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With new brand, former DTC sightholder gets over rough patch

By Michelle Graff
April 16, 2008

New York—It's business as usual at Hasenfeld-Stein as the company faces life after getting rough supplies from the Diamond Trading Co. (DTC).

At a January press conference, the New York-based company unveiled its new FireMark brand princess-cut diamond, a stone Hasenfeld-Stein says rivals the brilliance and light performance of ideal-cut rounds.

Hertz Hasenfeld, vice president, called the new diamond brand a "breakthrough."

"We cracked the code in creating the perfect princess cut," he said at the conference.

Hasenfeld-Stein will offer FireMark stones with clarity of VS-SI1, color D-I, excellent cut and between 0.7 and 3 carats.

A sightholder since 1990, Hasenfeld-Stein was one of the companies that lost its sight in the recent DTC realignment.

The DTC continued to supply Hasenfeld-Stein with rough through March. After that, new programs and new supplies of rough will carry the 60-year-old company forward, executives say.

The diamond supplier received 75 percent of its rough supply from sources other than the DTC, said Steve Feldman, Hasenfeld-Stein's director of sales and marketing, and the company had anticipated the loss of its sight, so it had already worked out a way to source the leftover 25 percent.

"We weren't a company reliant on De Beers to begin with," Feldman said.

Hasenfeld said the company is moving forward with the attitude that there is "life after the DTC." After recording its best year ever in 2007, he said, the company is also bullish on the FireMark program, for which it will supply retailers with a marketing kit including advertising materials, a 10-page consumer brochure and sales training information.

As for those who might wonder if FireMark could be confused with similarly named brands such as De Beers' ForeverMark or the CanadaMark, Hasenfeld said it is quality—not name—that will carry the brand.

"This program will not live or die on the name," he said. "The name is not going to move the needle one inch."

Editor's note: This article first appeared in the March 2008 issue of National Jeweler.
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