SIX months in the Royal Marines followed by six years as a DJ is perhaps not
the most obvious route to starting up a business selling diamonds.
Fortunately, Neil Duttson has always been extremely good at networking.
“The fact that I know what I’m talking about accounts for a large percentage
of my sales,” he said. “I can walk into a room and as long as my personality
wins a guy over – it’s normally men I deal with because they are the ones
buying engagement rings – I will probably have that sale. I can convert
about 90% of the people I talk to into a sale.”
Duttson spent his early childhood overseas, then from the age of seven lived
in Margate, Kent. He left school at 16, having failed all his O-levels. He
joined the Marines, as his father had before him, but quickly realised it
was not for him and spent the next two-and-a-half years working his way
around the world. He ended up in the French ski resort of Val d’Isère where
he got a job as a DJ in a nightclub and stayed two seasons.
Then he came back to London and got a job with Juliana’s, an events-management
firm that provided DJs and marquees for parties. After six years, and by now
26, Duttson realised it was not something he wanted to do for the rest of
his life.
It was at this point he started thinking about diamonds. “I had always had a
passion for diamonds. When I was 18 I bought a book on gemology but I had
never actually done anything about it,” he said. Duttson also thought
working in the diamond industry might involve lots of travel opportunities.
He explored the idea of working for De Beers, but the diamond group required a
minimum of two A-levels to join its training course so Duttson realised he
needed to find another route into the industry.
He searched on the internet and found a school in Antwerp run by the HRD
(Diamond High Council) that ran a six-month course. He remortgaged his flat,
which he had bought while working as a DJ, and took out £50,000 of the
equity to pay for the course and support himself while doing it. Then in
1998 he enrolled on the course and went to live in a cheap hotel nearby.
It was a bold step, but he loved it. He said: “I realised that I could do the
maths and physics and chemistry which I couldn’t do at school. At the
weekends I travelled around Europe going into jewellery shops pretending I
was getting engaged to find out what they charged. It was a total change. In
fact, it was a complete reinvention of my life and that was what really
excited me.”
He took more courses in synthetic diamonds and man-made stones to make sure he
knew what he was talking about.
Armed with his new-found knowledge, Duttson set himself up in business as a
diamond jeweller. It was a lot harder than he had thought. “The diamond
industry is quite a dark and mysterious one and knowing where to buy
diamonds was a real hurdle,” he said.
“It actually took ages to gain the trust of dealers. I went to a jewellery
fair in Basle in Switzerland and basically went round every stand telling
the diamond dealers what I was doing and that I wanted to buy diamonds from
them. I got a lot of closed doors.”
After four months, however, he eventually met two dealers, one in Israel and
one in Antwerp, who were prepared to do business with him. They still supply
him today.
His first clients were friends who were getting engaged, and gradually word of
mouth brought more customers, helped by Duttson’s talent for networking.
Without any funds to buy stock, though, Duttson would show potential customers
a selection of glass fakes in every single cut and shape of diamond and only
once they had chosen and paid a deposit would he purchase the real diamond.
Then he would get a jeweller friend to set them into rings.
His firm, Duttson Rocks, is a member of the Kimberley Process, which means
that it buys only diamonds from legitimate sources and not those involved in
funding conflicts.
As well as rings, Duttson, who has a workshop in London’s Hatton Garden, now
also sells bracelets, necklaces and earrings, and will be bringing out his
first collection of designs in September. Turnover this year is expected to
be £4m.
Now 39, Duttson said his secret was simple: “It’s about making people
comfortable. Otherwise they can get bored quite quickly.”
