Deepak arrives in the United States and joins a De Beers sightholder as a trainee. Over the next 10 years, he built his book of accounts selling VVS to I2 clarity diamonds in colors D to Z to many of the top 50 retailers, jewelry manufacturers and diamond wholesalers in North America.

Deepak establishes his first recurring business of top-quality melee diamonds (0.18cts and below) with top maisons in North America. He realizes that this business is perfectly suited to his strengths because of the attention to detail and precision in grading required.

Deepak starts his own business, Excellent Facets, with a sole focus on selling top-quality melee diamonds to the most quality-conscious maisons. He saw the potential of long-term relationships and customer satisfaction and felt an independent company would be the best structure to align with customer needs and his personal strengths over the long-term.

We started to manufacture our own melee diamonds, rather than solely buying polished from the market, in order to ensure compliance with local labor laws and promote a better work environment. This was accomplished by both starting our own diamond cutting and polishing factory in Thailand, which we later closed down, as well as by working with manufacturing subcontractors.

We became a Rio Tinto Select Diamantaire and received our first rough allocation from its Diavik Mine in Canada, which we sought in order to have a mine-to-market supply chain. This rough produced polished diamonds of 0.30cts to 2.00cts. We used it to cut custom shaped stones for customers. We worked as a Select Diamantaire until 2009, at which point the custom shaped project was completed. We initially polished the Rio Tinto rough in our Bangkok factory. After shutting the factory down, we moved manufacturing to a third-party audited and socially compliant factory in Qingdao Province, China.

As part of our commitment to precision, we were early adopters of Sarine technologies for the measurement of each melee diamond’s table, depth, facet angles, and girdle thickness. This optimized the brilliance of each stone. We continue to evaluate and implement new technology in order to optimize polished outcomes, as well as to ensure each and every diamond entering our inventory is 100% natural.

As a customer of Rio Tinto Diamonds, we were given the opportunity to purchase pink diamonds directly from Australia’s Argyle Mine via tender. We were impressed with the mine’s incredible provenance and the beauty of its treasures. This marked our entry into the fancy color diamond business. From here, we expanded into other rare and important stones, both in fancy color and in white. Today we have a large inventory of Argyle pink diamonds, along with other important fancy color diamonds.

We purchased two of the most important diamonds in the history of North America. One was the Diavik Foxfire, which was the largest white diamond mined in North America, weighing over 187 carats. The other was the Radiant North, which was the largest fancy color diamond mined in North America at the time. The Diavik Foxfire was exhibited at the world-renowned Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC for three months, where it was placed next to the famous Hope Diamond.

Amay Sheth, Deepak’s son, wound down the software company that he founded in order to join the family business. Amay was always excited about Deepak’s vision of a mine-to-market supply chain, and believed the time was right to implement it more thoroughly with traceability involved. He is also passionate about sustainability, and one of his first initiatives was auditing Excellent Facets existing emissions and investing in renewable energy projects to offset those emissions, making the company net zero for 2023.