2007: This is a fascinating story about Harry Winston + his personal operating system. You’ve got to keep your eyes and ears open in gem identification + business. There are many lessons one can learn from the real events.
(via The Australian Gemmologist, Vol.11, No.10, Serial No.97, May 1973): A N Wilson’s interview with the famous dealer and gem personality, Harry Winston.
Harry Winston is sitting at his desk, loupe in his fingers. He is musing aloud: ‘You know, there’s always a client for something big or wonderful in the way of diamonds. I told you last year about Ibn Saud but there was something more I didn’t tell you then. I was in Geneva and Ibn Saud was on holiday somewhere in the vicinity. He called at my office and I did some very good business with him—something like $3,000,000 worth of diamond and other jewelry. I delivered all the jewelry to his residence myself and was waiting there for his cheque when one of his aides came to me and said the King had just asked whether I happened to have any diamond bracelets available at my office in Geneva. If so, he’d be interested in having half a dozen. I replied that I thought I could help in this direction. The aide then said the King was flying off at eight o’clock the following morning and the bracelets would have to be delivered to him before then. I telephoned my office and told them what was afoot and asked them to set out whatever they had in the way of diamond bracelets. I motored back to my office. There I found the office staff had dutifully put out five or six diamond bracelets selected from those that were available.
‘I called the staff to my office and said: ‘Have you no imagination?’ I had the whole range of diamond bracelets available set out and then had then carefully parceled and ready for display at the King’s residence. The staff then asked me about delivery. ‘You are surely not going to get up at four or five in the morning to take them out yourself?’ they said. I said to them: ‘Look, boys, I’m going myself with these fifty five bracelets. That’s the way to conduct business.’
‘So I got up that morning and took the bracelets with me to the King’s residence. When I arrived the aide told me the King was getting dressed, but would look at the bracelets over breakfast and make his choice. A little later the aide came down to tell me that the King would buy the lot at a price. The price was arranged. The King went off in his aircraft and I went back to my office. The staff was stunned when, the following day, a message came through from Ibn Saud saying that he now found he was short of 25 bracelets and asking me to send him these. Can you blame me if I read a little homily to my staff about how, be getting up early in the morning, you can convert a sale of six bracelets into eighty? A good lesson for any young person in the diamond business!’
Harry Winston chuckled as he remembered another story. ‘You’ve got to keep your eyes open at this business,’ he said. ‘One day a bank director called me up to say that a very distinguished and important client had a collection of jewels he wanted to sell. Would I do him as well as possible? Well the distinguished bank client duly arrived and he spread his collection of diamonds on the table. I looked at them very briefly and said abruptly. ‘Take them away, please!’ I had seen immediately that most of the diamonds were paste but I was not prepared to tell him so. ‘No, I’m not interested,’ I said, “I can’t give you a valuation. I can’t give you a price. I think you ought to go elsewhere.’ He gathered up his pieces in frustration and anger and said he would, indeed, go elsewhere. He said harshly that I had not even looked at them: that here was an emerald worth at least 150,000 dollars on its own and there was a beautiful pearl necklace. I insisted that I was not interested. He went away. Some time later he came back to see me. ‘I’ve come to apologize,’ he said, ‘because it now turns out that my wife must have had maids who took advantage of our traveling all over the place from time to time and they substituted imitations for the real things. We’ve been robbed. I’m sorry that it would appear on the face of it that I tried to defraud you.’
‘Of course, that was not true at all. What was true was that his wife had a very expensive boy friend. My visitor’s special anxiety was that I should not report what had happened to his bank director. I assured him I did not discuss business affairs with anybody else. As those who were then concerned are now all dead, I am at liberty to tell this sad little story.’
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