Will De Beers’ lab-grown diamond company help protect the prestige of the ‘real thing’?
Weeks after sustainable and lab-grown gemstones lit up the red carpets at Cannes Film Festival, the ‘created diamonds’ industry has received another boost with the launch of Lightbox: a new ‘demi-fine’ jewellery brand by De Beers.
Launching in the US later this year, Lightbox is targeting a millennial audience with everyday studs and pendants featuring lab-grown white, blue and pink diamonds. Sold exclusively online at first, the pieces start at $200 (￡150) for 0.25 carat, and go up to $800 (￡600) for a one-carat diamond, plus $100 for a silver setting and $200 for 10ct gold.
In comparison, a one-carat diamond engagement ring set in platinum at De Beers Diamond Jewellers would cost upwards of ￡11,400, depending on the colour and clarity of the stone. Pink and blue diamonds are much rarer and therefore many times more expensive.
Such an aggressively low pricing strategy not only sets Lightbox apart as a serious player in the growing market for lab-created gemstones (other lab-grown diamond brands such as Diamond Foundry price them at just 30 to 40 per cent less than mined stones) - it also aims to protect the prestige of De Beers’ traditional diamond brands.
Lightbox’s marketing approach hammers home the difference between lab-grown diamonds and natural stones. “Nature created diamonds over a billion years ago...each one is unique, like a snowflake,” runs the new brand’s website. “But we can make laboratory-grown diamonds every day of the week.” Regarding its pricing, it explains, “because [lab-grown diamonds] are not inherently rare, they’re priced more accessibly.”
Lightbox also distances itself from the engagement ring market, which is where most lab-grown diamond jewellers have focused. “We’re for lighter moods and lighter moments, like birthdays and beach days and just because days,” the breezy copy continues. “We’re for everyone you love in life, not just the love of your life.” The ‘Lightbox Moments’ section of the website depicts groups of women and girls - running along the beach, a child hugging her mother, a teenager celebrating her sweet 16th - but there’s not a romantic couple in sight.
Engagement rings make up the majority of business for the likes of De Beers Diamond Jewellers and Forevermark, which is also owned by De Beers. The company, which once held 90 per cent of the market share for rough diamonds, famously coined the phrase “a diamond is forever” in 1947: an advertising campaign held responsible for the cultural custom of buying diamond engagement rings.
Launching a created diamond brand might seem a surprising move for a company that has built its reputation on the rarity and natural beauty of its stones. De Beers is part of the Diamond Producers Association, which in 2016 launched an advertising campaign targeted at millennials with the tagline “Real is rare. Real is a diamond”.
But De Beers has been experimenting with lab-grown stones for over 50 years. Its Element Six Innovation Centre in Oxfordshire has long created diamonds destined for industrial use, and the company has plans to invest $94 million (￡71 million) in a new plant in the US, which will produce half a million carats of rough diamonds a year.
De Beers has grown diamonds up to 25 carats - a process that took six weeks - by subjecting a diamond ‘seed’ to intense heat and pressure, mimicking the conditions that lead to their creation underground. As well as this ‘High Pressure High Temperature’ approach, Element Six also uses Chemical Vapour Deposition (CVD), where chemical reactions cause layers of carbon to build up and create a stone - akin to 3D printing a diamond.
Whichever process is used, these lab-grown diamonds are chemically and physically identical to mined stones. While De Beers’ research arm previously experimented with creating gem-quality stones so that it could better detect so-called ‘synthetics’ on the market, it will now use them in Lightbox jewellery. Man-made stones currently account for two per cent of all diamonds sold globally; Citibank forecasts that this could rise to 10 per cent by 2030.
Proponents of lab-grown gemstones argue that they are more ethical, as the supply chain is completely transparent, and more environmentally-friendly, with a carbon footprint much lower than that of a mined stone. But in an interview with the New York Times, Lightbox’s general manager Steve Coe labels these claims “misleading and bogus,” due to the pressure required to create lab-grown stones. “If you look at the detailed numbers, the energy consumption levels between natural and man-made diamonds are in the same ballpark,” he says.
Avoiding the sustainable standpoint is an interesting approach for a brand so squarely aimed at the millennial market - the generation believed to be far more concerned with transparency and ethics than their parents or grandparents were. In recent years, De Beers Fine Jewellers has made more overt attempts to woo younger consumers with its ‘My First De Beers’ line of tiny everyday diamonds, which start at ￡700 for a 0.07ct diamond in rose gold - about the same price as a one-carat Lightbox stone.
For now, Lightbox is concentrating on the “diamonds are for every day” message. “Synthetics are fun and fashionable, but they are not real diamonds in my book,” Bruce Cleaver, De Beers chief executive, told the New York Times. “They aren’t rare or given at life’s great moments. Nor should they be.”
Lightbox will be available from September at lightboxjewelry.com
