Shine bright like a diamond: Interview with Ian Douglas, Village Goldsmith

15 Apr 2025, 9 a.m.

By Linda, Business Librarian

Local master jeweller, Ian Douglas, Village Goldsmith, has been instrumental in revolutionising diamond jewellery settings in a way not seen for over a century. We talk to him about innovation.

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When Marilyn Monroe breathily sang “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” she meant those in a traditional setting. The six claw jewellery setting, designed by Charles Tiffany has been in use for over 130 years. Until 2021, when Ian Douglas, master jeweller and owner of Wellington’s Village Goldsmith, unveiled a revolutionary diamond ring setting that was the first radical innovation for the craft in more than a century.

Named (and trademarked) The Floeting® Diamond, Ian invested nearly two decades, and a lot of money, pursuing his vision of a ring setting that showed off diamonds without the need for claws holding them in place. This innovation gives the gemstones the ability to shine bright, optimising light return.

In 2022 The Village Goldsmith won the Red Dot design award for product design with their globally recognized industry breakthrough.

In 2025 the Floeting® Diamond was named as a finalist in two categories of the 2025 NZ Hi-Tech Awards.

In recognition of World Creativity and Innovation Day on 21 April WCL met with Ian to talk innovation, jewellery and perseverance.

Jewellery is a moment in time. It’s a physical object that captures the spirit of society in a global sense... the power of jewellery is not actually how much it costs, it’s what it means.
Ian Douglas, Village Goldsmith

WCL: Let’s begin with you telling us who you are and what you do.

Ian: I began my apprenticeship with a manufacturing jewellery company called Clements & Holmes. They originally had premises on Willis St, where New World Metro is now. I worked for them for five and a half years and in 1979 I was approached to run and manage a brand new jewellery store in the Dukes Arcade. Eventually I felt I needed to get back to doing my own thing and I saw an opportunity in Kelburn. In 1981 I set up The Village Goldsmith in a small studio, crafting and making pieces. Kelburn was the place to be in the early 80s. It was the first place that had Saturday trading in Wellington. For quite some time it was the only place that was open six days. We never had a wedding or engagement ring on our shelves for the first six years. We were making unbelievable things for Wellington’s high society. Then in 1987 the sharemarket crashed and BANG! It was a complete refocus for our business. We pivoted and focused on the engagement and bridal market because no matter how tough times get, people still get engaged and married. That’s how it all began.

Floeting Diamond setting pictured in two rings, earrings and a necklace — Image courtesy of Village Goldsmith

WCL: In late 2021 you caused a stir in the international jewellery community when you launched The Floeting® Diamond. It's been described as “The first significant innovation in diamond solitaire ring design since the standard six prong setting was designed in 1886”. What’s innovative about how The Floeting® Diamond is set?

Ian: Throughout my career, we’ve made some very different and unusual pieces for clients and often I would present a finished piece of jewellery to someone who would go “I love it, thank you but is there someway you can hide the clasps?” That is a question jewellers around the world get every day. So it led me on a path of discovery.

The Floeting® Diamond evolved, not because it was a ‘Eureka” moment where I thought this was a fresh way to make something but it was a result of listening to clients and thinking a little laterally about things.

Jewellery has been crafted since time immemorial, and it’s about holding gems into a setting; you have to move metal across the surface of a gem to lock it in place. I thought: “What if we think about this a little differently and if you can’t see anything from the top how can we hold it from the underside?”. To me, this was a logical progression. I came up with this idea of creating a microgroove on the underside of the diamond and then creating a setting that would connect into place and hold the gem safely. So the idea was born, and that was over twenty years ago. Then there was a lot of lag in between the idea and when we began to execute it. We were young and quite a small business and when you start experimenting with diamonds it’s expensive. The ability today to commercialise it and scale it has required a lot of very, very sophisticated technology. Twenty years ago that technology didn’t exist. The idea was ahead of its time.

You can’t use conventional diamond cutting techniques and physical jewellery manufacturing and different alloys to create what we now have. We needed to - not so much wait, because we developed and experimented and did all sorts of things - but over time the right metal alloys and the right laser equipment that were all necessary to combine to actually cut and create the diamond and connect the setting, came to exist. The creation and final achievement of The Floeting® Diamond is the result of patience and endeavour and pulling in technologies from around the world to bring together a successful product.

WCL: Why the spelling Floeting?

Ian: The term “a floating diamond”, spelt conventionally, is a term used by lots and lots of companies to describe tension set stones. It’s a generic term and we couldn’t protect it. But spelling it with an ‘E’ and with the font which is trademarked, meant we could trademark it. Not long after we launched it we got an email from a gentleman in Germany indignant that we were using his name. Floeting was his family name!

WCL: What technology did it take to create this setting and what assistance was required?

Ian: We’ve been very, very fortunate on our journey to come across some unbelievable brains both here in New Zealand and internationally.

We worked with the world’s leading laser researchers for two years to design a machine to suit our needs. Lasers are utilised in the diamond industry as a cutting tool. Diamonds are mined out of the ground all across the world. Throughout Africa, Australia, Canada and Europe, and in Russia. The rough production that is mined out of the ground is largely processed in India. It is processed in traditional cutting centres such as Antwerp in Belgium, in Israel, in China, Thailand, and Vietnam. They’re all cutting diamonds but the vast bulk is processed in Surat in India.

14 out of 15 diamonds that are cut and polished are manufactured in Surat. It’s a powerhouse of production and there are these sophisticated, multimillion dollar machines where the diamond crystal can be laser scanned and a perfect model of that diamond can be created. That’s given to a team of designers within the system and they work out how they can best cut that diamond into smaller subsets to get the maximum weight retrieval. If you can cut it into small sections which are then ground and polished by the people on the cutting floor you can maximise the return for the weight of the investment that’s being made. Those lasers are effectively like a highly sophisticated saw that slices through the diamond and dissects it into smaller sections. We don’t want to be slicing our Floeting® diamonds completely apart so the laser that had to be created had to be built from scratch with a whole different set of parameters. That machine now exists – not here in New Zealand at this stage – we still have that positioned overseas. The goal is to eventually bring the machinery and technology we have under our control.

We also worked with Callaghan Innovation throughout the R&D process. We need to really celebrate the fact there are so many clever individuals in that organisation, we need to celebrate the cleverness and skillsets that exist there in science and engineering.

We worked with them for two years and they were instrumental in helping refine the engineering focus of creating the settings, how they had to function, then helping us test them. When you are creating something like this you have to actually put it through some unbelievably rigorous testing processes to measure its strength, its durability and those sort of things and they were just superb. We made so many great connections, like Dr Grant Lumsden, who is still working with us on a contractual advisory basis.

We had a tumble testing system, which is a design Nokia invented to drop test cellphones. This system has a drop of 1.2 metres and it rotates three times per minute. It means an object can start at the top, it drops down as it rotates, it drops down again, it takes a turn and drops down again. It means its continually dropping.

We put our prototypes through this machine as well as the tests Callaghan had done and the results proved how strong and sustainable the setting was. We then built two brand new solitaire rings – our classic Floeting® Diamond solitaire in the special setting, and a classic, very strong, six claw diamond ring and we put them through the same drop test process. The traditional ring was destroyed after three hundred drops, the claws were smashed and the diamond was rolling around. But you have to do that. The Floeting® Diamond ring, after 1700 drops, was looking like the day it went in.

So there’s a lot of work we had to do to put this out there commercially. That it was going to be one, a product people wanted and two, something that was a safe, sustainable object as a piece of jewellery.

WCL: At what point in this lengthy process did you think I have to keep pursuing this idea, there’s no going back?

Ian: That was a gradual realisation in that, I think when you believe in something, you are prepared to go to quite extreme lengths to make it happen. We’re proud to say we’ve done this without having to go to external investment. We’ve funded it ourselves out of the Village Goldsmith. It’s put a lot of pressure on the company. Now when a lot of my contemporaries are retiring I’m still working crazy hours but you just keep focused. If you’d said to me twenty years ago, to get it to where we are today that it would take that long, that it would take that much investment I probably would have gone “No, you’re mad. Just stop now”.

The investment cost has been significant. But I never got into this industry to make money. I got into it because I like making things, I like designing things and dealing with people. The success of Floeting® has been a subset of that passion

Did it make financial sense throughout that period? Definitely not. That’s not what’s ever driven the process. It’s the fact we believed in it. We believed it could be a very successful technology and we’ve been prepared to pursue it.

WCL: Did you ever consider giving up?

Ian: Once I developed the concept plans I thought I’m going to give this a go. So I had some meetings with a company I had been recommended to. A boutique specialist who cut fine diamonds and was regarded as having some of the world’s most expert diamond cutters. We made an agreement for them to cut the diamond as I had planned. They told me they needed an investment of this much to do it, which was a pot of money back then, about 17 years ago. I gave the go ahead, and paid the deposit and two months later, I received a parcel. Imagine my anxiety and anticipation. I opened up this box of diamonds and they had utterly butchered every single one. It looked as though they had taken a hacksaw to create the groove. A diamond is all about light return. To say they had failed was an understatement. But I was committed to paying for these things. So I ended up with a box of utterly butchered diamonds. That was incredibly disheartening and dispiriting. I literally put them in the box, in the corner of the vault for a number of years. Each day I would walk into the vault and it would remind me of my crazy investment and what a stupid idea it was.

I think every entrepreneur, every innovator and every creator who has ever achieved anything has had those nights [of doubt]. I think it’s the true mark of the successful entrepreneur, whether you’re talking about tech or jewellery or agriculture. Innovation in life and industry comes about from dogged determination and perseverance and sheer bloody single mindedness.

WCL: As you came closer to perfecting the setting and more people were involved in the process then also more people would have known you were on to something. How did you protect your Intellectual Property throughout the process?

Ian: It’s a very difficult field to navigate. We have got two international patents that cover both the diamond and the connection process. Once you’ve gained a patent that’s information that’s out in the public arena. We know that there are companies making modifications to get around patents. But the beautiful thing about what we created is that it is so utterly specific to maximise and guarantee light return and there’s a lot of detail that’s not in the public arena. Also the metallurgy, the techniques about how the connection occurs and the parameters that need to be achieved to make a successful, strong and capable setting. That’s what’s taken ten years to design and develop.

It’s very much a secret spices in KFC thing – there’s so much that isn’t in the public arena.

WCL: When you reached the point of going public with what you had achieved, how did you orchestrate the “The Big Reveal”, onto the world stage?

Ian: We originally did the first launch in 2021. We were aware our patent was being scrutinised and so we realised we needed to get out into the world soon and have our brand in the market as a consumable product. We put together a plan and took a stand at the world’s biggest trade show in Las Vegas. We did work with a NZ owned PR company in New York so we did a combination of a trade stand at the jewellery show with a global launch about the technology and how it was going to affect the jewellery trade. We were very trade centric focused. That put that line in the sand for The Floeting® Diamond - that we were the developer and originators of this product.

Companies around the world were starting to look for innovation and how that could be applied into their own businesses. That’s when we were fortunate enough to make this collaboration with Tiffany. That arose really around the fact that this technology is accessible to the trade and the industry. To our delight Tiffany where the ones who chose to bring it in to their stable.

As a brand, and with influence, and innovation it’s very exciting to be working alongside them and be in this partnership. And to have a name like Pharrell Williams promoting it as part of his series for Tiffany ... if you’d told us that at the very start of this journey twenty years ago I definitely would have said yes, no matter what it cost.

WCL: You’ve said the industry is at heart conservative - how was this innovative setting from a guy in New Zealand received by the international jewellery design community?

Ian: It comes back to the Kiwi attitude. I’ve been fortunate to meet some of the most amazing and wealthy individuals in the world through my career. The one thing that resonates is that no matter how much influence or money you may have, when you meet some of these wealthy and powerful people on a one to one basis they’re just another person.

As far as the Floeting® project was concerned I had a wonderful meeting in Las Vegas with an incredibly influential individual in the diamond mining scene.

I met with this wonderful gentleman who had an incredible sense of humour and was very frank. When he saw the product he was full of admiration and a lot of swearing. I’m cleaning up the conversation but his comment was “Bloody brilliant”

It was kind of cool. He said “I can’t believe how unbelievably simple this idea is, but I understand how complicated it must be. I cannot believe someone hasn’t done this before”. And I went “Thanks mate”.

WCL: As well as Callaghan Innovation you also received support from NZ Trade and Enterprise to launch in the US. How important is it that institutions like these are accessible to NZ innovators and developers?

Ian: You can’t understate how important it is. It’s just such a wonderful organisation. Their international growth funding has enabled us to accelerate our growth. We would have got there without that, and you have to contribute as a company, but having that availability there, gave us the opportunity to access the US market.

The US consumes half of the world’s diamond jewellery spend every year. So that’s always been the target market. NZTE advisors have amazing experience in global markets. It’s not just funding, its also about gaining knowledge and connections and all of those factors. The suite of services that NZTE provides, I think, is just magnificent. It’s run by supersmart people who are dedicated to really trying to help New Zealand companies achieve. I can’t speak highly enough of them.

WCL: What do you think it is about New Zealand that makes us innovative?
Ian: I think isolation is most definitely a part of it and I also think we have never had a great deference to class structure or anything like that.

New Zealanders don’t get overawed by money. We have a different value set to a lot of different cultures around the world. Our isolation means we also have a very ‘can-do’ attitude. It’s ingrained into us. It’s like “I don’t know how that works, but I’ll give it a go”.

WCL: Peter Drucker argued along the lines that innovation is real work that can and should be managed like any other corporate function; it’s a mix of inspiration and hard work. Do you allow your staff time to be creative and possibly make mistakes. How do you foster innovation?

Ian: Our CAD team have a time allocation per week just to be doing that. The wonderful thing we have with our retail team is that every single day they are interacting with clients. If our retail team are detailing with a client who has a lot of old family jewellery they want redesigned into a new concept we may see some concept ideas come off the floor and put across to the CAD team.

Sometimes we have to review it and tell them “It looks great, but it’s not going to hold together” but it’s out of that that they come up with ideas that I, as a trained craftsman, may not have necessarily thought of. It’s the ability to continually foster that kind of free thinking that means you will always get great new ideas coming out.

(NB: We asked - It’s not possible to repurpose heirloom diamond jewellery into the new setting style).

WCL: Diamonds and the mining/trading thereof are controversial. How do you ensure your diamonds are ethical and sustainable?

Ian: It’s becoming increasingly easier. We have long established links with the best mining, cutting and processing companies in the world. Every single diamond we sell today, we can tell you if it came out of Angola, or Botswana, or Canada. We can trace it right back to what mine it came from, when, and how it went through the polishing process. 99 percent of world diamond production goes through that same process. You can imprint a diamond from the second it comes out of the ground right through the whole process in the system, right up to someone purchasing it and wearing it out of the store. It’s traceable throughout. Transparency and sustainability is huge. We have to be able to verify every part of our supply and production chains. Without our commitment to ethical sourcing we wouldn’t have got the contract with Tiffany we have.

WCL: The global diamond market in 2024 was worth nearly US$100 billion dollars and is projected to grow to nearly US$140 billion in the next 7-8 years. You are aiming to capture 2% of that market share. That’s a mind boggling figure for a Wellington based small business. What will it allow you to do in terms of your business and innovation?
Ian: As you look around these premises there are lots of unbelievably clever young minds that we’ve got here, who understand the vision.

“What we want to be able to do is create an opportunity, a design and production hub here in Wellington, where we can keep growing the opportunities, keep scaling it up, continuously thinking of Innovation”.

Its going to be something that we hope will be able to provide growing employment and opportunity in logistics management. For it to grow and achieve that two percent, and we do think that is achievable, we need to grow the company. There’s a lot of things that have to happen to make this thing successful. We will be able to consolidate a lot of the supply chain here in Wellington so that’s going to grow.

The Village Goldsmith will always be the Village Goldsmith and will continue dealing with individual clients on a day to day basis. Floeting® is going to become a company that is a production company. It will have highly sophisticated machinery, technology, scientists, engineers, so it’s quite a different business but it’s built off the diamond and the platform we have created. That’s going to be continuously developed.

We’ll need premises. They’ve got to be secure. We’re working with government to look at free trade zones so we can import huge amounts of diamonds, add value to them, export them. We have to do that in a carefully managed and developed way so that we can be working with other outlets around the world regarding distribution and connection processes. That means we can work effectively around tariff regulations. Fully completed jewellery as finished items contain high value and are heavily dutied and tariffed around the world. We need to be able to segment our production and then set up assembly houses in key markets around the world.

So its all part of the growth of what we are doing. It’s always going to be driven out of Wellington because we can bring together all this amazing expertise in logistics management, engineers and scientists; all of the people that we need along with very expensive high tech machinery. All that needs to be scaled up and built up but we can do that out of the success of what we have created and the fact that we have this ongoing opportunity. There’s new markets opening up around the world for us now built on publicity that we have generated so it’s highly achieveable. It’s just a question of good management. I’ll be stepping back more into a chairman role and letting these fantastic bright young minds get on with it. It will be something that we hope will carry on long beyond my involvement.

We’d just like to think of it as something that can really develop and if we create a space and an opportunity for these wonderful young minds to have a role and a future, then we might see ourselves as being another Weta Workshop or Rocket Lab. It’s all based here, out of New Zealand. The core, the heart of what those companies are its people with great creativity, innovation and dedication.