Shopping for an engagement ring should have been fun.
Instead, it was stressful and frustrating.
Store after store after store didn’t have what Beth Gerstein and her fiancé wanted: a sparkling diamond with no ties to child labor, war and poverty.
“You wear the diamond everyday, and it’s supposed to signify love between two human beings, but many diamonds are not ethically sourced,” Gerstein said. “One million diggers in Africa make less than $1 a day. They can’t feed their families, and here we are, wearing a beautiful diamond they helped mine.”
Finally, they found a diamond from Canada that was certifiably “conflict-free,” similar to the fair trade label that guarantees the product it marks (coffee, tea or chocolate) was harvested and produced in a sustainable, ethical manner.
Gerstein, then a business student at Stanford, brought up the ordeal one day with another student, friend Eric Grossberg.
They talked about the power of social enterprise. They agreed it was odd that in a world with a lot of ethical consumer alternatives (hybrid cars, organic food and cotton, fair trade coffee, solar and wind power), nothing similar existed for fine jewelry.
“People in the Bay Area make ethical consumer choices all the time, but when it comes to an engagement ring — a very big purchase with strong emotional significance and lasting sentimental value — no ethical alternative was available,” Grossberg said. “It seemed to me something should change.”
And thus Brilliant Earth was, well, unearthed.
Grossberg and Gerstein put their MBAs to good use in July 2005 by starting their own business. Brilliant Earth provides its customers with high quality diamonds mined in Canada in an environmentally and socially responsible way. Most of their diamonds also are set in bands made from recycled metals.
And 5 percent of its profits go to an organization the pair helped found, Diamonds for Africa, which directs money to African communities harmed by the diamond industry. Diamonds for Africa encourages people to donate their previously worn diamond jewelry, or to make cash donations.
Jews have long been involved in the diamond industry, especially in Israel, which is an epicenter for diamond cutting and polishing. And for much longer, Jews have honored tikkun olam.
The two young Jewish entrepreneurs see Brilliant Earth as a natural melding of these business and spiritual traditions.
“As Jews, we’re in a privileged position to understand the suffering of others and not sit idly by, but to do something,” Gerstein said. “We’re taught to improve the world as much as possible.”
The discovery of diamonds in West Africa has caused wars, poverty and environmental damage. The issues entered the mainstream in December with the film “Blood Diamond.”
The movie takes place in Sierra Leone in the early ’90s, during which time a civil war raged, partly caused by corruption and mismanagement in the diamond industry, according to the United Nations.
Gerstein and Grossberg were invited to the film’s Los Angeles premiere, and said they were excited Hollywood made their concerns more mainstream.
“We want to change the paradigm, change the whole way the diamond industry does business,” Gerstein said.
Unless diamonds come from Canada, tracking their origin is almost impossible. Diamonds mined ethically and those mined in poverty-ridden corners of Africa both are sent to the same distribution centers, mixed together during the cutting and polishing process, and then sent all over the world to sparkle on jewelry counters. There is often no way to distinguish between the two diamonds.
Gerstein and Grossberg envision a diamond industry that has independent oversight capable of developing a conflict-free certification and tracking system, like TransFair does with the fair trade label.
Already, the business has made a name for itself in the jewelry industry. Gerstein and Grossberg say there is a definite consumer demand for conflict-free diamonds. Their customers are all over North America, and many have told them that had it not been for Brilliant Earth, they wouldn’t have bought a diamond at all.
The pair hopes that as people become more educated about diamonds’ complicated and often unethical past, they will demand a change in the way they’re mined. It may take a while, they admit, but they’re optimistic.
Brilliant Earth’s Web site (which is how the company conducts most of its business) encourages people not just to buy their diamonds, but to get involved — by writing letters to Congress, donating money or emailing friends and family.
“Luxury purchases are not something entirely selfish,” Grossberg said. “They can be something beautiful that is also giving back to the world.”
For more information on conflict-free jewelry: