{"id":121,"date":"2008-08-03T20:10:44","date_gmt":"2008-08-03T11:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/the-diamond-geezer-steps-into-the-dragons-den\/"},"modified":"2018-08-30T14:11:17","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T06:11:17","slug":"the-diamond-geezer-steps-into-the-dragons-den","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/the-diamond-geezer-steps-into-the-dragons-den\/","title":{"rendered":"The Diamond Geezer Steps Into The Dragons\u2019 Den"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b006vq92\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dragons&#8217; Den<\/a>, the BBC show which lets budding entrepreneurs pitch their business and\/or ideas to investors, featured British jeweller Clive Billings from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.diamondgeezer.com\">diamondgeezer.com<\/a>.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nThe recording of the show can be viewed below:<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RezxmtGS-oY\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/mtI7psbwnn0\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center><br \/>\nIn a nutshell, Clive wanted to sell a 15% stake in his company for 255,000 pounds, in order to expand the business to target the lower end of the jewellery market &#8211; between 25 and 500 pounds, or as he called it, the &#8220;click and buy&#8221; market. This represents an entirely different market to what diamondgeezer.com are currently targeting, and that is the $5000+ diamond engagement ring market.<\/p>\n<p>After two rejections from the first two &#8220;dragons&#8221;, the last three dragons offered the money Clive wanted, but for a 40% stake in the company. The dragons also seemed to want a large personal guarantee from Clive, and by the time they made the offer, it seemed like a bit of a dud deal for Clive. However, this was the first time that three dragons had made an offer in the show&#8217;s six season history.<\/p>\n<p>In the end, Clive, I thought, did the right thing and rejected their offer.<\/p>\n<p>I believe the show raised the following issues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The online market for jewellery is real, forever growing, and as the interest from the dragons has shown, is a worthwile investment.<\/li>\n<li>Overheads, despite over $3 million of sales, can kill a jewellery business. It seems that even though diamondgeezer.com made a 39% gross margin, they only made 3000 pounds last year.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t prostitute your business to venture capitalists, especially when you want to expand into the low end of the jewellery market.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Meanwhile, poor Clive and diamondgeezer.com have been criticised on SEO forums, blogs and even <a href=\"https:\/\/www.diamonds.net\/news\/NewsItem.aspx?ArticleID=22614\">Rapaport<\/a> for bad SEO practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Dragons&#8217; Den, the BBC show which lets budding entrepreneurs pitch their business and\/or ideas to investors, featured British jeweller Clive Billings from diamondgeezer.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diamond-industry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":287,"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions\/287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jogiadiamonds.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}