50s: Starting with a storage ring

Chapter 800 Nothing Gained

Among Sun Zhiwei's many businesses, Guili Jewelry was not originally an important company; it was mainly used to provide an outlet for the gold mines he owned.

Although Theodore Ellis, the original store manager, was promoted to president of the jewelry store, he was too cautious in his actions due to his personality, and only opened three branches over the years.

But with the addition of Belinda McKinney, Magnificent Jewels began to show unprecedented vitality.

A few years ago, after leveraging her encounter with the mayor to expand the influence of the Rose Jewelry flagship store in New York, Belinda was successfully promoted to headquarters and became the new president's assistant.

Since last year, under Belinda's leadership, Rose Jewelry has opened several more branches in New York State, and she is currently preparing to expand into other states in America.

It's important to know that in Europe and America, the jewelry industry is not just about gold and diamonds; other gemstones of various colors are also an important part of the jewelry industry.

The wealthy, in particular, prefer colored gemstones to so-called diamonds.

Photo: Princess Eugenie's engagement ring is a padparadscha sapphire.

If you look at photos from various public occasions, you'll find that most of the jewelry worn by celebrities around the world consists of colored gemstones.

Photo: Princess Diana's engagement ring was an 18-carat Ceylon sapphire.

Photo: The emerald ring John F. Kennedy gave to his fiancée Jacqueline.

If it's a diamond, it must be an extremely large, gem-quality diamond.

Photo: Actress Elizabeth Taylor's 33.19-carat diamond ring.

After all, they were the ones who made up the diamond lie; they wouldn't fool themselves into it.

According to data Sun Zhiwei knows, the total global diamond production last year was around 1 million carats. If sold at jewelry prices, this amount would exceed America's annual GDP.

But the reality is that most of the mined diamonds are ground into powder and used as consumables for industrial cutting and grinding, and are priced by weight.

The world's total diamond reserves are measured in tens of thousands of tons, which is only slightly less than the reserves of gold, but its selling price is a thousand times that of gold.

For the super-rich, unless it's a diamond of the highest caliber, ordinary diamonds are no different in value from glass.

Therefore, for jewelry businesses, focusing solely on diamond jewelry carries significant risks. For exquisite jewelry to achieve long-term development, it must possess its own colored gemstone mines.

However, none of Sun Zhiwei's businesses have a colored gemstone mine, which clearly restricts the development of Guili Jewelry.

Sun Zhiwei also heard Belinda mention this issue at the end of last year during the annual summary of Magnificent Jewelry.

However, he has been too busy this year to deal with this issue.

Now that he happened to be passing through Sri Lanka, he thought of taking this opportunity to acquire some gemstones to supply the sales needs of his shop.

When he arrived in the Ratnapura region, he discovered that owning a gem mine was not so easy.

Today, all the gem mines in the Ratnapura region are in the hands of private families; none belong to international jewelers or mining groups.

This is quite remarkable, mainly because the Sri Lankan government strictly prohibits mechanical mining of gemstones in order to protect the environment; all gemstone mines must be manually excavated.

This not only limits gemstone production but also prevents foreign mining groups from entering the market. After all, these mining groups are in it to make money; they buy gemstone mines hoping to recoup their investment as quickly as possible. But here, you only allow manual labor to mine—how long would that take?

So this is what the local gem mines looked like to Sun Zhiwei: many people would dig a well in their backyard and then a few of them would slowly dig it out.

The locals don't rely entirely on this to make money. They farm normally, and during the off-season, they dig a few shovelfuls. They can dig up a few gems a year, sell them at the market, and that's enough for their family's needs for the year.

Occasionally there are a few larger mines, but they only employ more people. The mining method remains the same: a shovel and a sieve. The efficiency is incomparable.

Even if a large mine has the capital to build up manpower, it can't produce much output in a year.

Seeing the state of gemstone mining here, Sun Zhiwei was also worried about how to enter this market.

As far as he knew, most international jewelers operated a shop in the local jewelry market and acquired gemstones locally on a piecemeal basis.

Actually, if he really wanted to get into the jewelry mining industry here, there were ways.

The Sri Lankan government is already worried about the LTTE, so if he promises to take down Prabhakaran, that LTTE leader, they'll definitely be willing to trade a few gem mines for his head.

But is he really going to send people to dig here? It doesn't seem worthwhile no matter how much he thinks about it.

Those international jewelers aren't fools; they'll do anything for profit.

Even those capitalists are helpless here. Sun Zhiwei isn't a god; how could he possibly have a solution than those thousand-year-old jewelers?

Alright, I guess I'll just have to be obedient and do what everyone else does. I might as well set up a shop here to collect gems.

Having finally come to his senses, Sun Zhiwei stopped worrying. Besides, Sri Lanka only has a few types of gemstones, and there are many other places in the world that produce gemstones, so there's no need to fixate on just one place.

Of course, since he had come all this way, he wouldn't leave empty-handed. Naturally, he planned to use his spatial abilities to dig up some gems to take back with him.

But when he unfolded the space and looked down, he was really dumbfounded.

It's not that there are few gems, but that there are too many. The ground here is truly full of gems, with all kinds of rubies and sapphires scattered everywhere.

However, this time he did not find any particularly valuable gems within the area covered by the space.

The main reason is that the gemstones are distributed over such a wide area that the entire country of Sri Lanka can be considered a large mining region.

The Ratnapura region simply has a higher gem content; finding truly exceptional gems in such a vast mining area is like finding a needle in a haystack.

He searched the mining area for a long time but didn't find any huge rubies or sapphires, so he eventually gave up on the idea of ​​digging for them himself.

Before coming here, he never expected that this would be the result. With his spatial cheat, he actually gained nothing here. It was simply amazing.

After returning to his hotel in Colombo in a huff, he sent the situation to the jewelry store headquarters in New York and instructed them to send someone over to open the store.

He came full of enthusiasm but left disappointed, which made him very unwilling. So he thought of doing something to make up for it, so that the trip wouldn't be a complete waste.

(End of this chapter)