A Legacy of Craftsmanship

Our vertical integration model helps us uphold our standards of craftsmanship, safe and healthy working environments, community economic development and supply chain traceability.

In 2002, we established Laurelton Diamonds, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary, to procure rough diamonds and source, cut, polish and supply finished stones. Today, we cut and polish diamonds at our own workshops in Botswana, Mauritius, Cambodia, Vietnam and Belgium. We also manufacture approximately 60% of our jewelry at our state-of-the-art facilities in New York, Kentucky and Rhode Island, and polish and perform select assembly work on jewelry in the Dominican Republic. Because we operate our own facilities to our high standards, we are able to help ensure safe, healthy and welcoming work environments. We hire and train skilled craftspeople and endeavor to pay a living wage to employees at our manufacturing facilities in developing countries to support local people and communities.

Our vertical integration model gives us a strong chain of custody over raw materials, direct oversight of our manufacturing and a platform to help improve global standards and conditions, serving as a model for others in incorporating environmental and social integrity in the sourcing, processing and crafting of our jewelry.

We are proud to be able to share the journey of a Tiffany diamond with our clients. Beginning in 2019, we launched the Diamond Source Initiative, enabling us to provide provenance information—region or countries of origin—for every newly sourced, individually registered diamond (of .18 carats and larger) that we set. In 2020, we expanded upon this initiative with the launch of the Diamond Craft Journey, becoming the first global luxury jeweler to share with its clients the countries where these stones are crafted. The journey outlines several steps, including cutting, polishing, grading and setting—a pioneering achievement in diamond traceability and transparency.

We are committed to excellence as a company and hold our suppliers to the same high standards to which we hold our own business. The Tiffany & Co. Supplier Code of Conduct (Code of Conduct) and Social and Environmental Accountability Program have helped us uphold our basic expectations with our direct and indirect goods and packaging suppliers. Our Code of Conduct articulates our expectations related to human rights, fair and safe labor practices, environmental protection and ethical business conduct. Our Code of Conduct also asks suppliers to align with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and to work consciously to operate within that framework.

In 2019, we launched a revised Supplier Code of Conduct further enhancing the Code’s requirements on human rights, labor conditions and environmental protections, among others. In 2020, we also developed and released our Supplier Code Guidance Document to further clarify our expectations for suppliers and provide more detail on all of our requirements in the Code of Conduct. In addition to the Code of Conduct being publicly available on our website, the Guidance Document is now available as well. To help ensure our Suppliers have the tools they need to meet our expectations, the Code of Conduct and Code Guidance are translated into several languages.

More information about our purchasing practices can be found in the Tiffany & Co. Responsible Purchasing Policy – Worldwide.

We prioritize capability building and continuous improvement as a part of our supplier engagement strategy. We are committed to increasing our knowledge and understanding of our key suppliers’ businesses through ongoing dialogue, and taking steps to further embed our responsible sourcing practices into the daily operations of our suppliers.

To assist our suppliers in building these capabilities, we provide training for our supplier base, including in-person and online programs that cover our Supplier Code of Conduct, including health and safety, business ethics and management systems. Following the release of our revised Code of Conduct in 2019, we conducted both in-person and online training to suppliers that were customized to the needs of our supply chain. We prioritized in-person trainings for our suppliers in China, Thailand and India. In total, 43 suppliers participated in this 1.5-day in-person training. This training is estimated to impact over 17,000 employees across our suppliers. Topics covered in this training include changes to our Code of Conduct, key topics based on the audit results of our supply chain, and tools for capability building. To facilitate training to all of the suppliers in our SEA Program, we also provided several online training modules available in multiple languages. These modules include changes to our Code of Conduct, health and safety, business ethics and management systems, and are estimated to have the potential to impact approximately 40,000 employees across our suppliers.

In our most recent SEA Program cycle (2018–2019), we completed approximately 100 audits. Suppliers are required to take action to address any audit findings in a manner that meets our expectations and in a timely fashion, and we expect regular updates. We have also ended relationships with suppliers that have been unwilling to take these required corrective actions.

We continue to analyze the results of all audits to identify trends and develop additional training programs that focus on improvement and building capabilities throughout our supply chain, and we look forward to continued engagement with our suppliers through this program.

In 2018, we launched the Jewelry Design and Innovation Workshop, to gather the top creative and technical minds from across Tiffany in a single location to focus on innovation, marking an important development in the evolution of our vertical integration strategy.

Just steps from our Company’s New York City headquarters, our Jewelry Design and Innovation Workshop provides nearly 17,000 square feet of open space and state-of-the-art technology for our expert designers, jewelers and engineers to collaborate. Features include a prototyping shop with the latest equipment—3D printers and scanners, milling equipment and laser engravers. Additionally, the Jewelry Design and Innovation Workshop has a team of skilled craftspeople with the ability to complete prototyping needs from wax carving to stone and metal cutting to surface enhancement to setting and assembly.

Through the Jewelry Design and Innovation Workshop, we aim to develop new jewelry designs with efficiency and sustainability prioritized throughout the process. We do this by exploring new materials, technology and artisanal processes in support of Tiffany’s creative vision.

As part of Tiffany’s 2025 Sustainability Goals, we aim to build on these efforts by further integrating sustainability into our design processes and identifying innovations that continue to make our products and manufacturing processes even more sustainable. To this end, in 2020, Tiffany developed a framework to systematically assess the sustainability impacts and benefits of innovations from the Jewelry Design and Innovation Workshop. The framework evaluates product and process innovations developed at the Workshop across a number of key environmental and social criteria. We plan to use this framework in the future to assess new innovations for our business so that we can identify and prioritize those with equal or improved sustainability impacts and benefits.