and Fonder Diamond will then become more competitive in the market. This will have a positive contribution towards FON liquidity (Fonder cryptocurrency).
2) A supplier platform of Tested and Streamlined Suppliers Chain for Global Jewellery Industry
Based on Fonder Diamond’s tested streamlined procurement chain for diamonds, jewellery manufacturing and jewellery shop accessories, we will build an efficient supplier chain platform to share our premier resources and efficient operation system to the global jewellery industry. The scale effect advantages in price and quality will benefit whole jewellery industry.
Such a platform would accelerate the industry’s growth as traditional jewellers can immediately tap into it.
