Press

Diamonds have a certain shine, a certain weight, a cut, colour and origin that cannot be churned out by a production line – a factor which makes each one so unique and exclusive. The value that diamonds hold is the sum total of all of these properties, alongside something more that cannot be found in the stone itself: its unique story.

Obtaining information about the origin: who mined the diamond, or how many pairs of hands the diamond passed through before being put on sale, is more important than ever. Some, in fact, are convinced that this adds significant value to the diamond.

This is the case at Tracemark, an emerging company that has established a traceability protocol which can be applied to each piece that makes up an item of jewellery using an encrypted application which stores and tracks relevant information from the origin to the point of sale. Aided by Facet, this start-up aims to generate its first €1.5 million next year.

The project has its origins in the concerns of the second generation at Facet, a company founded at the end of the 1980s by three young men working in Barcelona’s luxury industries: Josep Miquel Serret, Jaume Garrós and Francesc Quer. Serret was 25 years old when the company he was working for in order to pay for his studies, closed. An economics student, he was working for a firm specialised in diamond imports, managed by an Israeli businessman. With the business closed and out of a job, he wanted to take advantage of his knowledge in the field, allying himself with two colleagues to set up his own diamond import company.

Serret alone continues to head up this company and has dedicated himself to travelling all over the world over the last 30 years, especially to India, the world’s biggest diamond extractor, to trade diamonds and sell them in Spain and several other countries. After a failed venture in Botswana, in 2005 Serret decided to start to make his own diamonds, basing operations in India with a factory employing 400 people.

25 million

He is now president, but not the sole shareholder, of a company which survived the downturn in the luxury market and is present in the US, Spain and India. Facet boasts more than 1,500 companies as clients, and last year brought in €25 million. This year, due to the pandemic, Facet projects €14 million in sales, and €30 million for 2021. This September, the firm has invested half a million euros in a new 1000 square metre factory in Córdoba, where they expect to move a large part of their operations that are currently undertaken in India, a country which has been badly affected by the pandemic (the factory is currently working at 10% of its original capacity).

“This year could be described as lost, because it’s been completely atypical, but luxury as a sector is holding up. We are seeing, thanks to Tracemark, that next year we could be going at rocket speed”, Serret claims in an interview over videocall. His daughter, Berta Serret, is behind the driving of this project regarding diamond traceability. “The jewellery and diamond industry is quite mysterious and fairly opaque, and there has always been a need for more transparency”, she says. “This project comes from the heart. Mining activity is responsible for the release of 1,400 tonnes of toxic mercury into the environment each year and is the cause of 30% of mercury pollution found in the oceans. Even today, there one million children working in mines. We feel that on an ethical level, we simply have to work to realise the change we want to see in the sector”, explains Serret’s daughter, full of emotion. Her father adds, with a smile, that the added value that this technology provides should not go unnoticed: “this also means we can sell more, and earn more.”

Security

The head of Tracemark, which started its journey as a company in 2019 and last July sprang forth to look for clients in the market, defines the company as an opportunity to add an extra level of security to sales. In order to guarantee the legality of the origin of diamonds in the market, a Kimberley certification is needed – a type of passport which prevents conflict diamonds (otherwise known as blood diamonds, those that come from warzones and are used to fund conflicts, often extracted by slave labour) entering into the market.

The Chain of Custody, another system focussed on gold, is used to track each pair of hands that the piece of jewellery passes through. Lastly, the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC) is an affiliation of companies which audit jewellery pieces to ensure best practice in the industry. “Tracemark is the next step regarding these origin certificates” Serret conludes.

The end result is a piece of software that identifies all attributes of every diamond and presents them to the consumer at the point of sale. “In every transaction the diamond plays an important part” adds the head of the start-up. “But we can’t forget the intangible: all the information that the seller has. All this information is audited and verified.”

The Serret family are aware of the fact that their proposal is entering a market which for so long has relied on handshakes to verify authenticity and that other industry giants, like TrustChain, Tracr, Tiffany and Everledger have tried, and failed to launch their own traceability initiatives. “They simply didn’t offer all the information. We’re the ones who can actually do it due to our direct relationship with, and our full confidence in, our partners in India, where 92% of manufacturers are based, who have accepted to offer us the relevant information,” explains the father.

The initial investment for Tracemark totalled €300,000 for software development, and the firm is already gaining its first customers. The first will be Facet joined by Messika, a firm which brings in €100 million each year, and Tous, a firm which is also considering using this traceability software.