CaratLane gets its first international customer

Around the same time when the Indian cricket team was beating the Aussies, India’s first diamond portal found an admirer from Australia.

This is what happened

An Australian national (I am not supposed to name him) from Victoria was looking for diamond options on the internet. Using Google ,he happened to chance upon CaratLane. The website didnt mention anything about international shipments but this guy still sent a mail asking us if we could ship diamonds to Australia.

CaratLane provides free shipping to any destination in India. But an international shipment costs a lot in terms of duty and shipment costs. We gave him the details of this additional cost.

The customer didn’t get back to us for a couple of days and we thought he had dropped out in the face of the additional costs.

But he was back shortly. And he never once spoke of the additional costs being an issue. In fact, we later discovered that our prices were almost half of what similar diamonds would have cost in Australia.

But that was not the end of it. Our prospective customer was also a first time diamond buyer and kept coming back with more and more questions. He was a classic case of someone who would feel uncomfortable asking the same questions in a store. But was very comfortable asking them on over the phone or on Live chat. There was no way he was buying before he was totally convinced that he had made the right choice – in terms of the specification of the diamond he was interested in.

Finally, our friend was convinced and went ahead and purchased the diamond. This was a first for CaratLane. The product was shipped out in 4 days and the customer is already in possession of the diamond. he is extremely happy with his purchase and we expect him to be back fro more

This was quite a first for CaratLane – A foreign national,an international credit card transaction and an international delivery

We are now ready to ship to anywhere in the world. It will cost you extra in terms of duty and shipment costs but as the Australian example shows, you will still be getting a great diamond deal

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CaratLane in the News – NDTV India – Nov 2008

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CaratLane in the News – The Hindu – October 2008

Want to buy diamonds, go online

Want to buy a diamond for your loved ones. Well, you don’t need to visit a jewellery shop. Just by a click of the mouse, you can buy certified quality diamond at fair price.Caratlane.com has just launched the first -of-its-kind portal to sell online certified and high quality diamonds. read rest of the story

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CaratLane in the News – UTV – October 2008

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=6-e203Xeg9s

Why CaratLane offers great pricing – Reason no 1 – because our inventory cost is almost negligible

Most businesses say – our prices are lower than others. Few almost none bother to tell you why. Its important to do so because in most cases, customers assume that lower prices also mean lower quality. So making a ‘lower prices’ claim without explaining how is deathtrap for any quality conscious business.

We at CaratLane want to avoid the deathtrap. We make a confident claim that our prices are lower – confident because we have done enough market research to prove it. And now we will tell you how we manage to keep our prices lower than other without compromising on quality.

We do so by saving on our inventory costs. For any retail business, inventory costs – meaning the cost of the products stored in your warehouses is huge. Most online businesses also have to keep a certain inventory level to ensure that they don’t run out of stock. Most of them are re-sellers and have to be dependent on their suppliers – necessitating the need for a safety stock. In other cases the time required to make the product is high and again businesses have to keep a safety stock to ensure delivery time lines are met.

So how does CaratLane manage to be different?

CaratLane manages to be different by avoiding both the scenarios which force businesses to keep inventory.

CaratLane has their own manufacturing set up and does not face the danger of a stock out situation – and hence does not need any safety stock. Our own manufacturing also allows us to maintain quality standards.

Secondly our product range is very contemporary, simple and minimalistic. While this was done primarily to make online buying easy, this also allows us to manufacture our products faster – fast enough to meet the seven business days shipping requirement.Our product goes into manufacturing only after an order is placed – the process is very similar to the Dell model in that sense. That we have an automated manufacturing process just adds to our advantage.

So there you go. Now you know one reason why CaratLane can afford to keep their prices lower without compromising product quality – because our inventory cost is almost negligible.

Visit www.CaratLane.com to benfit from our ‘lower pricing’

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CaratLane now makes Google a better place for diamond shoppers

Today CaratLane launched their Google Adwords campaign. As an e-commerce company this is critical to our online marketing efforts.

The online diamond jewellery market in India is still looking for their first established player. In such a scenario, most customers looking to purchase online will have to resort to a google search. Such customers are extremely important as they are the first batch of Indian e-commerce converts – the innovators and early adaptors for the online diamond jewellery category if I may borrow from the ‘Tipping Point’. And then they will do what all such people do – spread the good word about a good product.

This is step one of changing the face of diamond jewellery retail in India.

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Answers to the CaratLane Quiz – part 1

Here are the answers to the first quiz. Nobody got all right.So no prizes for anybody.

1) What is the shape of the Kohinoor diamond?
A) Oval

2) Fancy yellowish brown diamonds are sometimes called
A) Bananas

3) ‘Black diamond’ is a term used in which sport?
A) Skiing

4) The GE research laboratory discovered the process of making diamonds in
A) 1955

5) The ‘Pink Panther’ is a
A) Name of a fabulously valuable diamond being protected by Inspector Clouseau

6) These creepy crawlies and their mounds have helped prospectors find traces of diamonds
A) Termites

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Processing the first order – moment of truth for the CaratLane operations team

We got our first order on the very next day we launched. So first congratulations on the first order. Now the first test of our back-end operations – something which is extremely critical to the success of an e-commerce business.

We were now supposed to

First make the product – we don’t keep any inventory after all and that keeps us competitive. The product has to meet the high standards of manufacturing and also pass through the tests of the independent certifying authority. This was successfully done within the prescribed time limit.

Then to certify the product. The product went to Solitaire Gemological Laboratories for certification and met their strict testing and certification procedures. This process is extremely important for us in our effort to create credibility for the online jeweller in India. We have the confidence to get our products certified by renowned third-parties. This will give our customers complete confidence in our products.

Now for the final step – delivering it to the customer. We have defined a new standard Operating and Delivery Process with our logistics partners to ensure a safe and secure delivery. Getting this done was one of the hardest things. Logistics is probably the biggest barrier to e-commerce in this country. Inter-state taxes are an operational nightmare and volumes are too small – leading to high costs of shipping. But change is on the way. We would like to thank our partners for their efforts and I am fairly certain the investments that they have made today will put them in a great position when the volumes pick up.

As for our first product dispatch, it went off smoothly. We managed to ship it out on the fifth day itself – meeting our commitment to ship in seven business days.

The Operations team have successfully delivered the first product. The numbers will rise and there will be greater complexities to handle. But there is nothing like the first time and it feels great to have come through with flying colours. CaratLane’s operations team is now ready – let the orders roll.

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CaratLane’s two bits of Diamond gyan – part 1

1) What is the shape of the Kohinoor diamond?
• Round
• Princess
• Oval

2) Fancy yellowish brown diamonds are sometimes called
• Balloons
• Bananas
• Beverly

3) ‘Black diamond’ is a term used in which sport?
• Snowboarding
• Skiing
• Surfing

4) The GE research laboratory discovered the process of making diamonds in
• 1975
• 1985
• 1955

5) The ‘Pink Panther’ is a
• Gorgeous jungle cat from the Amazon
• Lovable feline comic character
• Name of a fabulously valuable diamond being protected by Inspector Clouseau

6) These creepy crawlies and their mounds have helped prospectors find traces of diamonds
• Termites
• Snakes
• Tarantulas

Happy quizzing all you diamond lovers. We will publish the answers in the next post

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First Caller Pleasantly Surprised

We had a pleasantly surprised customer today. This was a prospective customer who had been invited to view the Beta site. He was known to one of our directors and called our toll free to check us out.

He was looking to buy a pair of solitaire earrings – two .75 ct diamonds – DEF Colour and IF/VVS1 Clarity. He had got a quote from one Retailer in Chennai and the cost of the pair of diamonds was a little over 5 lakhs. He asked us for a price. Infact he also added whether he could make a counter offer if he felt the price could be lower

We walked him through searching for diamonds of his specification in our website and surprise..surprise – the price for similar diamonds (E-VVS1-0.75 ct, Excellent Cut, Polish and Symmetry) in our website was just Rs.4.2 lakhs. He now has asked us to identify a few larger diamonds and get back to him – that’s what Caratlane does – offers customer “more diamonds for their money”. He is going to parallely check with his wife and daughter on designs and get back to us. He’s now not even talking about the Counter Offer. Thank you sir. You made our first day. We’re looking forward to your call again

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