A Birmingham mobile phone company is hoping to cash in on the city's burgeoning rich list this Christmas with a range of diamond-encrusted gold handsets.
And directors of recently-founded Obsession - the only mobile phone company to be a member of the British Jewellers Association - say top-of-the-range luxury items like their £1,400 phones are one of the fastest-growing sectors of the retail market.
Obsession, based in Brindleyplace, only moved into the luxury market four weeks ago, but has already been deluged with requests for their yellow and white gold phone handsets.
Marketing director Heath Thomas says the company's Aphrodite range - made of 18 or 24-carat gold - had already proved a hit with the world's wealthy.
"We sell them over the internet but we have been approached on a daily basis by retailers. It's only the fourth week and the response has already been breathtaking," said Mr Thomas.
"The general target market is high net worth individuals. However, it is also targeted at the aspirational part of the market, people who are aspiring to that sort of lifestyle.
"That sector is growing, without a shadow of a doubt. Not only is luxury goods a massively high-growth sector, but people's expectations are growing massively too."
And he added that although the company had already developed a worldwide fanbase in its brief lifetime, Birmingham was still a key market for it. He said: "The image of Birmingham is improving practically on a daily basis, and I'm confident that there are people out there who are looking for this kind of luxury.
"It isn't a cheap item, but we are confident that there are people who are not afraid of spending money to achieve that kind of image.
"And we have to take customer security very seriously because, of course, being not cheap the sort of people we are selling to are high end wealth individuals and often like to keep themselves to themselves."
The telecommunications company had already been in existence for ten years when Obsession director Ronnie Banga thought of the idea for the Obsession Collection, which is described by the firm as "inspired by Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, lust and beauty."
The company, which employs 15 people in its Birmingham office, had been involved in telecommunications before, but decided to move into luxury goods after it spotted a gap in the market.
"The move into the top end of the market has been under development for a year and a half, and for us it's definitely a turning point," said Mr Thomas. "It was very simple, for us, we spotted there was a gap in the market for luxury mobile phones, and we decided to move into that gap.
"What Ronnie Banga thought was that at times phones were very much subservient to the design and you either have phones that were plain to look at or phones that were functional, just all-singing and all-dancing.
"People were starting to become more demanding with the cosmetic appeal of the phone, and we weren't satisfied with what was out there, so we decided to make our own."
He added the company saw its work as part of a proud manufacturing and jewellery tradition in Birmingham.
"We are a Birmingham company, only a spitting distance of the Jewellery Quarter, and it would be great to people in Birmingham owning an Obsession piece", he said.
