Jewellery internet was born about 3 years ago when "Russian Jewellery Network" server(www.jewellernet.ru) was on its way. The main task of that time was to show that Internet can and should be used in the jewellery industry.

Misunderstanding based on the slogan "Jewellery is a family business opposed to any outsiders."

Luckily, this was not common opinion. Assay officials were the first to see profits of the Internet and "Russian Jewellery Network" was given an honour to create official server of the Assay Office of Russia (www.assay.ru), which included virtual guest room. The server was launched at the end of 1999 dedicated to 300th Anniversary of Assay Office.

In November 1999 at the second conference "Precious metals and gemstones market (RPMG)" the need in the Internet for annual conferences was expressed, thus this should offer possibility to share viewpoints as well as get information about future conferences. RDMK Server (www.rdmk.ru) was again given to the team of "Russian Jewellery Network" who accomplished this task in short time.

The mission was complete - we managed to show that the Internet is a serious tool for work.

Another task to accomplish is to create single web-area for jewellery industry. Jewellery Internet of today is about 300 web-sites ranging from individual pages to web-sites of leading enterprises of precious metals and gemstones market - ALROSA Company, Jewellers of Ural, KRISTALL of Smolensk, Adamas Company and many others - chiefly Russian Jewellery Network members. This is to be an ground for recent news, future events and listing those 300 jewellery pages which can be found in the Internet. This strategy resulted in our site being the most visited jewellery server of Russia.

We also established contacts with foreign leading jewellery servers - GemKey, Rapaport, Polygon and others. In 2000 web-server was honoured an award of the international GemKey Magazine and won the 6th place which again proves high quality of the team and that our sites can compete with other sites of Internet community.

Along with that despite collapses there is a growth in the Internet audience. E-mail service is a concept deeply rooted in the mindset of modern man. And our future task is to meet the needs of future audience - we are to target at the youth, potential buyers are to be raised today. Another line is to develop jewellery sales via Internet - Trading Centre is presented at the ground of Russian Jewellery Network. This project has caused a great interest among Internet audience. There are a lot of plans and projections and will have a chance to see their implementation in future.

Unfortunately, our participation in the International projects is very tough due to the imperfection of Russian legislation. We hope that sooner or later it will comply with modern need and it will enable entering jewellery Internet of the world. Will we be ready for that? Time will show. And to draw a bottom line we are to say that today we are to develop infrastructure of Russian Internet and adapt to International standards, i.e. be ready for integration.