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De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

money.cnn.com

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Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#271

Post by cpeterso »

philsnow wrote: post #179
acchow wrote: post #33

De Beers hasn't admitted defeat. They've pivoted strategies. "De Beers launched a new jewelry brand on Tuesday [...] The brand, called Lightbox [...] will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now," Genius attack from marketing.

I think the brilliance here is not the "may not be forever" bit, but the "fashion jewelry" jab (without giving a crass label to the mined diamonds). We have associations with the term "costume jewelry" that they're trying to have cross over.

I think the "may not be forever" suggests that fashion (jewelry) goes in and out of style, so you need to buy new jewelry to stay on trend.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#272

Post by Bad_CRC »

fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

The same thing Coca Cola did with Crystal Pepsi...

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#273

Post by jimnotgym »

acchow wrote: post #103
degenerate wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the position is, it's not a shiny rock with natural scarcity and artificial inflated value because we hoard all the diamonds... but instead, a shiny rock with artificial scarcity and value because we hoard all the laboratories and control price. I fear the publishing and journal industries will stick around for another 100 years, just like De Beers has done to the diamond industry. We'll still be in the same crapp…

How can they hoard all the laboratories? This isn't a repeat of the early 20th century. It is way easier to make a lab than to find a new diamond mine.

Looking forward to the world market being so flooded with Chinese and indian diamonds that the price dies.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#274

Post by hulahoof »

acchow wrote: post #103
degenerate wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the position is, it's not a shiny rock with natural scarcity and artificial inflated value because we hoard all the diamonds... but instead, a shiny rock with artificial scarcity and value because we hoard all the laboratories and control price. I fear the publishing and journal industries will stick around for another 100 years, just like De Beers has done to the diamond industry. We'll still be in the same crapp…

How can they hoard all the laboratories? This isn't a repeat of the early 20th century. It is way easier to make a lab than to find a new diamond mine.

Perhaps similar to a printing press however

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#275

Post by Steeeve »

fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

Ahh... the old Tab Clear strategy. Brilliant when you can pull it off.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#276

Post by ivanhoe »

And we don't even need synthetic diamonds to bring the prices down, it would be enough just to liberalize the diamond mining. De Beers is artificially pumping up the prices by limiting the mining that they almost entirely control, it's a typical case of monopoly on the resources.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#278

Post by oblio »

ISL wrote: post #71
fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

I'd love for synthetic diamond to bring the price down on gemstones. A lot of people are engaged in arduous and risky work to produce natural stones. The environmental costs, too, are real. Modern high-quality synthetic materials, whether in gemstones or other uses, have so much to offer in fashion innovation. Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion tha…

> Platinum is a boring metal, visually, difficult to distinguish by eye from steels, aluminum, and titanium.

Platinum has very low reactivity so it doesn't rust, corrode, whatever easy, unlike the others. That's why it's considered valuable, because it looks almost the same after a lot of time.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#279

Post by himom »

test6554 wrote: post #181
sigi45 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We as humans just need to be less stupid. Srsly no one cares if a stone is real or not.

Everyone is "trying" to be less stupid. But selling my wife's diamond rings and buying cubic zirconia replicas at this point feels like a very stupid move even though I know I will net a bunch of money up front, I hear divorces are very expensive.

Diamonds have little resale value because of high retail markups, on top of previous De Beers monopoly price controls. If someone paid $3000 retail for a ring, good luck getting $700 for it.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#280

Post by dchest »

patall wrote: post #234

> The world's largest diamond miner is doing the unthinkable: Selling stones produced in a laboratory. Sorry, but that is some plain wrong headlining. Maybe its a first that they sell them as jewelry but De Beers is producing (and selling) synthetic diamonds now for 60 years and is already one of if not the biggest producer ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Element_Six )

This is mentioned in the article.
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