When a client in the market for a large engagement ring visited Isaac Gottesman in the fall of 2017, the founder of jeweler dimend Scaasi in Chicago showed the shopper several stone options, including a 2.80-carat, D-color lab-grown number. When the would-be groom compared the cost to that of a mined diamond with the same specs, it paved the way to a sale.
“It was an eye opener,” Gottesman recollects. “The ring was half the price of a mined diamond.”
Laboratory-created diamonds are growing in recognition and availability. They were first made in the 1950s for industrial purposes, but reappeared as a jewelry option for consumers in the late 1990s. Firms like Diamond Foundry have forged a path for loose-stone sales in high-end stores like The Clay Pot in New York and Shapiro Diamonds in Dallas, while Diamond Nexus sells finished jewels with lab-grown diamonds directly to consumers via its website. The 31-member International Grown Diamond Association (IGDA) was founded in 2016 to raise awareness about laboratory-created diamonds and to educate more individuals about them, but even that newer group doesn’t represent every lab-grown player in the market.
The mushrooming popularity of these stones makes them a formidable option in jewelry cases.
“Lab-grown diamonds are around to stay,” says Paul Schneider, co-owner of Twist in Portland, Oregon, who offers some loose ones for wedding rings. “When we explain to consumers that they’re grown in a lab in California, are certified as diamonds, and that they cost 30% less, not a lot of people say, ‘Yeah, I don’t want that.’”
Giving clients what they want
Merchants who already carry laboratory-created diamonds do so for five main reasons: price, ethics, sustainability, quality — and the fact that customers ask for them.
At Gallery of Jewels in San Francisco, California, Bill Hoover started stocking loose lab-grown diamonds two years ago at the request of shoppers. Most are millennials in the market for wedding rings, but some are older female self-purchasers. Making the choice between a mined or a lab-grown stone boils down to personal preference.
“The reality is that it’s the exact same composition as a mined diamond, it’s just the development process that has changed,” says the store president.
And as Gottesman learned firsthand, cost influences many decisions. Laboratory-grown diamonds are anywhere from 30% to 50% less than mined diamonds.
“Instead of a 1-carat stone, you can buy a 1.50-carat for the same price,” notes Hoover.
Lance Shapiro, co-owner of Shapiro Diamonds in Dallas, hasn’t sold many lab-grown diamonds, but he does keep them in mind if clients have a lower budget. “Some customers are excited that they can get a large diamond for less money,” he says.
Ethical considerations
Lab-grown diamonds also fit naturally into the arenas of ethics and sustainability, their supporters claim. The earth is not displaced to make diamonds in a lab, they note, though strong arguments certainly exist to keep miners working to earn a living in remote, impoverished areas of the world — especially if that living comes from fair-trade diamonds.
For custom, appointment-only jeweler Christine Guibara in San Francisco, laboratory-created diamonds are the choice of those who want a non-mined stone. She concedes, however, that the question of their long-term value is a tough conversation to have. Fortunately, couples who buy lab-grown diamonds for engagement rings don’t often ask, she says. “They’re not thinking about resale value.”
Sharon Zimmerman’s custom jewelry business, also in San Francisco, includes selling lab-grown stones to clients who want a traceable diamond that reduces their carbon footprint. If someone is simply looking to save money on a diamond-like stone, she offers moissanite. As for laboratory-created diamond melee — a sore spot for jewelers, who sometimes find these stones mixed in with parcels of mined ones — Zimmerman struggles to source traceable varieties. To wit, she often falls back on using post-consumer or recycled diamonds as accents.
“Lab-grown diamonds are only about 5% of last year’s sales,” she says.
Then there’s the matter of quality, which lab-grown diamonds have in abundance, according to their proponents.
“Their quality is many times far superior to Mother Earth diamonds,” says Hoover.
Breaking with tradition
Soha Javaherian, millennial and co-founder of online jeweler Soha Diamond Co. in Madison, Wisconsin, agrees. His company sells exclusively lab-grown jewelry, a niche that attracted him despite his history: He is the 10th generation of Javaherians — a name that means “family of jewelers” in Farsi — has a graduate gemologist degree, and formerly worked at Tiffany & Co. and as a diamond grader.
He doesn’t have a retail storefront, but does make house calls locally with lab-grown diamonds and finished jewelry sourced from myriad producers. His reason?
“To fulfill the expectations of today’s shoppers who want full transparency, and to avoid the adverse human and environmental consequences of mined diamonds,” he explains. “Lab-grown diamonds are chemically, physically and optically identical to their mined counterparts, and we pride ourselves on [selling] them.”
After his entrée to jewelry, Javaherian determined that laboratory-created diamonds were not the inferior gems that many were calling them. Today, he offers 100% recycled metal jewelry set entirely with lab-growns — even the pavé.
“Our competitors offer lab-grown diamonds as center stones, but side stones that are recycled or conflict-free mined,” he says. “We go out of our way to source lab-grown melee — 0.01 is the smallest size we work with.”
Consumers find him through social media and attendance at wedding shows. His biggest challenge thus far? Education. Lab-grown diamonds are not presented to shoppers enough, he feels, and sometimes they’re called simulants. Javaherian explains to customers how and where laboratory-created diamonds are made and how long it takes to grow them, and provides further education on his blog.
“Our intention is not to replace, degrade or talk down mined stones, because there would be no lab-grown industry without them,” he says. “There is a big concern from traditional store owners who fear [lab-growns] will taint the whole industry, but it’s all about disclosure and education.”
Image: Shutterstock.Article from the Rapaport Magazine - February 2018. To subscribe click here.