Double door security.
Yeah, so this is it.
Welcome to one of the largest diamond dealers in the UK.
We've got a diamond polisher here as well. We'll have a look around.
We deal primarily and exclusively with the trade.
We lend stones to the shops.
The retailers don't have the capacity to have a huge stock.
They will borrow stones from us and they will use that service in order to have stones in
their shop to then engage with their clients.
Basically, polishing is putting the facets on.
I'm putting facets around the girdle.
That's the edge of the diamond, yeah?
And how much you reckon that stone will cost?
It doesn't concern me.
I'm just interested in doing the job.
We've seen diamonds pass through here well into the 7 figures.
It's a very rarefied market.
You worry when you're doing a really nice diamond that you don't damage it more.
You know, you can damage this diamond while you're working.
Tobias, tell me.
Why is De Beers so important to the diamond industry in the U.K. and also to Hatton Garden
as a whole?
There was a gentleman called Cecil Rhodes who basically went around and bought and consolidated
all the diamond mines after the crash because they discovered so many diamonds the market
couldn't handle it and created the De Beers company which was a farm, the farm was called
De Beers actually.
They owned, they had land that was on two of the richest seams of diamonds.
So Cecil Rhodes took control and basically created a monopoly.
They're the ones who invented a diamond is forever.
They basically commissioned an advertising agency in the US to come up with that.
And you can just watch the graph.
5 percent diamond penetration in the 1930s kind of go up by the 1950s so to over 80 to
90 percent of all engagements had a diamond engagement ring.
Actually we owe a debt of gratitude to De Beers who helped shape that market.
Subsequently they've lost control and you've got some other large independent big mining
companies that are digging it out of the ground and distributing as well.
The family that's controlled De Beers recently sold out about four years ago and they are
basically selling off their headquarters.
And so yeah the original headquarter of the empire so to speak has actually been sold
and staff are moving out.
I started in 1963.
Worked in the factory actually in Hatton Garden.
Later on I went to work with De Beers.
All along here was a heavy manufacturing of jewelry and then the retail shops came later
on to support that industry because it made, you know, sense and actually what's happened
is manufacturing has all but disappeared.
At one time, there were probably about, I don't know, maybe 600 to 1000 polishers in
all of England.
But that's all gone.
There's probably about three people, including myself, the same age.
We're all pretty old.
I think this is one industry where tradition still applies.
There's always a role for your traditional retailer local high street, Hatton Garden
has its place as well.
I think it loses some of the magic to buy something online.
A lot of people feel more comfortable coming in and touching the product that they're about
to purchase.
The online industry is actually creating the ability and the space to give the information.
So that people can utilize that.
The beautiful thing about the diamond and jewelry industry is that there are many things
that you can't do with technology.
Jewelry still needs to be finished by hand.