Diamond Industry Experts Provide Online Diamond Shopping Solution

January 11, 2011

Jacques Voorhees, founder and former CEO of Polygon, and Bill Boyajian, former long-time president of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), have joined forces to offer a revolutionary online service that addresses one of the biggest problems for jewelry retailers: diamond price shopping on the internet.

The Daily Diamond Report (DDR) from VeriChannel, which formally began operations on Monday, provides subscribers with an exclusive list of freshly-graded diamonds directly from the diamond grading laboratories of GIA and the American Gem Society (AGS). DDR stones, which are automatically posted within hours of grading, have not yet appeared anywhere else on the internet, and therefore cannot be "shopped" by consumers across multiple websites.

The DDR service allows clients of these labs to pre-market their diamonds to a global audience before the stones have even physically left the lab and before the grading reports have even been printed. The Daily Diamond Report includes seller contact information, a PDF file of the certificate and full grading details in searchable format.

"Sightholders and other large manufacturers want to accelerate the speed at which their diamonds can be seen by potential customers," explained VeriChannel Chairman Bill Boyajian. "The Daily Diamond Report cuts as many as seven days off the time when freshly-graded inventory can be seen by buyers. It also expands the audience of potential buyers via email distribution of the data."

"Both the supplier and the retailer win," said VeriChannel President Jacques Voorhees, an industry pioneer largely credited with inventing the online trading of gemstones. "One of our primary goals was to give retailers some protection against internet price-shopping. DDR addresses the problem of the same diamond appearing on dozens of B2C websites simultaneously."

Hundreds of diamonds each day are now being fed automatically from the GIA and AGS labs into the Daily Diamond Report, a unit of VeriChannel, LLC. VeriChannel is also launching a specialized search engine for the jewelry industry that is powered by Google technology. Other products are planned for release later in 2011. The Daily Diamond Report is free to both the companies who post diamonds and buyers from the trade who participate. All jewelry industry professionals are invited to subscribe to the Daily Diamond Report newsletter, free of charge. DDR services are accessible at http://gemfling.com/

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