THE NEW NORMAL

It is important that the diamond business has a narrative which it can relate to and entirely appropriate that the DTC’s senior management does its best to provide one to its Sightholders and stakeholders.

The phrase ‘the new normal’ has a reassuringly rational and responsive ring to it and nicely encapsulates consumer sentiment in the western world. To what extent this more subdued consumer mood (zeitgeist) applies to the Chinese, Indians and consumers of other rapidly emerging countries is open to question.

However, now that we are in recovery mode and the Indian industry is in exuberant form again it is easy to forget that only just over a year ago the industry was in the midst of a crisis in confidence the severity of which had not been experienced since the 1980s.

This time last year there was a lot of discussion about the lessons that had to be learnt from how the industry collectively and individually handled those testing times and most of these issues revolved around the effectiveness of the distribution model and how it functioned under extreme pressure.

While there are certainly challenges ahead and that awful old cliché about cautious optimism is appropriate we must not allow the ‘new normal’ to revert to the ‘old normal’ and risk repeating the distribution mistakes of the past. The ‘new normal’ requires a more rounded and inclusive approach to DTC Sightholder relationships.