Leading diamond jewellery wholesaler Diamonds Factory Ireland has increased its turnover from €100,000 to €1m over the past year after its website saw surges of 54% in organic traffic and 86% in direct traffic.

The company has doubled the size of its team in Ireland and will open a new operations office to meet demand and delivery of custom-made jewellery more efficiently, reducing the typical delivery time from 4-8 weeks to 2-3 weeks.

Globally, the Diamonds Factory is on course for a turnover of £35-40m this year following a large-scale expansion of its business in national markets that has seen its business grow five-fold in the past three years.

Ben Stinson, head of e-commerce at Diamonds Factory, commented: “Diamonds Factory Ireland, in particular, had quite a rapid growth.

“We thought it [Ireland] would be an incremental contributing country, but it’s gone from a couple of hundred thousand to a million euro turnover within a year to 18 months.

“We’re actually going to have a hub in Ireland for the EU which will allow us to provide quicker service to our customers in terms of delivery and have a dedicated European service team, which is really exciting.

“Currently, we’re allowing customers to be able to afford what they want and receive it quickly, which I think is an unbeatable proposition.”

Stinson added that sales have actually fallen 12% this year to date due to the rising cost of living in Europe, but that sales are now growing month-on-month. In Ireland, the company has made more affordable lab-grown diamonds the default option in-store and online.

“On the back of defaulting to lab-grown diamonds, we saw a +23% increase in users, +54% increase in organic traffic and +86% increase in direct traffic. Lab-grown sales now represent 55% of total sales,” Stinson said of the move.

The company is also planning to open a larger store in Dublin, where it has its main office, and Stinson said the firm wants to focus on tailoring its offering to customers’ needs.

“For us, it’s all down to the consumer. We’re just there to support and equip them with the information they need to make a decision and create the jewellery they want.

Because we’ve seen such a rapid rise and rapid growth in sales – we didn’t have time to fine-tune that [tailoring content to Irish customers] by sheer nature of what’s happened. Now, we’ve got time to sit down and really decide how we can best serve the Irish customers’ needs.”

Diamond Factory sources its stones from the most reputable gemology laboratories and adheres to the standards of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) and European Gemological Laboratory (EGL).

Photo: Wayne Knowles, managing director of Diamonds Factory Ireland’s Dublin store.