Diamonds are a girl’s best friend! Ask Clare Appleyard and she would agree. Her love for and extensive technical knowledge of the diamond industry led her to launch her own business, Katannuta Diamonds.
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The guest speaker at Tuesday Rostrum at Mbango Valley this week, Clare enlightened her guests on her involvement in the diamond exploration industry for over six years, working for De Beers and Anglo American.
“As a geologist working at De Beers, I was privileged enough to gain tremendous diamond knowledge while working in the company’s diamond research division. We worked solely with rough diamonds, but I’d always had an interest in the cut and polished side of the industry. One year, while helping my father source a diamond for my mother, I met a diamond trader who offered to be my mentor, teaching and training me the gem side of the trade,” explained Clare.
Clare added that she loved the thought of working for herself and craved the freedom she had, not having to work in a fixed office space, sitting in traffic jams and working set hours. “A nervous breakdown was the catalyst I needed to escape from my corporate cubicle – I realised that I had to make significant changes to get myself and my life back on track. My partner, Davina Toale, had previously resisted joining a company when she’d been retrenched a few years earlier, so we brainstormed a way to merge our skills and knowledge and formed Katannuta Diamonds.”
She told her guests that it had been quite a journey! “Before starting Katannuta Diamonds I had absolutely no entrepreneurial background whatsoever. My family was definitely of the ‘go to university, get a degree and work for a corporate’ kind of mindset. Ten years after quitting the corporate world, my parents still think leaving De Beers was a mistake! I quit my corporate job with absolutely no back-up plan other than Katannuta Diamonds and, while it’s worked out in the long run, there have been some hairy moments. There has been so much to learn along the way. My biggest mistake at the beginning was trying to be everything to everybody.”
Clare mentioned that she had to learn and master skills that would never have been required in her corporate job, from websites, marketing and Photoshop to communication and leadership skills. “It’s certainly made my life richer, even if it’s given me more grey hairs than before,” she smiled.
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