See Online Magazine
https://labgrownmagazine.com/Issues/January2020/
Coming of Age
For the last few years, lab-grown diamonds
have dominated the news in the jewelry and gem
industry. For some, LGDs were seen as a looming
threat that would destroy the diamond sector.
While these fears seemed to be largely driven by a
lack of understanding about lab-grown diamond,
the question for many industry players was not
whether LGDs would become mainstream, but
when?
Today, these fears have largely subsided. Labgrown
diamonds have moved mainstream, and are
taking their place among the vast array of products
that make up the jewelry universe.
More and more manufacturers and jewelers
are jumping onto the lab-grown bandwagon—not
the least of which was De Beers when it made
its surprising-or perhaps not so surprising-
U-turn with the creation of its lab-grown subbrand,
Lightbox. This unexpected and disruptive
force was a game changer that helped catapult
LGDs to top of mind for jewelers and the public.
With their arrival, LGDs are offering the consumer
a 5th C: Choice. And, it is important that
this choice be an informed decision, one based on
full disclosure of the product.
To this end, the Federal Trade Commission
updated its Guides for the Jewelry, Precious Metals,
and Pewter Industries in 2018. The Jewelry
Guides provide detailed information to marketers
concerning how to make non-deceptive claims
about their products, including jewelry made with
mined, laboratory-created, and simulated diamonds.
The FTC also sent warning letters to a number
of companies, citing examples from their ads
that raise compliance concerns under the Jewelry
Guides.
In view of the increasing importance of LGDs
in the industry, LAB GROWN MAGAZINE has
been created as a neutral entity, published once a
month, to bring together opinions and activities
of the various stakeholders in this arena.
You are holding the launch issue, with articles
by several contributors on their take on LGDs,
including their history and how they are created.
Future issues will include more detail about
FTC’s guidelines and concerns as well as other
timely topics as lab-grown diamonds come of age.
Happy New Year!
Zev Oster
Why
EVERY
Retail Jeweler
Should Be Selling LAB-GROWN
DIAMONDS
By Jerry Taylor
Lab-grown diamonds have taken center stage in one of
the most heated debates in the history of our industry.
And many jewelers are still hesitant, or even adamantly
against selling them. For you that fall in the latter
category, here are three reasons you should be offering
lab-grown diamonds to your clients, and then some good
tips on how to successfully sell them.
Reason #1 – Customers want them.
Customer demand for lab-grown diamonds is growing more and more every day, especially among
Millennial and Gen X consumers. In a recent study by MVI Marketing, 66% of millennial customers
reported they would consider a lab-grown diamond. This is significant because it represents a 13%
increase from last year. Also, 23% of customers reported they are definitely going to buy lab-grown.
It’s simple. If you’re not offering lab-grown diamonds to your customers, you are losing sales.
Reason #2 – Your profit margins will increase.
You will make more money selling lab-grown diamonds. Full stop. Here’s the math. If your customer
has a $5000 budget and you sell them a 1-carat round diamond (I color, SI-1 clarity, Ex cut, GIA)
set in a simple solitaire setting, you’ll gross about $1200 profit. Not bad. But if you sell a 1.5-carat
lab-grown diamond of the same quality (I color, SI-1 clarity, Ex cut, IGI) then you will gross over
$2000! If one quarter or even one tenth of your customers choose lab-grown over mined, your profit
margins will increase…a lot!
Reason #3 – Customers who buy lab-grown
diamonds are more likely to refer their friends and family.
Lab-grown diamonds are new and exciting and consumers that choose them are much more likely
to refer their friends and family to the jeweler that helped them with this exciting purchase. They
want to evangelize this new product category and your name can be the one they tell their friends
and family about.
Here are a few TIPS
to help you successfully SELL LAB-GROWN
DIAMONDS
Tip #1 Keep the customer’s budget the same.
Don’t sell a lower price point.
If your customer has a set budget or ideal price range, keep them at the same price
point when showing lab-grown. You can show your customer the best mined diamond they
can get at that price point and then show them the best lab-grown diamond in the same
budget. It’s going to be bigger and/or nicer and the customer can then choose. You don’t
want to move your customer to a lower price point. It’s obvious right? But a lot of jewelers
are making this mistake so don’t be one of them.
Tip #2 Offer lab grown diamonds to every
customer and let them choose.
When it comes time to show your customer diamonds, show both mined and labgrown.
Explain the difference so your customers understand what their options are and then
let them choose. Consumers appreciate options, which means they’ll more likely buy from
you if you’re the one offering it to them. Most customers aren’t just going to shop at one store.
They shop around and if you aren’t the one giving them different choices, your competitors
will and you’ll likely lose sales because of it. So get out in front and start taking sales from your
competitors that aren’t offering lab-grown.
Tip #3 Educate your customers with
correct information about
lab-grown diamonds.
There are persistent myths regarding lab-grown
diamonds coming from powerful interests who don’t
appreciate competition in the market. Understanding
that your customers may come across false information
when shopping around and that you can be the leader
in education will give you a noticeable edge over your
competition. By examining the myths, you can help
your clients understand the truth about
lab-grown diamonds and stand out
in the industry as a thought
and education leader.
Setting the Facts Straight
and Dispelling the
Myths About Lab-Grown
Diamonds
Myth – Lab-grown diamonds aren’t real diamonds.
FACT – Lab-grown diamonds have the same physical, chemical, and optical properties of a
mined diamond. Last year, the FTC removed the word “natural” from the definition of a diamond. This
means a diamond is a diamond, whether it’s created above ground by humans, or below ground by Nature.
This is the foundational fact that customers need to understand. Lab-grown diamonds are real diamonds.
Period.
Myth – Lab grown diamonds will plummet in value as technology advances.
FACT – Growing a diamond is one of humankind’s greatest scientific achievements. It is not
simple and it is not cheap to grow a diamond, nor will this change. Ph.D scientists are required and
complex equipment is needed to grow gem quality diamonds. Many argue that lab-grown diamonds will
become as easy and inexpensive to produce as CZs. This myth disregards a basic understanding of the
economics of growing diamonds and the complex nature that will never change. Also, the cost of cutting
and polishing a lab-grown diamond is exactly the same as the cost to cut and polish a mined diamond. For
that reason alone, lab-grown diamonds can never be as inexpensive to produce as cheap simulates such as
CZs.
Myth – Mined diamonds appreciate in value and lab-grown diamonds don’t.
FACT – Buying a diamond ring is not an investment that will yield a positive return to the end
consumer. If you sell diamonds under this pretense, STOP! Jewelers cannot and should not be expected to
pay more than what their customers paid them if the customer wants to sell back their diamond. And they
don’t. They might offer trade-in credit, but that requires a larger purchase where the jeweler can recoup the
cost of the original sale. You don’t want your customers to think they can take the diamond they buy from
you and in five or ten years walk in to any jewelry store and resale it for more than what they paid. That is
absurd, and if your customers believe that, they will despise you when they realize it’s not true.
Buying a diamond ring is romantic. It’s a gesture of commitment and love. It’s exciting and it’s sexy.
The sentimental value of a diamond ring is the same whether it’s lab-grown or mined. And as more jewelers
offer lab-grown diamonds, the resale market for them will get bigger, and eventually be similar to the
resale market for mined diamonds. Again, customers lose a lot of money when they resell their diamond,
whether it’s mined or lab-grown, so don’t sell diamonds as if
they were a bond or mutual fund. They are not!
In summary, lab-grown diamonds are here to stay.
As more and more jewelers are closing their doors,
embrace the future and this exciting opportunity to
thrive as a jeweler! Start offering lab-grown diamonds
to your customers and you will see why it’s a win-win
for you and your clients.
About the Author
Jerry Taylor is a GIA Graduate Gemologist and CEO of Lab
Grown Source, the largest online trading platform dedicated to
lab-grown diamonds. ♦
Scintillation Science
The Continuing Evolution of Lab-Grown Diamonds
By Dan Scott
Classics. The jewelry industry thrives on them.
We wouldn’t be an industry if we didn’t offer
classic bridal and fashion diamond designs for sale
at every form of retail. That sets the stage for this
diamond story built around a classic cornerstone.
As an adjective, “classic” is defined as “judged over
a period of time to be of the highest quality and
outstanding of its kind.”
With mild exceptions, countless jewelry designs
in any collection sold anywhere at any time offer
standard or “classic” designs. Routinely, diamond
studs, solitaire rings and pendants, etc., are basics
and bestsellers. They are required to anchor any
bridal diamond collection or an entire showcase
of multiple brands. Classics are mandated because
they are bestsellers and because classic diamond
designs offer a competitive in-case platform for
unconventional or unique jewelry designs simply
by comparative contrast. Strong contrast sells the
opposite, that’s a fact.
Global consumers still lean toward classic conservative
looks in diamond jewelry designs. But
many are giving classics their own personal twist,
and diamonds—whether lab-grown or mined—
aren’t always part of their plan. Luckily, as history
proves, this situation is a classic challenge that is
often overcome. And so, the story continues.
Looking Back
Mankind’s desire for diamonds and the motivation
to create them is daunting. This passion
was so potent that man had to invent a way to
manufacture diamonds by his own hand. This
eagerness is hardly new—we’ve been at this since
1797 when diamonds were discovered to be pure
carbon. Since coal is nearly all carbon and coal
was present in people’s daily lives, the concept of
crushing coal to create diamonds drove people
mad, bankrupt and even was responsible for the
death of several others along the way.
But this isn’t just a history lesson—it can’t be
since we are living diamond history at this very
moment. To appreciate the turning point in the
lab-grown diamond story that occurred some 65
years ago, we have to rewind to 1880.
A scientist named James Ballantyne Hannay
claimed he had successfully synthesized a diamond
and received notable praise at the time. It
was undeserving praise, though. Analyses today
show that, although he had correctly identified
some structural portions used to engineer a diamond,
he couldn’t possibly have carried them out,
and thus likely presented a false claim.
Under Intense Pressure
Advancing to 1901, a French chemist named
Ferdinand Frédéric Henri Moissan spent eight
exhaustive years attempting to create a diamond.
He tried using his electric arc furnace to force intense
pressure. Alas, the technology for pressure
and heat simply wasn’t up to the task in the early
1900s to formulate diamonds. But, while Moissan
didn’t succeed at creating a man-made diamond,
he did earn a Nobel Prize for discovering silicon
carbide. His composition was branded Moissanite
in his honor two years after his death. Thanks to
his being extremely detailed in his research papers,
Moissan’s writings were later published and
led to the Lely Method, an in-lab process of crystallized
growth. It was later re-engineered and refined
by scores of scientists, but each resulting in
failed attempts to create a diamond.
We should note that numerous claims of diamond
synthesis were reported between 1879 and
1928. Many of those reports were analyzed, yet
none were confirmed to be accurate.
In the 1940s, the U.S. government began
deep, systematic lab-grown diamond research—
followed by Sweden and the Soviet Union—to
grow diamonds using chemical vapor deposition
(CVD) and high-pressure high-temperature
(HPHT)processes. Many trials; all errors. That
changed, however, one wintry day in 1954.
The Diamond Hall
Dr. Howard Tracy Hall, a physical chemist
at General Electric (GE) oversaw considerable
funding for the Schenectady Laboratories and its
experimentation. Braving a severe snowstorm on
February 15, 1954, he went to work to continue
his experiments with a diamond press. The press
was a massive machine capable of producing 1.5
million pounds of pressure per square inch with
multiple conical piston chambers, and able to
reach 2,760° C.
To start the process, Hall packed a graphite
tube with iron sulfide. He inserted the cylinder
into the metal beast and fired it up. After fifteen
minutes and at sixty thousand bars of pressure, a
deafening sound erupted, causing Hall to immediately
stop the operation. Thinking he had damaged
the equipment, he carefully peered into the
apparatus.
To his amazement, the tube had exploded, and
sprayed dozens of microscopic crystalline diamonds
into the gear shaft.
As he examined the crystals, Hall documented
that he trembled with anticipation. These small
crystals were indeed rough man-made diamonds.
With a shaking hand, he wrote on his lab ledger
the words “made 1st diamonds at GE.”
Those words quickly made the headlines worldwide,
advancing GE to newfound heights and
Hall’s patented process to world-class fame. The
diamond world changed forever. Two weeks later,
Hall was promoted and given a raise to $16,000 a
year. It was, after all, 1954.
Today’s Methods
While much more refined, the CVD and
HPHT processes remain the core methods used
in today’s lab-grown process. In the late 1990s,
a third process called detonation synthesis entered
the market. This method creates nanometer-sized
diamond grains from a detonation of carboncontaining
explosives to formulate a rough stone.
A fourth procedure processing graphite with
intense ultrasound has also been successfully reported
to generate rough, but as of now, it hasn’t
been deployed in any application.
The above is an account of historical events in the
life of lab-grown diamonds, but the story is far
from over. Let’s take a look at how it is evolving.
What’s Trending
Some jewelry trends aren’t trends at all; they
are too short-lived and thus can be called fads.
Others enjoy years of popularity and some become
constant, stable, evergreen. In the bridal
domain, current popular looks that are thinner
ring profiles, demi-fine designs, scaled-down and
more simplistic pieces, as well as modern settings.
And, a growing trend is towards colored gemstones,
namely sapphires, emeralds and rubies,
being used in bridal, away from white diamonds.
While this move into color is seen as small, it
does signal an erosion of a legacy standard—the
white diamond engagement ring.
This is not such great news for either mined
or lab-grown stones, but what if you could leverage
the diamond engagement ring demand with
a lab-grown profitable twist? With today’s technology,
it is possible to focus on the color not the
colorless. And by color, we mean fancy color labgrown
diamonds.
Fancy color mined diamonds are quite expensive,
so there could be added sales leverage by
setting fancy color lab-grown diamonds in bridal
rings. After all, wasn’t the idea behind lab-grown
diamonds to reduce price, produce faster goods
and offer customization?
Now, imagine the delight and subsequent social
media shares of the elated consumer who just
purchased a certified pink or blue lab-grown diamond
as their engagement ring!
In the mind of most young brides, can emeralds,
rubies, sapphires or opals compete with the
time-tested love connection to diamonds and
diamond jewelry? Does the perception or actual
value of a fancy diamond supersede that of any
other colored gemstones? The answers should be
obvious.
Since mined fancies are rare and offered in
cuts, sizes and shapes the consumer may not
want, customized lab-grown color can come to
the retail rescue.
If It Bleeds, It Leads
I’ve always found that media slang distasteful,
but it was true when quoted in the 1920s, and it’s
still true today. Headlines are delivered to grab
attention and 98% of all news is bad news.
This is true in the diamond world as well. The
Bain Group and the Antwerp World Diamond
Centre (AWDC) forecast rough diamond sales
to drop a whopping 25%, while polished diamond
sales are expected to decline 10%, by the
end of 2020.
One daring blog post called this present situation
“The Diamond Curse,” implying karmic
payback for the past blood on the hands of some
industry suppliers who are “still abusing the Kimberly
Process.” Harsh words, but there may be
elements of reality in the journey that some diamonds
take. And even in the finest hour of blockchain
technology, those computer codes are only
as good as the humans who enter them.
But let’s talk about the word diamond. In all
domains, it denotes a high level of product or
service. There are diamond awards bestowed on
individual achievements; diamond levels are given
by credit cards and frequent flyers. Place the word
diamond next to any other word and it instantly
heightens the perception of literally anything.
That’s powerful.
As an industry, we’ve achieved an incredible
alignment between diamonds and status. What
we haven’t done well, however, is align mined
diamonds with lab-grown diamonds. It behooves
people in both sectors to accept each other—look
at Lightbox by De Beers—there is space for both.
Those of you who are reading this are real-life
players, contributing to what could be either a
very rewarding dual-diamond evolution or perhaps
a dueling diamonds’ revolution.
About the Author
Dan Scott is Founder and Brand Architect
with Luxe Licensing, a brand, marketing and
digital agency with present and past clients that
include Pirelli, Gucci Jewelry, Harry Winston,
Chanel, Erbert Chong, Elf Cosmetics, Creative
Being and more. Dan welcomes conversation
and may be reached at dannjscott@gmail.com or
+1.201.294.3697. (luxelicensing.com) ♦
How Are Lab-Created
Diamonds Grown?
Many customers still don’t understand the true nature of lab-created diamonds.
Some think they are cubic zirconium and others assume they are Moissanite. So it
is very important to be able to educate your customers. You need to be the expert
in order to help your customer understand that lab-grown diamonds are physically,
optically, and chemically the same as those diamonds found in the earth.
By Jerry Taylor, CEO of Lab Grown Source
While it is unlikely your customers will want or need an in-depth science lesson on how a
diamond is grown, it is important to have enough understanding to help them feel comfortable
with lab created diamonds. Use this article and other resources to come up with a brief
explanation for your customers.
CVD vs HPHT
To create these diamonds, it is no simple task and requires exceptionally precise procedures
and very costly scientific equipment. It is not like throwing some carbon into a microwave
and coming back a few weeks later to pick up your sparkly diamonds.
There are two main ways that these diamonds are created in a lab. The first is chemical vapor
deposition (CVD) and the second is high-pressure high-temperature (HPHT). Below is an
explanation of each process and how it works. Understanding this will be foundational to
your ability to properly educate your customers regarding lab created diamonds.
Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD)
CVD is similar to 3D printing a diamond.
1. Pure carbon-rich gasses (often methane) are put into a controlled chamber with 15-30
diamond seeds. The diamond seeds are small wafer-thin slices of diamond.
2. The chamber is then heated to about 900-1200 degrees Celsius.
3. This causes the carbon-based gasses to break apart, allowing the carbon atoms to
separate and fall onto the diamond seed crystals.
4. Layer by layer, the diamond grows into a rough diamond crystal. This process takes
roughly four to eight weeks and yields gem-grade Type IIa diamonds.
High-Pressure High-Temperature (HPHT)
High-pressure high-temperature, or HPHT, recreates the natural growth environment found
deep within the Earth.
1. Diamond seeds are placed in a HPHT growth chamber with a catalyst mixture.
2. The HPHT chamber reaches temperatures over 1,300 degrees Celsius and 1.5 million
pounds per square inch of pressure (PSI).
3. The catalysts react to the added heat and pressure and transform into a molten form
causing the graphite within the cell to dissolve.
4. As the molten form cools, the carbon builds on the seed and the diamond grows. The
newly formed diamond rough is removed from the HPHT machine once the growth cycle
is complete.
Which Method Is Better?
While there is much debate about which method is better, there isn’t a scientific consensus
regarding which is better. Except for some obscure structural differences that can only be
measured with expensive and rare equipment, the end product is the same. Both CVD and
HPHT produce lab-grown diamonds with the same optical, chemical, and physical properties
as a mined diamond. ♦
