Editorial body
Our favourite case study begins modestly.
Seventeen stones.
Not seventeen tonnes.
Not seventeen kilograms.
Not an entire mine.
Seventeen.
A small geological delegation.
Frankly, not even the royal family.
More like distant cousins sent abroad to see what everyone was doing.
They entered an established market.
And bounced.
Professional to professional.
Conversation to conversation.
Location to location.
Boing.
Boing.
Boing.
The little green delegation proved surprisingly athletic.
What made the experiment valuable was not what happened to the stones.
It was what the stones revealed.
Service culture.
Timelines.
Assumptions.
Documentation practices.
Pricing philosophy.
Custody expectations.
Market openness.
The holder received an entire market diagnostic from seventeen relatively ordinary stones.
This is exceptional value.
Management consultants charge far more.
The lesson is now institutional:
use pilot material to assess markets.
Do not send the vault.
Send representatives.
Observe carefully.
Markets reveal themselves beautifully when they believe they are assessing you.
Sometimes you are assessing them.