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GOING BEYOND CARAT, CLARITY, COLOR AND CUT

Introduced by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the 4Cs is the universally grading system, whose underlying premise is that the value of a polished diamond is decided by its respective scores for carat, clarity, color and cut. But do they represent an adequate number of criteria to provide the definitive price of any given stone? Not so says gemologist Renée Newman, writing in Jewellery Business, a Canadian trade publication, in an article entitled “Diamond Evolution: Why the 4Cs is no longer an adequate pricing system – Jewellery Business.”

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Jewelry Trade Gathers for IJL 2019 in London

One of the key jewelry markets to watch over the coming months is that of the United Kingdom. With an estimated annual value of £3.3bn at the end of 2018, it nonetheless is being rocked by incidents not of its making, with the most prominent being Brexit. No wonder then that the country’s most important jewelry show, International Jewellery London (IJL), is one of the industry’s most keenly anticipated events. This year, it will be held September 1 to 3.

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Alrosa Aims to Lead Fancy Colored Diamond Supply

Alrosa, the Russian state-controlled mining company that for most the past decade has been the world’s largest producer of rough diamonds, is positioning itself to also be the leading supplier of fancy colored stones, aiming to capture the position held since the mid-1990s by Argyle, the Western Australian producer that earlier this year announced that it would be ending mining operations.

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Rough Diamond Purchases Drop but Market Stays Calm

Alrosa announced an almost 50 percent fall in the sales of rough stone in July. Its moves mirrored that De Beers, which at the end of the July reported that its sixth sales cycle was down 53 percent from the amount sold during the sixth cycle in 2018. But despite the dramatic slowdown in the volume of new supply entering the pipeline, there is not an air of panic, neither in the market or among rough diamond producers.

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U.S.-China Trade War Hits Diamonds and Jewelry

Members of the American jewelry trade who had believed they had dodged a bullet in the escalating trade war between the United States and China seem to have had their hopes dashed with the most recent decision by President Donald Trump to impose a 10 percent levy on those products imported by China that weren’t covered in earlier three rounds of tariffs.

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Country of Origin Reports Gain Popularity in Diamond Trade

In the colored gemstone trade, the provenance of the article has long been of critical importance. While Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma) and Madagascar frequently produce top quality sapphires, if a stone was mined in the remote the Zanskar range of the Himalaya Mountains, allowing it to be referred as a Kashmir sapphire, it will almost undoubtedly fetch a high premium.

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High Jewelry Prices No Longer a Barrier to Online Sales

It recently was reported that a $400,000 ruby necklace was sold on Moda Operandi, a fashion discovery platform that gives its customers access to shop directly from designers’ runway collections. Net-a-Porter, its high-end online fashion counterpart, has also been said to have six-figure sales for fine jewelry.

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Diamond Analyst Eases Concerns Amid Industry Crisis

In many respects, 2019 is likely to be remembered as the year that synthetic or laboratory-grown diamonds made their imprint on the diamond market. And, as many have predicted, the most indelible mark has been on goods at the lower end of the price spectrum, and particularly melee.

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De Beers Production Drops on Weaker Demand in Trading Centers

As had been predicted widely by market pundits, the De Beers Group has announced a quite significant fall in its half-year production of rough diamonds, which equaled 15.6 million carats, which was 10.9 percent lower than during the equivalent six-month period in 2018, and 12.4 percent lower than during the second half of last year.

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COULD FINLAND BE THE SITE OF THE NEXT DIAMOND MOTHERLODE?

Picture a diamond mine, and one most likely conjures up image of a giant pit or underground shaft set against the backdrop of the sweltering African savannah. Who would think then that, in 2018, 42 percent of rough diamonds in terms of value and almost 45 percent in terms of volume mined in the frigid cold of Arctic region, in Russian or in Canada?

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RESPONSIBLE JEWELLERY COUNCILS LOOKS TO RAISE PROFILE IN CONSUMER MARKETS (cover)
RESPONSIBLE JEWELLERY COUNCILS LOOKS TO RAISE PROFILE IN CONSUMER MARKETS

The Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC), which in 2020 will celebrate the 15th year since its establishment, is planning a program that it intends will to raise the profile of the organization’s code of ethical business practices among jewelry consumers. The program will not only emphasize that an item of jewelry and each of its components sold by an RJC member has been sourced responsibly, but also that they contribute to the fulfillment of the United Nation’ Sustainable Development Goals.

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Children learning about the luxury industry
A LUXURY INDUSTRY PAYS FORWARD

“Pay It Forward,” an American romantic move released in 2000, tells the story of child who conceives of a plan to build a better world, by which the recipient of a favor does in turn do a favor for three others, rather than paying the original favor back. It is a concept that is being translated into reality in the luxury product industries, which over the years have acquired much of their raw materials from developing countries, where few people would be able to purchase the products they sell. The idea is that they initiate capacity building projects in projects that not only provide direct revenues, but also build capacity so that sustainable economic opportunities are created.

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DIAMONDS FROM THE SEA
DIAMONDS FROM THE SEA

A good deal of fuss was made earlier this year when an article in a scientific journal defended the hypothesis that a large percentage of the natural diamonds that have been discovered on earth were created from organic materials on the seabed that, millions of years ago, were drawn deep into the red-hot mantle of the planet through the movement of tectonic plates. Diamonds, the article suggested, are essentially the remains of sea creatures and marine vegetation that had been transformed through a combination of high pressures and temperatures into crystalline carbon – or in other words, diamonds.

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7 Macro Trends to Shape Luxury Market Through 2025

According to Bain & Company’s recently released luxury market report, the personal luxury goods market segment, which includes jewelry, will grow by 3 percent to 5 percent per annum, driven by seven trends that , in the opinion of its authors, will shape the future of luxury.

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QUESTION OF WHAT CONSTITUTE ‘CONFLICT DIAMOND’ STILL DOMINATES DEBATE IN KIMBERLEY PROCESS
Conflict Diamond Definition Still Debated in Kimberley Process

Members of government, the diamond and jewelry industry and human rights groups gathered in the Indian city of Mumbai, June 17-21, for the first of two Kimberley Process (KP) meetings that will be hosted in the country this year. India is the current chair of the KP, which is the multinational coalition established in 2000 to prevent the infiltration of conflict diamonds into the legitimate diamond pipeline.

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TRACKING THE DIAMOND FROM MINE TO MARKET
TRACKING THE DIAMOND FROM MINE TO MARKET

Traceability, or the ability to track a diamond from the mine all the way to the point at which it is sold at retail, set in jewelry, was a very hot topic at the 2019 JCK Show in Las Vegas in June, with both of the two world’s largest diamond companies discussing or demonstrating systems that they are developing to the do the job.

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an antique cash register and several sparkling diamonds
De Beers Ends Recycled Diamonds Project Quietly

Quietly, without very little fanfare, the De Beers Group has shut down the International Institute for Diamond Valuation (IIDV), which was established 2014 as a polished diamond buy-back service that would give players on the secondary market a fair price for their goods. Simultaneously, the company’s website has been taken down, and its social media accounts have gone off-line.

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