Diamonds In South Africa

Before 1869, diamonds were located in India , they were pulled off in a very rudimentary way. Those mines stopped being productive in the mid XIX century. The diamonds mining moved to Brasil, where diamonds were extracted in a very easy way. This fact matches with the appearance of the diamonds in South Africa. Until then the diamonds were reserved exclusively for the richest people in the world.

After the appearance of the diamonds in South Africa some adventurous tried their luck to make money and some others respond to what is know as dimond rush, where people migrated to Kimberly area to work on the mines.

In this historical context we find Cecil Rhodes who moved to Kimberly attracted by the profit on the diamonds.

He started renting

-Political

First of all the dissolution of the Soviet Union. the raw material like steel, petrol, gas and of course diamonds were privatized. The contract De Beers had with the soviet government in which de Beers bought all the rough diamonds extracted was over due to the privatization and they stood as a new competitor of de Beers.

They face new policies in African countries. The African countries demand the investment and the develop of their countries due to the poverty situation.

-Economical

Other mines are discovered in Angola, Canada, Australia. Civil wars in Central Africa happened, in which diamonds played a very important role and De beers was related to them .

There are emerging countries like China and India that start playing an important role they stand as very fair competitors. Furthermore the workforce in those countries was much cheaper regarding the polish and craving.

-Social

When the worldwide was aware of their monopolistic practices, the reaction, was a huge antimonopoly pressure on behalf most of the world´s governments.

When the scandal of the blood diamonds was out and De beers was related to it supposed the immediately rejection on behalf the

-Weaknesses They have not been paying much attention to the final customers their needs and desires, they do not know the tendencies. The consumers don’t know the brand and this is the weakest point.

- Threatens.

New competitors are increasing their share market. The pressure anti-monopoly from the EU and EEUU make them weaker in the global market.

In the value chain, at the beginning, they were just responsible of the extraction of the rough diamonds, where most of the benefit is taken but through the years they have been integrated the rest of the steps in the company in other to retain the value : extraction, sorting and valuation, retailing and brands. Taking part in almost very step of the value chain but the polishing cutting and jewelry manufacturing is performed by their sightholders and accredited buyers .

The international pressure and the bad image, as we mention before, was so that affected their sales and their name.They took the advantage used this to reinvent