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

a2a_linkname=document.title;a2a_linkurl=”http://www.caratlane.blogspot.com”;

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.

a2a_linkname=document.title;a2a_linkurl=”http://www.caratlane.blogspot.com”;

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.

a2a_linkname=document.title;a2a_linkurl=”http://www.caratlane.blogspot.com”;

CaratLane.com goes live

We are ready to go!!!

More than a year back, we set on a path to create CaratLane. Today that day is finally here. The beta version of www.CaratLane.com has now gone live.

While others party around me, I sit down to write the first post on behalf of CaratLane. This because it’s important to let all Indians know that they finally have a better way of buying diamonds and diamond jewellery – and if you don’t believe me, then go see for yourself. Go to www.CaratLane.com

A lot of work has gone into creating the business and we would like to thank everyone who has played a part. The website is merely a user interface and there’s a lot of other stuff that we have had to do to get this going.

The last one year that went into building the site, with thousands of changes and importantly the effort in integrating a customer friendly UI into the site has paid off! The initial feedback and comments from our users, has given us reasons to smile and to wear our pride on our sleeve. People from all over the globe are visiting and enjoying the site, and we hope they do continue to keep enjoying its benefits.

The humongous task ahead of us is to get more Jewellery for our users to choose from. Many of them found designing their own Jewellery fascinating. We request you all to let us know about any feature that might be improved in the site, we’ll have them done.

Thanks again to everyone who contributed to our launch. Keep watching this space for more news from us soon!

And as an introductory offer – here’s the deal! Buy any Jewellery for Rs.20,000 and get a 1 gram gold coin free. Offer only for the first hundred customers. So if you buy Jewellery for Rs.2,00,000/- you get 10 grams of Gold free!

So Hurry & log on to www.caratlane.com and buy!

a2a_linkname=document.title;a2a_linkurl=”http://www.caratlane.blogspot.com”;