March 28, 2024

Florida Diamonds

Carat Factory

A Sarasota company can manufacture diamonds as real as those that come out of the ground. Selling them, however, is a multifaceted problem.

Amy Keller | 8/1/2007


[Photo: Jeffrey Camp]
In Gemesis Corp.’s cavernous warehouse on the outskirts of Sarasota, hundreds of washing machine-sized pressure chambers emit a series of squeaks and puffs. The gentle chorus belies the violent process playing out inside the machines: A tiny shard of a natural diamond has been placed into each steel sphere along with a metal solvent and a carbon source — usually graphite. The machines are squeezing, generating 850,000 pounds of pressure per square inch, with the temperature inside the spheres soaring to 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit.

Crystals have begun growing at a rate of about half a carat a day. Within four days, they will be diamonds. Real diamonds. The Gemesis stones aren’t imitations or “simulants” like moissanite and cubic zirconia. They may emerge from machines, but they’re visually and chemically identical to those produced naturally.

“Everything that happens below ground in nature happens here — the only difference between our diamonds and mined diamonds is their origin,” says Britta Schlager, Gemesis’ marketing manager.

Just how do you make a real diamond in days? To see how Gemesis does it, click here for photo tour.
Gemesis, which has been in business since 1996, can produce tens of thousands of carats’ worth of diamonds in a year, and it can sell its stones for a fifth of what mined stones cost. All that additional low-cost supply creates interesting dynamics in an industry where the ability to charge big prices for tiny stones depends on their scarcity.

How, for example, does Gemesis market a manufactured product in a way that establishes it as both identical to and different from its created-by-nature counterpart? More to the point, how does Gemesis prosper without bringing the very industry it’s a part of to its knees?

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