So Real, It's Scary

So Real, It's Scary

By Rob Brannon

The East County Observer

Lakewood Ranch-based Gemesis Corp., the maker of manufactured diamonds, continues to worry the world's traditional diamond industry, but its acceptance is growing.

The company is doing so well it's ready to expand. Manufacturing will increase, and more than 50 jobs will be added by 2008.

"(We've gotten) great traction," says Gemesis Chief Operating Officer John Clement.

Gemesis and Boston-based Apollo Diamond Inc., have been so successful making diamonds that they've garnered national attention. Newsweek published a cover story on the two companies in its Valentine's Day edition. Reporters tested several experienced diamond retailers, people who know the minutia that separate a diamond from a clever fake. The experts mistook Gemesis and Apollo stones for the real thing.

At one time, Gemesis, which moved to Lakewood Ranch in 2002, was open with its business, willing to talk to the media and even have photographs taken within the manufacturing area. That was when the company was in its startup phase, Clement says, and needed publicity. Now, officials routinely decline interviews, and the inner workings of the corporation are fiercely guarded.

Gemesis began in the 1990s. It was a time of change in the former Soviet Union, and investors scoured the newly opened market for hidden technologies, ones that in capitalist hands could become money machines. Gen. Carter Clarke stumbled upon what is now the Gemesis technology in Russia. He brought it to the University of Florida's incubator program. There, Clarke streamlined the process and lowered its cost. He eventually moved the company closer to his Longboat Key home.

How well does the process work? Differences between a Gemesis and the real thing are undetectable, he says.

"There's no difference in what you would find in the ground," Clement says. "At the atomic level, there is no difference."

A trace element, however, is added into the process so that the stone may be identified as a Gemesis, he says. And the company's logo is placed on the stone.

Clement wouldn't discuss the diamond-making process. Newsweek said the process is essentially the same as nature, except in a ceramic container. Hydraulics simulate the countless tons of earth needed to convert carbon to diamond. A tiny real diamond is used to seed the process.

The national attention given Apollo and Gemesis has created nervousness in the diamond industry. "We're driving change in a really traditional industry," Clement says.

Chaim Even-Zohar wrote a response to the Newsweek article in Idex Magazine, an industry publication, titled "Scary Romance." Zohar says the industry is in the midst of change and has yet to develop a strategy to handle Gemesis and Apollo. He says the real diamond versus fake diamond marketing strategy will not work in the long term largely because Gemesis stones are as much as 75% cheaper.

"I guess many of us in the industry are scared," Zohar wrote. "Change is often scary. But 'scare' seems to be the only strategy on the table today."

Maybe the biggest gauge of the Gemesis/Apollo effect is how DeBeers, the world's largest diamond supplier, has reacted: DeBeers is developing its own synthetic diamond.

Gemesis currently operates through a number of retailers and has opened an office in New York. The Gemesis stone, which is yellow and often sold mixed with mined diamonds. Clement cites the Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck pink engagement ring as a great marketing moment for colored diamonds.

"It introduces a new market," he says.

Kathy Baylis, of the Economic Development Corporation of Sarasota County, says: "Companies like Gemesis are creating manufacturing jobs. They're a higher wage, more sustainable type of business."