According to a Jewish story, someone asked what God has been doing since he finished creating the world. The answer was that he has been making matches, and that each one was as difficult as parting the Red Sea.

 

While it might not be quite as hard to match stones as people, matching gems is one of the hardest tasks in the jewelry business because rarely do two stones share characteristics that make them a perfect color match.

 

Thankfully, help is at hand to take the matching of gems from a best-guess game to a science. The breakthrough in matching comes from Israel-based GemeWizard, whose computer technology offers a clever, almost cheeky solution, to color coordinating.

 

The solution comes not in a lab but online. Subscribers to the GemeWizard service can access the company’s website and database to match the color not only of a gemstone but also of a fancy color diamond. The GemeWizard database constantly updates itself in color varieties and prices of gems offered for sale, allowing for better and better matches. There are about 200 unique coded colors for each hue and a total of more than 7,000 colors at present.

 

 “There is nothing like it on the market,” says Menahem Sevdermish, the company’s CEO and president. “What we have is the first system that can allow users to best match the color of gemstones so that everyone is speaking the same language.”

 

Once a color has been selected, the user can record the findings on a colored gemstone or fancy color diamond report. These are saved in a database, and provide a detailed color grading history of every gemstone handled by the company.

 

Such is the usefulness of the program that recently, a large jewelry retailer bought more than 40 of the GemeWizard programs allowing the different stores within the company to ensure they could always find a specific colored gemstone, or jewelry item with certain shade of a stone.

 

“Now when one store calls the other store, the two salespeople are talking about exactly the same shade and color. Because this is a computer software and database program, which can be on the countertop, customers can basically point to a color out of thousands so that they get exactly what they want,” says Sevdermish.

 

While the technology itself is impressive, it could not be successful without the tremendous advances in the quality of LCD computer screens. The newest generation of screens is so true-to-life that they allow users allow users to see enormous differences in the color of potential gem matches based on shade, saturation and hue that was not possible with older screen models. 

 

“These screens give an easy solution for finding and seeing the differences between colored stones. We have thousands of color variations and tones that allow users to easily see, within an almost near perfect ability what shade their stones are. All you have to do is look and you can match the stone,” Sevdermish explains.

 

With GemeFancy, the company also offers a solution for the colored diamond market. GemeFancy is a digital colored diamond master, enabling users to recognize the relative location of colors within the fancy diamond color range and to identify its color. The program assigns values to fancy diamonds color variations using standard terminology and the GemeWizard alphanumeric color code. Users can communicate fancy color by sending specific GemeWizard images via Gememail.

 

"Unlike white diamonds where there is an established system for grading color, the system to describe and communicate colored diamonds is somewhat vague, with no clear rules," Sevdermish explains. "[When a trader has possession of a colored diamond] the trader rarely has the ability to grasp the full scope of colored diamond colors and grades."

 

GemeFancy has been calibrated using thousands of certified fancy diamond colors grades. To compute the colored diamond prices quoted by GemeFancy, GemeWizard developed an integrated system that includes a color analysis of thousands of diamonds offered for sale online, gemstone prices allocated by a panel of industry-renowned experts, and real time commercial data collected by the company.

 

Because the system allows for color identification, it also aids in pricing fancy color diamonds. "The GemeFancy pricing system is groundbreaking, not only because of the ease and accuracy with which users can define what is the price of the diamond they are examining, but also because of the scientific method by which we collect and collate the pricing data," Sevdermish claims.

 

He stresses that the system is not run by traders who may have an interest in setting prices, but by information technology specialists who have no interest in the prices of gems but only in gathering data and creating a price list from it. Users cannot change the prices, since it is an independent system running purely on received information.