Billiton Diamonds

Auction Platform · Product Rebuild · Diamond Trade

Billiton Diamonds operates in the two centres of the global diamond trade, Antwerp and Dubai. Parcels of rough diamonds and gemstones are viewed in person by invited buyers across multi-day sessions, then sold through scheduled online auctions in single and multi-round formats.

Every stage of that operation runs on trust and timing. The platform managing it had aged out of the business, and the ask was a rebuild. The research showed the real problem sat deeper, in how information moved through the system. We rebuilt the platform from the ground up: the information architecture first, then the admin and bidder experiences on top of it.

Year

2025

Industry

Diamond Auctions

Scope of work

UI/UX Design

Front End Development

Back End Development

Timeline

6 months

Auction Platform · Product Rebuild · Diamond Trade

Year

2025

Industry

Diamond Auctions

Scope of work

UI/UX Design

Front End Development

Back End Development

Timeline

6 months

The Visibility Gap

A viewing is a controlled event. High-value parcels move between rooms and buyers over several days, under schedule, under supervision. The old system recorded the operation without making it visible. Where a parcel sat, who had seen which goods, which room held which buyer. The information existed, but not where decisions were made.

An operation built on control was being run partly from memory. On the bidder side, the friction was countable. Eighty clicks from invitation to first bid. For buyers transacting at this level, every one of them was a demand the platform had no right to make.

View website

The Approach

We mapped the life of a parcel before designing a single screen. Vault, viewing room, buyer, auction round, result. Every screen was then tested against one question: does this put information where a decision happens?

Two users, two different jobs. Admins run the floor: rooms, parcels, buyers, and schedules in one live view. Bidders need one uninterrupted path from invitation to bid. The auction logic followed: single and multi-round formats, advancing bids, priority-tiered access, sales scheduled against the physical viewings that precede them. The physical and digital halves of the business now run as one system.