Oria Gems exists because the gemstone trade has too many hands in it.
Most coloured stones pass through six or seven owners between the pit and the buyer. A rough parcel is sold to a broker, then to a sorting house, then to a cutting factory, then to a wholesaler, then to a dealer, then to a retailer. Each one takes a margin. None of them ever cuts or sets the stone themselves. By the time a sapphire reaches a customer, most of what they paid went to people who never touched it.
How we started
We began buying rough directly in Ratnapura, the town in Sri Lanka's Sabaragamuwa Province that has been the centre of the island's gem trade for centuries. The pits there are small, family-run operations. Some are no more than a shaft dug into a riverbed, worked with a bucket and a rope. Others are shallow open casts beside the paddy fields.
Buying at the pit means seeing the gravel the day it comes up. It also means paying a fair price to the people who dig it, rather than to whoever happens to be holding it three months later.
What we do with it
Rough goes to our own workshop in Colombo. We cut, we polish, and we grade. When a stone is good enough to stand on its own we list it as a single stone. When it is small, or part of a matched run, we sort it into calibrated parcels for jewellers, or set it ourselves in silver, platinum and gold.
Nothing is bought in and rebadged. If it is listed on this site, we cut it or we set it.
What we will not do
We do not sell synthetics. We do not sell treated material without saying so. We do not describe a stone as "Ceylon" unless it was mined in Sri Lanka, and we do not describe a stone as unheated unless we are certain of it.
Where a stone has been heat treated we say so and we price it accordingly. Heat treatment is a normal and accepted part of the trade. Silence about it is not.
Where we are
Our sourcing is in Ratnapura and our workshop is in Colombo. We ship worldwide from Sri Lanka, and we answer our own emails.