After graduating with distinction from Irony D High School in 1999, majoring in Math and Computer Science, Roei enlisted to the Israeli military in February 2000 where he served as a software engineer. In 2003 Roei was released from the military, receiving Certificate of Esteem for his dedicated service from the head of the Adjutancy corps, Brigadier General Yossi Peretz.
In September 2004 Roei commenced his bachelor degrees at Stanford University. During his time at Stanford, Roei was highly involved in Student life, extracurricular activities, Stanford's various student programs, and the Silicon Valley High-Tech industry. He participated in Stanford's Overseas Program in Berlin and the Stanford in Washington program. As part of the program, Roei worked for World Bank while taking classes at night and meeting with top government officials. As a student leader, Roei was elected as the president of Hillel for one year and the president of Chabad at Stanford for 4 years, served as AIPAC campus representative, and was a member of the Stanford Israel Alliance student group. Passionate about writing, Roei regularly contributed opinion pieces for the Stanford Review and the Stanford Daily on-campus newspapers. As a naturally born entrepreneur, Roei was also highly involved in the Silicon Valley Hi-Tech industry, working for two Silicon Valley startups and developing mobile applications while still a student. In 2008, in his senior year, as smartphones were introduced to the market, Roei recognized the opportunity to facilitate the workflow of diamond traders worldwide. He quickly developed and released iDiamonds, the first iPhone application to bring Rapaport Diamond Prices to the iPhones of every Diamond Professional. Roei graduated in 2009 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Science and Engineering and a Bachelor of Art degree in Economics.
After graduation Roei joined his family business bringing long-needed changes and technological advancements. Roei won the 2010 GIA Endowment Scholarship and became a certified Diamond Gemologist by the Gemological Institute of America. In 2011 he founded Kashi Diamonds Limited, Hong Kong based company, with the purpose of engaging in a full-scale vertical integration of the supply-chain, from the mines to jewelry manufacturing to sales to end consumers. By engaging both in backward and forward integration, Roei continues his father’s philosophy of providing their customers value as well as quality. By providing their clients the most attractively priced diamonds, gemstones, and fashioned jewelry, Roei perpetuates and re-emphasizes the company’s reputation as the world’s most famous inventory of Investment Diamonds.
As his career in the Diamond Industry evolved, Roei was abled to focus and professionally grow in five main areas: Diamonds, Technology, Diamond and Jewelry Photography, Color Stones, and Jewelry manufacturing.
Diamonds Manufacturing, Trading, and Sales. Roei continued his father’s legacy of traditional diamond manufacturing. He focused mainly on cutting large size and fancy color diamonds. Realizing that the market changed drastically and understanding that in order to keep meeting the company’s mission of being the most cost attractive diamond supplier, Roei roamed the world to find innovative solutions, new sources of rough, and alternative supply channels of second-hand re-cuttable diamonds. On the supply side, Roei engaged the company in backward integration (a type of vertical integration related to the purchase of supplies). He registered the company to participate in all major rough tenders of the world’s biggest rough diamonds mining company; expanded the outreach to new suppliers of secondhand diamonds such as pawnshops, auctions, and estate sales; and utilized his advantage with technology to build an automated, real-time, demand system to better and faster source from suppliers. On the demand side, Roei focused on building online and mobile sales platforms, opened new markets through the traditional methods of traveling and knocking on doors, registered the company to exhibit in the largest trade shows, including JCK June Show in Las Vegas and March and September shows in Hong Kong, and built an online demand system to more efficiently meet customers’ requests.
Technology. Roei continued to be a pioneer, bringing the old-fashioned diamond industry up-to-date with technology. He continued working and improving iDiamonds, which rapidly became the most known and widely used application in the diamond industry. He added to the app new features such as average and best prices on rapnet and a foreign currency exchange converter, thus allowing traders to quote diamond prices based on the Rapaport Price List in their desired currency. In 2009, Roei partnered with IDEX Online and launched iDiamonds Consumer, a mobile app that provides Suggest Retail Price of diamonds as well as information and education sections to end consumers. The IDEX Suggest Retail Price is offered free of charge with the hope of bringing price transparency to end users.
Roei also developed the Kashi Diamonds iPhone application, which provides customers quick access on the go to the company’s inventory, including high resolution images of the diamonds and certificates. The app also contains a sophisticated, real-time demand system, in which clients can send the company their demands for diamonds. Registered brokers and suppliers receive the demands on real-time.
In his free time, Roei developed additional applications not related to the diamond industry. Feel free to check them out on the Apple iTunes store.
Diamond Photography. Roei understood that at the heart of successful e-commerce lie accurate and reliable images of the products. As a direct result of this belief, Roei put great emphasis on accurately photographing diamonds, especially since each buying decision involves thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But photographing diamonds is not an easy task.
Set out with this formidable task, Roei researched and carefully thought about every aspect of diamond, gem, and Jewelry photography - from the lighting to angels to resolution and lens. He visited famous museums such as the Getty Museum in LA to learn how they photograph their artifacts; he contacted researchers at major universities to study how they capture images of even the tiniest microorganism and atomic structures; and he reached out to his peers and colleagues at auction houses, gemological institutions, and other companies to share ideas.
The results were astonishing. The high-resolutions images provided clearer insight into the diamonds clarity. Inclusions were easier to spot by zooming into the photograph than by actually examining the diamond with a x10 magnifying loop. With experience and by trial and error, diamonds and gems color portrayal became very reliable. Furthermore, in order for customers to examine the depth and the cutting of a diamond from every angle, 3D images of were also carefully designed and thought of.
Today Roei is one of the most professional diamond and gem photographers in the world. Believing in promoting accuracy and integrity related to diamond photography, Roei set the standards of diamond photography to new heights. With this expertise, Roei also served as a consultant and advisor to some of the world’s biggest diamond manufacturer, who flew him around the world to their premises and paid him to build their diamond photography studios.
As new technology becomes available, Roei constantly modifies and upgrades the company’s diamond photography methods and equipment.
Color Stones. Roei’s strong passion to fancy color diamonds inevitably led him to expand his horizons into gemstones. After visiting Thailand and Myanmar for sales trip, Roei realized the importance of gaining knowhow on precious stones other than diamonds. In 2010 he relocated to Bangkok, where he lived for 3 years and started to gain valuable knowledge about gems, particularly rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. He worked closely with Thailand’s most famous gem dealers and cutters, absorbing and learning from the best gem professionals. In his frequent trips to Myanmar (Burma), Roei discovered not only a new and exotic culture but also business practices and archaic negotiation techniques he hasn’t encountered before. These connections, particularly networks to primary sources, including gemstones mine owners, enabled Roei to engage the company in vertical and horizontal integration, thereby enabling the company to meet clients’ demands by offering cost-attractive gemstones vis-a-vis diamonds.
Today, Roei mainly focuses on buying, trading, and repolishing burmese rubies and sapphires and colombian emeralds.
Jewelry Design and Manufacturing. While each of our company’s diamonds and gemstones is priced to be a profit bearing investment vehicle, there is no reason why diamonds should not be set and displayed in fashioned jewelry to be enjoyed by and embellish the possessors. We understand that end consumers do not have the ability to produce jewelry themselves. The alternative - buying jewelry directly from retail shops - significantly increases prices as diamonds and gems pass more hands in the supply-chain. In other words, when buying diamonds not directly from the manufacturer, one is paying not just for a brand name but also for other middlemen, which effectively renders the diamonds bad investments (since other middlemen already used up the potential profit).
In order to allow consumers who seek to buy magnificent jewel also be able to make good investments, Roei partnered with a jewelry factory in Bangkok Thailand. Engaging the company in forward integration (a form of vertical integration involving the manufacturing and distribution of goods further down the supply chain), effectively opened the company's outreach to new segments of the diamond and jewelry markets: shrewd investors that seeks not just diamonds as investments but also diamond jewelry. During March 2015 HKTDC Gem and Jewelry Exhibition Roei's jewelry were selected from over 10,000 exhibitors to be the highlight of a featured Gala Dinner and was presented by Chinese Movie Star Cicely Chow.
Roei currently works closely with his customers helping them to design custom jewelry for the diamonds they purchase.
In his free time, Roei writes opinion pieces to different publications and currently in the process of writing a novel. He likes outdoor activities, engaging in biking, scuba diving, jogging, rock climbing, and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
While hebrew is his mother tongue, Roei speaks and writes English as a native speaker and fluent in Spanish and Thai.