Darren Martin, CEO and owner of Alberta Diamond Exchange, has been in the diamond industry since the early 1980s. It’s a career that’s taken him all over North America, but it was a fateful day in Dallas that turned him from a diamond exchange manager into a diamond broker and jeweller. “I had a customer come in and ask when I was going to open my own store,” Darren recalls. “I told her it takes a lot of money. She immediately wrote a cheque, slapped it on the counter and asked me, ‘What’s your next excuse?’ I didn’t really have one.”
With that surprise initial investment, Darren opened his own store, eventually moving back to his hometown of Calgary to offer an alternative to what was available here at the time. “I came back knowing what my competitors in the States were doing that I could match and do differently,” he says. “It starts with treating our clients differently, and I think that’s the key to our success.”