109th Gemstone Gathering - Martin Rapaport on State of the Diamond Industry

Plan to attend the 109^th Gemstone Gathering and hear Martin Rapaport, Chairman of the Rapaport Group, present “State of the Diamond Industry.” His talk will identify the primary forces disrupting the diamond trade and what to do about them.

Topics that Rapaport will discuss include the impact of the Internet on consumer demand and electronic trading networks; the challenge of lab-grown diamonds; the supply side revolution from mine to consumer branding and exclusive distribution networks; and government regulations, trade policy and foreign currency volatility.

About Martin Rapaport

Martin Rapaport began his career in the diamond industry in 1975 as an apprentice diamond cleaver in Antwerp, Belgium. He established the Rapaport Diamond Report in 1978 as the primary source of diamond price and market information. In 1980, he created RapNet the world’s first and largest electronic diamond trading network. RapNet currently provides dialy listings of 1.56 million diamonds valued at over $7.4 billion dollars. There are 16,000 members in 97 countries and provide 140,000 daily diamond searches.

The Rapaport Group is a value-based organization and support ethical, transparent, competitive and efficient markets. As a primary advocate for fair trade and development diamonds that will improve the lives of millions of impoverished artisanal diggers. He traveled to Sierra Leone during their brutal war and then played a key role in the creation of the Kimberly Process (KP). In 2010 he resigned from the World Diamond Council (WDC) and fasted for ten days outside their meetings to protest the KP certification of diamonds from Zimbabwe.

The Rapaport Group provides a broad range of diamond grading and certification services with RapLab and GIA Lab Direct services in India, Israel and Belgium. Rapaport Auctions is the largest recycler of diamonds in the world with sales of over 500,000 carats of polished diamonds annually.