My sister and I have different responsibilities
in this business.
My sister is in charge of promoting the brand
and running the company.
I'm more responsible for securing our diamond supply
chain.
My job is to maintain very solid relationships with suppliers,
mainly the large diamond manufacturers.
We buy good quality diamonds, especially
the ones with GIA certifications.
My personal estimate is that our company
is one of the top three diamond buyers in China.
To secure our supply we need to work
with capable and stable large diamond manufacturers.
A lot of jewelry companies regard making money
as their ultimate goal, but I think
that Zbird has passed that stage.
We now have higher criteria for our suppliers.
They must be able to ensure a constant supply of high quality
products.
Zbird was founded 11 years ago.
We started selling diamonds online in 2002.
Back then, there was no Taobao or eBay yet.
There was only one online trading website called YiQu.
Three months after we posted our first loose diamond,
we made the first transaction in our company's history.
This marked the starting point of our whole online diamond
business.
We had to face many difficulties through the whole process.
We tried many different ways to solve these problems.
At the beginning, our biggest challenge
was to inspire confidence.
Because we sold our diamonds at about half the price
of department stores, it was a challenge
to reassure our clients about the quality of our diamonds.
I was a student with a gemology major.
I completed the GIA diamond grading lab class,
so I'm extremely confident about the grading system
and the service GIA provides.
In 2002 you rarely saw loose diamonds with GIA certificates.
Once in a while you would see certificates from HRD.
These stones were usually over one carat,
and stones over one carat did not
have a large market back then.
People spent most of their fortunes
on diamonds from 30 points to one carat.
At the time, I thought that importing diamonds
with GIA certificates might be a good way
to give our customers more confidence in us.
I began purchasing diamonds which GIA certificates
and bringing them back to China to sell.
At the time, other diamond dealers in China
almost laughed at me, since the wholesale prices of diamonds
with GIA certificates were a lot higher than those
without GIA certificates.
But I was pretty sure that GIA certificates
added positive value to my goods.
Throughout the years, our clients also changed.
Before they purchased a diamond just by looking at the diamond
itself.
Now they have been educated to look at certificates
from professional grading organizations
in order to understand the diamond.
This change is very meaningful to us.
I believe that GIA certificates have already
taken a very large portion of the Chinese diamond market.
Before my competitors all laughed at me,
but now all Chinese internet diamond dealers
sell GIA certified stones.
Even some jewelry dealers began selling GIA certified goods.
In one sense, this is due to the promotion
done by multiple dealers and GIA.
Last year I visited GIA headquarters
in Carlsbad and its grading lab.
I was very impressed by what I saw.
I could see the reason why GIA had always
played a leading role in the industry.
The graders pay a great deal of attention to detail,
and they are fair to every player in the industry.
I was impressed by the whole GIA grading system.
The business and trading models we apply to our company
are based on our clients' requirements.
We started as an internet dealer and then transferred
our experience to stores.
We followed this path because consumers
preferred to have both available.
About a year and a half ago we sensed another business
opportunity.
There are more and more wealthy people in China now.
They all have their own individual ways
to invest their money.
Some of them buy properties, stocks, or gold.
China recently applied a lot of new policies
to try to control land prices, so property is not as good
an investment as it was before.
The stock market is not very thrilling either.
Gold prices are not that stable.
We thought that maybe we could educate those wealthy people
to purchase collections of diamonds
as part of their investments.
We took action by contacting several well known banks
in China.
Two of them stand out, China Merchants Bank
and China Construction Bank.
Currently, the personal diamond investment business
of both banks is serviced and supported by Zbird.
We made a lot of progress during the past year and a half.
In the first year we launched a team of 10 staffers
to work on this investment project.
The team's sales figures for the year were 100 million RMB,
about $15 million.
The largest stone they sold was over 23 carats.
It sold for over 13 million RMB, about $2 million.
Today, there are many wealthy people in China
who can afford this type of diamond,
but they need a convenient way to buy, and also
to know more about diamonds.
The most important thing is to have someone trustworthy
to serve them and help them manage their money.
Our team is more like a private jewelry consultant team.
There are many different business models
operating in China's diamond market.
Traditional retail stores are still very popular.
Internet sellers are everywhere as well.
There are also some VIP programs.
Some dealers sell diamonds in the same way
that grocery stores sell their products.
I personally do not like this selling model.
People who purchase diamonds make their decisions
based on emotional factors.
Almost every consumer expects some emotional value out
of a diamond.
They want to express their emotions through the stone.
For example, they want their love
to be as solid and as eternal as the diamond.
If you sell diamonds in a grocery store type environment,
a lot of these emotional values are dismissed.
I do not think consumers enjoy the experience
of buying something as cheap as groceries.
There will be more and more a new business
models in the future.
My opinion is that business models
are related to the way information is conveyed.
We can get a lot of information from the internet.
New internet platforms like blogs and social media
are already popular.
Recently, WeChat took over almost all of them
to become China's newest information exchange.
Our business needs to catch up with the changing
methods of information exchange.
We need to follow the newest social media model
to sell our goods on the latest platform.