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De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
The world's largest diamond miner is doing the unthinkable: Selling stones produced in a laboratory. De Beers launched a new jewelry brand on Tuesday that features synthetic diamonds, a major reversal for a company that had implored consumers to stick with "real" stones.
The brand, called Lightbox, will offer synthetic diamonds at a fraction of the price it charges for stones pulled out of the earth. De Beers framed the move as a response to consumer demands. "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," said De Beers CEO Bruce Cleaver.
[...] De Beers had been an outspoken critic of synthetic diamonds. Company executives vowed never to sell artificial stones, and it participated in the diamond industry's "real is rare" campaign. It even developed a machine that spots lab-grown stones.
Also at Bloomberg and TechCrunch.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:52AM (5 children)
Synthesized diamond, typically for industrial uses, costs more than mining them in S. Africa/S India.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @07:06AM (1 child)
Kinda funny to market an industrial abrasive as a gift for women betrothed in matrimony.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday May 31 2018, @06:33PM
False advertising works better to elicit consent.
"Will you marry me?" polls much lower when holding a diaper and bottle of bleach.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @07:32AM (1 child)
Right now...
Just wait until the CPU / GPU industry switches from silicon to diamond wafers. How quickly will equipment to make artificial diamonds come down in price, once production scale goes from "a few" to "two factories for Intel, two for nVidia,..."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @10:42AM
Yeh, the diamond blanks rejected for semiconductor use will probably be offered to jewelers, who seem to consider the flaw as a desirable feature.
Letsee... just how much silicon die does the average user now own? Its gonna be interesting to see when "scrap" diamond becomes as commonplace as "scrap" electronic chips.
However, if the jewelers don't take it, it is always usable as industrial abrasive.
Something inside me tells me this is NOT the time to be spending thousands of dollars for crystalline carbon just because its got some jeweler's logo on it. Sounds like a repeat of what happened to my people when the European factories were commissioned to make lots and lots of cheap wampum, and here we traded very valuable things for this European wampum. Counterfeit wampum. Our land for trinkets.
I believe the well-being of the DeBeers Corporation is an extremely poor concern for two young people considering matrimony, and should be putting their resources into things of real value... their education, their home, their car and other personal infrastructure they need to survive, not buying frilly theater then borrowing money for a car. We keep arranging things so the younger generation is in debt up to the limit before they even get married these days - and most of the young people are so obedient to whatever the bobbling media heads implore them to do.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @08:11AM
Who says all the costs are calculated in the price for the mined gems? My guess is that a lot of the costs are externalized.