Antwerp Diamond Conference to Focus on Added Value

The fifth Antwerp Diamond Conference planned on November 17 and 18 will focus on the added value gap between a stone’s basic worth and its perceived worth, the Antwerp World Diamond Centre (AWDC) said in a statement.

The conference entitled “Diamonds, a Symbol of Value,” will look at how and why the value added gap grows and contracts, and in what way it is dispersed among the various players in the distribution chain.

“There is the diamond’s basic value, determined largely by the cost of mining the gem and then producing the polished product. There is the perceived value, reliant on the regard in which the consumer holds the diamond. And then there are the underlying sets of values, all which have to be defended if the perceived value is to achieve its maximum potential”, Freddy Hanard, chief executive of AWDC said.

Seminars at the conference will also focus on the powerful emotional factors that make diamonds, like other luxury products, difficult to compare to other products.

Speakers at the event will include Richard Hytner, deputy chairman of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, which pioneered the term “Lovemarks” to classify luxury products that have high emotional value, Bernard Fornas, chief executive of Cartier, Gareth Penny, managing director of the De Beers Group, and Sergey Vybornov, president of Russia’s Alrosa.