BC Business
Forget the T-shirt – cherish your memories of Sin City with a Las Vegas diamond.
The Las Vegas Cut diamond contains 111 facets in a modified round brilliant cut – that's enough sparkle to get the attention of the luxury goods market. You’re at a craps table in Sin City and just about to implore those dice to bring you luck. Forget “Mama needs a new pair of shoes.” What Mama really wants is a big ol’ rock. A Las Vegas Cut diamond, to be precise.?
You’re at a craps table in Sin City and just about to implore those dice to bring you luck. Forget “Mama needs a new pair of shoes.” What Mama really wants is a big ol’ rock. A Las Vegas Cut diamond, to be precise.
A pair of Canadian entrepreneurs, Immedia Public Relations business partners Heather Kirk and Laura Serena, have created just the thing: a patented diamond cut, inspired by America’s City of Light.
Why diamonds? “I’m convinced there is a new, lively market for authentic luxury goods,” says Kirk. “It lies with the Parisian milliner, the wooden-boat builder, the small-lot winemaker, the Canadian diamond cutter. It’s no different from our consulting work,” she adds, “except we are adding our own product to the mix.”
Toronto-based Kirk and Vancouver-based Serena have spent their fair share of time in Las Vegas over the past 10 years, representing such lifestyle and luxury clients as Mission Hill Family Estate Winery and Glowbal Restaurant Group. While the pair were attending the Business of Luxury Summit in Vegas a few years ago, “we recognized that consumers were looking for more personal experiences,” says Serena. Already having worked on a Canadian diamond project in the Northwest Territories, they saw a connection between sparkling Vegas and icy diamonds – both luxuries that need plenty of light to dazzle at their best.
Three years of planning and researching followed that aha moment, with Serena attending the ultimate school of rocks, the Gemological Institute of America in New York, to study gemology and diamond grading and to earn a diamond graduate certificate.
Kirk and Serena formed a separate company they named Kimberlight Inc. and commissioned a master diamond cutter, Mike Botha in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to design the Las Vegas Cut, which contains 111 facets in a modified round brilliant cut. Since a standard-cut stone usually contains about half that many facets, the Las Vegas Cut shines as brightly as the lights of the Luxor Hotel’s pyramid in comparison.
Kimberlight’s Las Vegas Cut diamonds start at one carat, selling for about $10,000. It typically takes four weeks to fill an order, depending on the size and specs of the buyer. Since the diamond’s debut last fall, the pair have showcased the diamonds in Las Vegas for guests of MGM Resorts International and at the Emmy Awards’ gifting suite. The efforts have garnered positive coverage in lifestyle magazines such as Experience and Vegas Magazine, and expressions of interest from potential clients around the world.
The duo have no plans to quit their day jobs. “We see this as a natural extension,” Serena says, “especially given our experience in the diamond world. We saw that business in this traditional diamond world could benefit from a fresh approach.”