Lamar Berko [LB], 32, is the founder and owner of LB Jewellers. Hailing from southwest London his 13 year career has already seen him reaching heights such as 47 million views per month on Snapchat, working with top footballers and celebrities, and most recently creating the world’s biggest diamond cut rope chain.
The rope chain sits at 30 inches and weighs just under 3.2kg. It’s a piece which has never been done at this size of weight before as usually these sorts of pieces are hollowed. He spoke to Something About Rocks to discuss the design process, the difficulties he faced throughout the creation of the piece, and how he got to this point in his career.
Q: When it comes to the diamond cut rope chain that you unveiled, where did that first inspiration come from to tap into the rope chain specifically and create what you did?
LB: As simple as this really, one of my VIP clients called me and he said he wanted a chain that was three kilos. He said he wanted a diamond cut rope chain. I said, Are you sure three kilos? Because I know I’ve never seen anything like this.
It took 2 months to create and design and what makes it so unique is the diamond-cut shape. Different to a traditional twisted spiral, this was designed with flat surfaces which reflect light and emphasise the shine of the chain.
I started to make the piece and I came into a lot of issues at first because I couldn’t even find a workshop that wanted to take on the job because of the complications of something being so heavy, and the machinery that is used to make this, it’s very difficult. You’d have to do it handmade, but to get it right, it wasn’t easy at all.
Q: You have spoken about how no workshop wanted to take the job on at first but you persisted, how important do you think it is to not give up on these sorts of ideas even when faced with pushback?
LB: Failure is not falling down, it’s refusing to get up. No is not a part of my vocabulary, in business you have to be very persistent so just because someone tells you that something can’t be done that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
Sometimes people are also scared, a lot of people don’t want to take on the challenge of such a big chain, because when they’re shaving it down, there’s gold filings going everywhere, money’s getting lost as it’s going along. A lot of people don’t want to take the risk for such a big piece like that, but me, I’m a risk taker. No risk, no reward.
Q: You’ve mentioned how you want people to challenge this and give it a go themselves, maybe even create something bigger. Where does that come from?
LB: You see in the UK right, in places like America, they’re only just starting to respect our [UK] culture and us, even in music, just in everything. Where other people in the world think they run certain markets, I feel like I’m representing for my country so why not challenge.
How can you say you’re the best football team if you haven’t defeated other teams? You’ve got to challenge them, right? So I’m all for challenging and taking on new, you know, new ventures and setting new goals.
Q: You’ve mentioned throughout this process how rope chains are so synonymous with hip hop, why is it important to keep that culture going?
LB: I mean, it’s history. It’s very important to keep, you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re from. So a lot of things we do, we do but we don’t actually know, where does it originate from? So it’s very important to also always know where something originates from. So you know that there’s a deeper meaning behind something.
Q: The jewellery industry is ever-changing, what evolutions have you noticed over the years?
LB: When I first came into the business, most of the people would be like in their 60s and their 50s, there weren’t a lot of people that looked like myself but as time’s gone on, there’s a lot more people from the types of places where I’m from, a lot of younger guys, and people that will be under the ages of 30 years old.
It was a very like small, saturated market, and everybody relied on foot flow traffic, so if you didn’t have a store, you wouldn’t be perceived as a trusted person, or go to person to buy, like an expensive watch or a chain, whereas now people are getting offices and then working from their offices, and they’re able to expand into what we would say, small store, big name. That’s a lot of people’s motto right now, that’s their USP.
Q: Considering how big social media is now, how much does that factor into the importance of creating high quality products in a world when considering just how much fake content is out there?
LB: It’s very different now, where we’ve got social media, it’s more about how many followers you’ve got and how much you’re in the algorithm.
Someone who’s in the algorithm can do a lot better than someone that has a store in a prime location, because social media runs the world right now and when it comes to being relevant as a jeweler you’re only as relevant as people can see. People can’t see who’s walking in your store but we can see who’s been to your store by looking at you online.
Q: How important does authenticity become when you’re taking that into account?
LB: I prefer to do quality over quantity. So I’m not about just pushing out hundreds and hundreds of pieces of low quality, because at the end of the day, you know, we’re in a very fast paced, moving world.
I like to always keep my quality at a high level, so that I will always buy back my stuff. I’m not like some jewelers where they will sell something, and can never buy it back, because I trust in myself, I trust in my brand and the work that I do.
Sometimes people just want one or two famous customers, and they leave it there. With me I like generational customers, so I want to be selling jewellery, and in the next 15-20 years, my brand will still be here. Then someone that used to buy jewellery from me, I’ll now be selling to their kids. That’s, that’s, that’s the type of business plan that I have.
Q: What is something in the future that you would absolutely love to create that maybe at one point felt a million miles away, but now you’re thinking, maybe we could do this, considering everything else that we’ve achieved?
Hopefully one day I can make a piece for Birdman from Cash Money and 50 Cent. Growing up, Birdman was one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to jewellery and the whole hip hop scene, growing up watching a lot of MTV cribs and hip hop documentaries, that’s the era that I’m from. So I was heavily inspired by Birdman, and then 50 cent is one of my favourite rappers, most respected. So, you know, I’d love to make a piece for him.
LB Jewellers short documentary on creating the diamond cut rope chain is available now:
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