The U.S. and International Diamond Week in Israel officially opened on Monday, with 400 companies operating booths, approximately 350 registered buyers from 20 countries and $1 billion’s worth of goods available for trade.

The event was designed to promote a greater volume of business deals by ensuring that buyer and sellers’ costs were kept to a minimum. This meant the Israel Diamond Exchange (IDE) footed the bill for buyers’ hotel rooms and sellers did not have to pay for booths or advertisements. To ensure that all exchange members had equal opportunity to benefit from the event, all companies were given standard-size booths.

The main motivation behind the diamond week initiative was to increase communication and intra-bourse dealing on the exchange.

“You would be surprised, sometimes the guy down the hall from you has a better deal than what people in India or the Far East are offering,” said New York Diamond Dealers Club (DDC) president, Reuven Kaufman.

IDE's president, Shmuel Schnitzer, credited Kaufman with coming up with the concept for the U.S. and International Diamond Week, as a joint IDE-DDC initiative with former IDE president Yair Sahar.

The guest of honor at this week's event was well-known Italian jeweler Roberto Coin, who delivered a lecture on the importance of branding in jewelry design to exchange members a day before the show’s official opening. Coin told exchange members not to overlook Italy as an influential center for setting trends in the jewelry industry, even if the country does not important large amounts of diamonds.