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"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 fashi

"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 diamonds down to the price of Moissanite, and create a artificial distinction between natural and man made dimaonds. All of this so the price of man made diamonds doesn't bring down the price of the natural stones with it.

godzillabrennus 8y ago
Smart move. Throw enough marketing dollars at misinformation and you can convince hordes of people to doubt facts. Case in point. Despite overwhelming evidence there are people today who still debate climate change.
- BookmarkSaver 8y ago
  Or the staggering number of anti-GMO laws and business ad campaigns.
  - seibelj 8y ago
    Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter
    - mathgladiator 8y ago
      Or that they understand science and don't want to be in the experimental group. They would rather be in the control.
      - bumblebritches5 8y ago
        Amen. It's hilarious to me how most of those "hur dur ur anti science11111!!" people literally don't even understand anything about what they're talking about, the talking box just told them that they're ok so they parrot it back to feel smart.
      - sametmax 8y ago
        That's a rather elegant and funny way to put it. Unfortunately, a huge issue is that it's almost impossible to be in the control group anymore. Or if it is, it demands huge efforts and is very hard to check the success of it. I understand the scientists defending the GMO. But quite often, they assume people in charge are making decisions the same way they do. However, the people in charge often make decisions according to economical factors, science being just a tool toward that goal.
    - sersi 8y ago
      I don't necessarily hate all GMO but I'm very dubious about GMO crops that are engineered to withstand Glyphosate better and I prefer not to eat such crops because they are more likely to have been treated with this herbicide.
      - daveFNbuck 8y ago
        Why do you have that preference? It's my understanding that the alternatives are worse.
        hutzlibu 8y ago
        Organic food is worse than food wich was treated with various chemicals to kill living things? Thats news to me. But you probably mean "alternatives" for producing dirt cheap. Then yes, there are much worse substances around. Doesn't make it good, though.
        driverdan 8y ago
        Organic food is treated with pesticides and herbicides too. There's a limited list of allowed chemicals, some of which are much worse than glycophosphate.
        barrkel 8y ago
        To be sure we're all on the same page, there are differences in organic regulation in the US vs the EU. I don't know much about the US situation, but an outline of EU general regulations for organic plants is https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/eu-policy/eu-rules-on-production/plants-and-plant-products_en https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/eu-policy/eu-rules-... : > Basic substances allowed in organic agriculture comply with two criteria: i) they are of vegetable or animal origin ii) they are considered to be "foodstuff"
        icebraining 8y ago
        That's not true, though, there are authorized exceptions, like copper. See Annex II, table 3: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=uriserv%3AOJ.L_.2016.116.01.0008.01.ENG https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=uriserv%...
    - 21 8y ago
      Right, don't forget about people who are opposed to nuclear because of Fukushima. A good filter of people who don't understand science and how safe the nuclear industry is.
      - sametmax 8y ago
        I'm pro nuclear, but given that the side effects on the oceans and hence the entire planet are still to be accounted for and that we won't know before decades, I find that comment quite arrogant. It's also discarding the real suffering of all the people that were affected by the 3 major nuclear accidents. I have a friend of mine who his medicated for life because of Chernobyl. Black and white are rarely the winning colors.
        Jedd 8y ago
        I suspect parent's comment was actually sarcastic, rather than arrogant. Nuclear is a term burdened with ambiguity - most people mean nuclear fission, some people mean nuclear fusion. As far as filters for scientific understanding, it's probably better than 'GMO is bad'.
        Turing_Machine 8y ago
        > I'm pro nuclear, but given that the side effects on the oceans and hence the entire planet are still to be accounted for and that we won't know before decades, I find that comment quite arrogant. The ocean already has about 4.5 billion tons of naturally-occurring uranium in it, as well as many other radioactive substances. Fukushima wouldn't have made a significant difference in that figure if they'd ground up the entire reactor to a powder and dumped every single bit of it in the ocean. You could perhaps produce localized contamination by doing that, but not on the scale of the oceans as a whole. For that matter, the Soviet Union used to dump their scrap submarine reactors straight into the ocean. They did that with a bunch of them.
        sametmax 8y ago
        > The ocean already has about 4.5 billion tons of naturally-occurring uranium in it Intensity and locality are important factors. You can eat a spoonfull of sugar everyday for a year and be ok, but eating 365 in one day is going to be a different story. Because ocean are very complex an interactive system, and local intense event can then have a domino effect on the rest. Now as I said, we don't know the effects yet. I'm not pretending I know if it's bad either. That's the meaning of "we don't know". But given we have only one planet and we kinda sitting on it, it seems very silly to me to state "nah, we'll be fine" and discard risks. That's how teenagers react.
    - p1necone 8y ago
      Lots of smart people have problems with Monsanto's business practices rather than GMO specifically.
      - KC8ZKF 8y ago
        Maybe we should have "Non-Monsanto" labels then, instead of "Non-GMO."
      - sametmax 8y ago
        Also, the fact is that Monsanto, which has had trouble with its ethical reputation, is very adamant about GMO. So if you don't trust Monsanto for most things, you will especially not trust it to tell you the truth about the safety of its products nor about the completeness of their tests to ensure said safety.
        dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Also, the fact is that Monsanto, which has had trouble with its ethical reputation, is very adamant about GMO. It's adamant about the safety of its GMO lines and (in the case of Roundup Ready) the pesticide products that are complementary to them. It's, OTOH, also a big producer of non-GMO seed and actively markets products to the organic food industry.
        nradov 8y ago
        What specifically has Monsanto done that was unethical?
        sametmax 8y ago
        It creates seeds you can't harvest, plant and grow again to maintain a captive market. When it can't do that, it sues farmers that harvest, plan and grow the seed it wants to protect. This includes Monsanto's crops contaminating other crops like in the Vernon Hugh Bowman case. It also promoted (at least in France) round up as biodegradable but we eventually found out it didn't, and went to contaminate the drinking water. Which is a problem, given that glyphosate based products are currently in the process of being banned in Europe. The answer from Monsanto to that has been ghostwriting reports and pretend they didn't come from them.
    - redstripe 8y ago
      That's not saying much. Most of us don't understand most science behind anything outside of our limited specializations. These beliefs are manifestations of people's distrust of large institutions. People believe GMO is bad because they believe that large corporations would do anything for a buck regardless of long term consequences. Alien abduction, anti-vaxers, 9/11 inside job and other conspiracy theories are just ways for people to express their distrust of government. Global warming deniers don't trust the liberal media. The pattern is: I don't trust X. What is the worst thing I could believe about X.
      - cgag 8y ago
        There's a world of difference between a proper conspiracy and thinking GMOs and powerful pesticides might not be a good idea. I don't avoid them but I don't think it's all that unlikely they'll turn out to have negative effects.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. Not actually being familiar with the science in a particular domain and not understanding as science are very different things.
    - ksec 8y ago
      And you just filter out most of of the world. Most in EU are against GMO, China is against imported GMO ( They only allow certain GMO options / products ) The only nation on earth that is a large proponent of GMO food is US. But even US consumers are divided on this issues At one point in time I thought GMO was a necessary evil, in order to feed the world better. Simplot used to pride their GMO potato that has much better yields then anyone else on the planet. But climate changes proves no breed is best for all time. In the mean time, a few European companies ; failing to combat the GMO production yield and had comparatively worse climate to grown potatoes, manage to outrun any US companies potato yield with machine learning. This is of course an over simplify version of it, but the story proves we don't need GMO to feed the world.
  - sametmax 8y ago
    GMO are a very powerful technology. Like anything powerful, an intelligent person calls for caution. A lot of people are worrying about GMO in food because we don't have enough data about them. We are changing things that could have important biological, health and ecological impacts, but the companies producing them are not willing to test them extensively for safety during 20 years before selling them. We don't know what are the long term effects of cross breeding the GMO species with non GMO ones. We don't know the long term effects of the fauna. We don't known the long term (on decades) effects of ingesting any of them. What we know is that if you give mouses the GMO food in isolation for a short time, they don't develop apparent problems. That's not a lot to go on, especially since very simple products, like processed meat, revealed themself as being carcinogenous on the long run (http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/). That's not science to me. That's business as usual. I don't trust business. History taught me that for profit entities don't make the right decisions on this. After all, we knew asbestos was dangerous in 1920, but had to wait 1980 to act on it. After all, we fed cows with meat while knowing it's an herbivore, leading to spongiform encephalopathy. After all, we used the least safe nuclear technology we knew about because it was more suited for our military ambitions. On a technology as complex as GMO, with a lot of interactions in different systems, it can take a lot of time to realize something is wrong. If it happens, it will take even more time before we act. The companies creating GMO will then, as usual, protect them-self to the extreme, and eventually just pay some money to get out of trouble, money they already earned by selling the GMO anyway. So yes, whether it's GMO in food, nano-particles or anything that is very potent, I think it's fair to say "hey, slow down, we are not doing our homework here" when the other side is just trying to sell it to everybody. It's a matter of agenda.
    - girvo 8y ago
      And yet none of the food we farm hasn’t been modified, genetically. None of it is natural. Are you as worried about new strains of rice? I can see a good argument to worry about all of it, but picking a particular method and demonising it confuses me. But perhaps it’s because I’ve not been exposed to the anti-GMO propaganda (and pro-) that the USA is flooded with that I’m not “intelligent”?
- tehlike 8y ago
  The diamond love itself was a result of marketing dollars from the same company.
  - jacksproit 8y ago
    References https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo... https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bullshit https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bulls...
- labster 8y ago
  A diamond is forever, even if your climate is not. Using diamonds for carbon sequestration seems like the wrong approach, though.
  - officialjunk 8y ago
    diamonds can burn, and temperatures reached in house fires are sufficiently hot enough to burn diamonds. cubic zirconia, on the other hand, will survive a house fire.
    - caf 8y ago
      My experience of a housefire is that there is far more water and smoke damage to contents than heat.
      - KozmoNau7 8y ago
        That depends on the response time of the firefighters, ie. how long the fire is allowed to rage. If it's an old house, there is going to be a bit more "stuff" in the wallpaper and furniture. Airborne cooking grease in the kitchen, and as disgusting as it sounds, human sweat and grease in the soft furniture. A well-used armchair with a decade or two under its belt is going to go up in flames disturbingly fast when it catches on fire. Depending on oxygen availability, you're right that smoke will do most of the initial damage, but as soon as the windows blow out, things heat up dramatically.
- dylan604 8y ago
  At the risk of diverging into politics, it's amazing how "influencers" can do this with social media posts without spending lots of money. As long as the information is from someone (company/individual/etc) perceived as reputable, people will believe almost anything at face value. It's much easier than researching something on their own. Whatever the message, say it loud and often, and it becomes accepted as true. Call it spin, call it PR, call it marketing, it works.
  - ballenf 8y ago
    Some people value information and being right less so make a trade off. If I found an “influencer” who was right on product recommendations 95% of the time it would be a relief and I’d be so happy to get all that research time back. I think the bar for right enough varies among different people. And for some people it applies to everything from politics to science. These people are also likely to believe the topics too complex to follow in detail. If they choose a good person to follow they may be more right than if they researched themselves. What you attribute to laziness could perhaps be seen in a different light: economizing time plus intimidation/fear.
    - pishpash 8y ago
      Put another way, not "lazy" then, but "slow". Because if you're "fast" enough (in understanding something new or different), you can do more of your own research and thinking and demand a higher bar on the outsourcing accuracy.
  - daryllxd 8y ago
    Yes, I agree, and it really is a feature (flaw?) of human psychology. As much as I want to say that I want to make sure that I research something before doing or buying it, more often than not I just choose something based on emotion. Even for something like programming, I wonder if I use libraries based on their utility or on the star power of the guy who built it. It takes a lot of mental power to weigh pros and cons versus just choosing and hoping for the best.
- everyone 8y ago
  Read about that business in detail in this good book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
- BurningFrog 8y ago
  That's not how disbelieving works. People disbelieve facts that would cost them to believe. If I believe in climate change, I have to make expensive life changes (sell the SUV, buy a Tesla, etc). Therefore I will not believe in it. This belief is 100% honest, BTW. This is key to understand! For diamonds, the incentives are reversed. If I believe that artificial diamonds are as good as the natural kind, I can get a wedding ring much cheaper. So I will probably believe that! If I have already bought natural diamonds, I might believe something else. But it doesn't matter much, since I'm not buying more diamonds.
  - goodpass 8y ago
    Erm, I think it’s more like “I have a certain worldview that is only consistent if climate change isn’t real” or “this belief is part of my identity, which means the idea that it could be wrong is threatening to my identity”.
    - BurningFrog 8y ago
      Yeah, those are also important. This is a big topic :)
    - ballenf 8y ago
      Or, believing in X empowers the opposition and weakens the party who cares about the people I care about.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > If I believe in climate change, I have to make expensive life changes (sell the SUV, buy a Tesla, etc). In part this is true, but none of those are necessary, but what is neceaary for most deniers if they flip is “abandon my political tribe, whose leaders have defined the belief in climate change as outside the bounds of the tribe.” That's really very nearly the only factor that matters.
    - lopmotr 8y ago
      The tribalism goes both ways. Sadly, it's hard to be a pragmatic optimist and say "Yea it's probably going to change but there's also nothing we can do about it without killing millions of people through economic destruction and we'll likely adapt anyway (humans can adapt their civilizations in the time scales of climate change - see the rapid growth of Chinese cities), so let's not worry too much." Then everyone sees you as their political enemy.
- briandear 8y ago
  We don’t dispute climate change. We dispute that man-made CO2 is the cause of it. Still waiting for the apocalypse promised in An Inconvenient Truth that was promised by 2016.
- BjoernKW 8y ago
  I don't think that's such a good example. Climate change should be debated. Not if it's happening but to what extent and effect. Science after all is about questioning findings and theories. Discussing climate change shouldn't be about politics first and foremost but about science. As for De Beers, throwing marketing dollars at misinformation pretty much has been their business model since the 1930s. Diamonds are a girl's best friend ...
  - Deestan 8y ago
    > Climate change should be debated Yes, by people who are trained scientists and researchers. We don't need more poorly informed, mathematically weak, statistically challenged, dilletantes yelling into the mix.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  If you're going to bring politics into it, don't forget the left's denial of the well established race-IQ and gender-IQ relationships.
on_and_off 8y ago
Well, their entire business model depends on persuading their clients that natural diamonds are a rarity and better than human-created ones. So I don't really expect them to offer a non biased view here, even though their audacity is astounding.
- colanderman 8y ago
  Yep. I've seen lots of marketing spam on my elevator's "Captivate" box "educating" viewers on colored diamonds and how "natural" impurities make them that way. Very obvious ploy to increase the desirability of mined diamonds.
  - John_KZ 8y ago
    Well, the whole point of diamonds is to show off wealth. Natural diamonds and their defects are more expensive and very hard to replicate crystallographically , so they're not doing anything unexpected.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      But they are more expensive in many cases because of artificially reduced supply, not because of actual rarity. Now, for a whole bunch of people that makes absolutely no difference (if anyone needs evidence, look at the Birkin Bag, which NPR's Planet Money covered well), but for others it does. In this case the market needs the average consumer to buy into that status symbol, and enough of them are price conscious that a cheaper alternative that almost nobody can tell is cheaper is quite a draw.
    - on_and_off 8y ago
      Somebody needs to persuade rich assholes that trying to make the world better is the new trendy way to show off.
  - distances 8y ago
    Off topic, but I'm not sure I got this -- you have advertisements in an elevator?
TylerE 8y ago
Diamonds are forever... unless dropped from waist height onto a hard surface.
- draw_down 8y ago
  Hmm?
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Four planes of perfect cleavage. That's why my favorite stones are corundum and nephrite.
Iv 8y ago
Interestingly enough, the way to differentiate man-made from natural diamonds is to look for flaws and impurities: man-made diamonds are much more likely to be purer and flawless. If you want a natural stone that is "forever", look into the nature shop, they have tons of beautiful solid stones. If you want a shiny, pure gem stone, lab-grown is going to give the best quality. Natural diamonds are hopefully becoming a commodity for wealthy and misguided hipsters. It is a good thing that the bloodstained business is failing.
- adrianratnapala 8y ago
  > man-made diamonds are much more likely to be purer and flawless. Hmm, both natural and man-made stones have price/quality trade-offs. I am no expert in the field, but I think both kinds are post-sorted into quality grades based on what flaws are found. And I guess labs can also tune their growth parameters for different trade-offs. So yes, for a given price and size, the artificial stone will have better quality -- but that is just another way of saying they are cheaper.
  - jjeaff 8y ago
    That's actually not my understanding. I have heard that most man-made stones are nearly flawless (at least when it comes to occlusions). Some processes have actually started introducing "fake" occlusions just to make them impossible to distinguish from the natural variety.
    - hessenwolf 8y ago
      Nah, you need all sorts of quality grades for drilling, polishing, etc.
      - CydeWeys 8y ago
        No you don't. Those aren't the hard parts. You use the same high quality, industrial machines to cut and polish synthetic diamonds as you do natural diamonds, and you get the same result. The only quality grades that make sense are color and perfection for natural diamonds, or maybe cutting grades for antique hand-ground diamonds that weren't done well.
ggg9990 8y ago
What if even below Moissanite? If they are selling artificial diamonds for $1 each that might be the best way to protect the mined diamond price.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  It would. But I think the real threat is that man-made diamonds will likely become impossible to distinguish from natural, even with the expensive, specialty equipment that debeers has created. At that point, natural and man-made will reach a price parity... Far below the current cost of natural diamonds. Because there will be no way of knowing where your diamond comes from.
  - ggg9990 8y ago
    Well, at that point they can create a "guaranteed provenance" diamond with papers like a show dog or a Mickey Mantle autographed baseball. That will help shut out even other mined diamonds vendors since all the marketing will be for the DeBeers branded diamond.
    - peatmoss 8y ago
      Though that could backfire. “This diamond was mined in a certified conflict zone.”
kenning 8y ago
Very reminiscient of the intentional devaluation of Crystal Pepsi by Tab Clear (see the second paragraph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Clear#Post-discontinuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Clear#Post-discontinuation)
- GalacticDomin8r 8y ago
  More like Hedging, either way Sergio Zyman looks like a genius: Doesn't stick = Intentional devaluation Sticks = Brilliant capitalization of the market. Tab back then was far more popular than today. It was at today's level of Dr. Pepper.
- gowld 8y ago
  That's absurd. People just didn't go for the colorless cola fad that year. Why did "Tab Clear" "kill" Crystal Pepsi, but not Sprite or 7-Up? The person who tried to copy Crystal Pepsi failed, and made up an excuse to cover his failure.
ISL 8y ago
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 than diamond. SiC has a greater index of refraction, which improves the properties of total-internal-reflection as well! (Edit: It is also birefringent, which does require care when choosing a cut, size, and setting) Cubic zirconia, too, can be stunning. Order a handful of 10-15mm stones and see for yourself. Or, for a little more money, synthetic rubies and sapphires can transform how you think about nature (they're the same crystal, except for differing defects). The real beauty of many stones is in the cut, not the base material. Diamond absolutely has its place, but it is but one in a spectrum of really cool offerings. It is the rarity of materials that give them cachet, but the physical properties that make them beautiful. Platinum is a boring metal, visually, difficult to distinguish by eye from steels, aluminum, and titanium. The bloom of the commonest flower is far prettier, but we barely notice because they seem so commonplace and ephemeral. Every one of these materials was born in the heart of a star or in the heat of an astrophysical cataclysm, each just as natural as the next. Disclaimer/Caution: I've lost (so far) large fractions of small amounts of money betting long on SiC as a business venture.
- thaumasiotes 8y ago
  >> Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made diamonds down to the price of Moissanite, and create a artificial distinction between natural and man made dimaonds. > Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion than diamond. SiC has a greater index of refraction, which improves the properties of total-internal-reflection as well! As an investor you probably know this, but for the benefit of everyone else, Moissanite is a marketing term for (crystalline) silicon carbide. Similarly to how sapphire is a special term for crystalline aluminum oxide, but the word "sapphire" has a bit more tradition behind it.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
propogandist 8y ago
The slogan "a diamond is forever" is one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time. It encourages people to voluntarily limit circulation of a rock that's mined by the tonnes, whose supply is carefully controlled to keep profits high. The links they've made with the slogan to love also helps keep the money flowing.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  It is deviously brilliant. Play on people's emotions, equate a diamond with "till death do us part", make it almost shameful to even consider reselling that stone. Is there any other product where resale is "voluntarily" limited like that?
  - lawlessone 8y ago
    bitcoin? "HODL"
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      Oh dear yes, that was certainly something. At least diamonds didn't see that type of rabid frenzy.
  - CydeWeys 8y ago
    It's widely considered one of the best marketing campaigns of all time, and used frequently as a case study in business school, for good reason.
- mkirklions 8y ago
  Eh, there is an obvious difference in quality between the brown diamond crumbs and clear rocks.
  - xienze 8y ago
    They scoop up tons of the gem-quality diamonds as well. OP is correct about how the industry operates. This is a great article (from 1982!) that goes into great depth about the diamond scam: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
mirimir 8y ago
I think that "may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" is not about the stone, but about the attitude of the giver and receiver. But experience doesn't support an association of diamonds with relationship stability.
sixothree 8y ago
My guess there are doped with detectable elements as to ensure they are never confused with real diamonds.
perfectstorm 8y ago
the skeptic in me thinks these man made diamonds they make are made so that it won't last forever. I bet in 5yrs these diamonds would somehow fade or even break so they can keep selling natural long lasting diamonds.
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
Exactly. Just wait for their counter-blow. They have enough money, resources and incentives to try to destroy man-made diamonds for at least a few more decades.
- Animats 8y ago
  Not like they used to. De Beers used to have a monopoly on distribution, but that's been broken. You can get synthetic diamonds on Alibaba now. Some of which really are diamond.
  - pnathan 8y ago
    now I am wondering about getting a multi-carat synthetic diamond on the cheap. :-)
  - hospes 8y ago
    How do you distinguish if they are real diamonds on Alibaba? Edit: Typo
SkyMarshal 8y ago
Yup, exactly. The man-made diamond industry should just counter by talking up how they can make perfectly "pure" diamonds with zero imperfections in color or clarity, superior in quality to mined diamonds, and with no human lives lost. Just keep drilling that point home in all their sales and PR until it changes the dynamic. I'm sure the millennials will be receptive to that - cheap, better, not immoral.
- tcgv 8y ago
  That would be a marketing battle, which is often won by the side with the biggest marketing budget, probably the well established natural diamond industry. Besides, I personally feel that "lab grown diamonds" have more weak (marketing) points than "natural, made by stars, millennial diamonds". Could be wrong though.
- mr_toad 8y ago
  They should introduce imperfections, and market them as real. Bad money drives out good.
rebuilder 8y ago
They're not the same. Physically, man-made diamonds tend to be superior to natural ones, or so I'm tood. But that's beside the point for consumers - they mostly don't buy based on physical criteria beyond size. They buy dimonds because it's the done thing, because they're expensive. If diamonds lose that exclusivity De Beers have gone to such lengths to uphold, I think they'll also lose their appeal.
Bad_CRC 8y ago
The same thing Coca Cola did with Crystal Pepsi...
Steeeve 8y ago
Ahh... the old Tab Clear strategy. Brilliant when you can pull it off.
nailer 8y ago
> affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever... ...is also a lie. The man made diamonds will last just as long (or longer, as they're generally more perfect) than mined diamonds.
manojlds 8y ago
Reminds me of what Coca Cola did to get rid of Crystal Pepsi.
onetimemanytime 8y ago
Yp, De Beers has a monopoly of sorts in the natural diamonds but anyone can create synthetic ones. Just like a "Diamond is forever" they will malign the man made ones. To be fair, diamonds have value because of rarity and marketing. Not sure how many normal people can tell the difference between a diamond and a cubic zirconia, so it isn't just how it looks.
konschubert 8y ago
I'm optimistic that their strategy will fail. People buying diamonds to show off to others will still buy the artificial ones since they're indistinguishable.
praptak 8y ago
Protecting the price of a product by selling its cheap substitute? Sounds pretty dumb to me. Hedging sounds like a more sensible explanation.
markatkinson 8y ago
My exact thoughts, this statement made me chuckle: 'Synthetic diamonds, which can be produced in about 500 hours, share the same physical, chemical and optical characteristics as natural stones. But they are not nearly as valuable.' So... the two items are identical in every possible way that matters except in the way that lines De Beers pockets? It almost feels like De Beers sponsored this article in a desperate campaign to make dirty mined diamonds more valuable.
- knieveltech 8y ago
  Considering the De Beers cartel basically fabricated the entire ritual around engagement rings from thin air through paid marketing and op-ed pieces this would hardly be surprising if true.
snarf21 8y ago
Obviously they will fight to keep their monopoly and protect their cache. Just like lab grown meat is gaining traction, I think synthetic companies have the ability to push the social angle. "Identical in composition to the diamonds mined by slaves and used to finance terrorism." Just need an English major to turn that into a catchy slogan! :)
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  NB: cachet vs. cache: https://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/cache-cash.asp https://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/cache-cash.asp
  - snarf21 8y ago
    Sorry, my statement was vague. I did mean cache as in horde. They have stockpiles of "value" that they will protect at all costs.
    - dredmorbius 8y ago
      Ah, thanks, though yes, unclear ;-)
vilhelm_s 8y ago
I guess De Beers must be selling the synthetic diamons with a much smaller profit margin? A couple of years ago, makers of synthetic diamond jewelry said they would cost about 60% of natural ones ("Baruch says savings may be as high as 40 percent in some cases; this is especially appealing to savvy millennial shoppers." --https://www.racked.com/2016/6/14/11872830/lab-grown-diamonds-synthetic https://www.racked.com/2016/6/14/11872830/lab-grown-diamonds...), and now Lightbox will sell them at 10% the price of natural ones. Unlike mines you can't really establish a monopoly in vapor deposit ovens, so in the long run competition should drive down costs. It makes sense that De Beers would want to fast-forward that process, particularly since the price of natural diamonds is kindof arbitrary anyway.
ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
This reminds me of the story about how Coke launched an intentionally bad competitor to "Crystal Pepsi" in order to confuse the marketplace. http://11points.com/coke-made-intentionally-terrible-clear-cola-take-crystal-pepsi/ http://11points.com/coke-made-intentionally-terrible-clear-c... The strategy is called Kamikaze marketing... and can result in fantastic stories like this, but it is almost never successful. Unfortunately I think DeBeers might have the ability to pull it off.
- gowld 8y ago
  That story is one executive's excuse for why his product idea failed.

godzillabrennus 8y ago

Smart move. Throw enough marketing dollars at misinformation and you can convince hordes of people to doubt facts. Case in point. Despite overwhelming evidence there are people today who still debate climate change.

BookmarkSaver 8y ago
Or the staggering number of anti-GMO laws and business ad campaigns.
- seibelj 8y ago
  Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. A good filter
  - mathgladiator 8y ago
    Or that they understand science and don't want to be in the experimental group. They would rather be in the control.
    - bumblebritches5 8y ago
      Amen. It's hilarious to me how most of those "hur dur ur anti science11111!!" people literally don't even understand anything about what they're talking about, the talking box just told them that they're ok so they parrot it back to feel smart.
    - sametmax 8y ago
      That's a rather elegant and funny way to put it. Unfortunately, a huge issue is that it's almost impossible to be in the control group anymore. Or if it is, it demands huge efforts and is very hard to check the success of it. I understand the scientists defending the GMO. But quite often, they assume people in charge are making decisions the same way they do. However, the people in charge often make decisions according to economical factors, science being just a tool toward that goal.
  - sersi 8y ago
    I don't necessarily hate all GMO but I'm very dubious about GMO crops that are engineered to withstand Glyphosate better and I prefer not to eat such crops because they are more likely to have been treated with this herbicide.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      Why do you have that preference? It's my understanding that the alternatives are worse.
      - hutzlibu 8y ago
        Organic food is worse than food wich was treated with various chemicals to kill living things? Thats news to me. But you probably mean "alternatives" for producing dirt cheap. Then yes, there are much worse substances around. Doesn't make it good, though.
        driverdan 8y ago
        Organic food is treated with pesticides and herbicides too. There's a limited list of allowed chemicals, some of which are much worse than glycophosphate.
        barrkel 8y ago
        To be sure we're all on the same page, there are differences in organic regulation in the US vs the EU. I don't know much about the US situation, but an outline of EU general regulations for organic plants is https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/eu-policy/eu-rules-on-production/plants-and-plant-products_en https://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/eu-policy/eu-rules-... : > Basic substances allowed in organic agriculture comply with two criteria: i) they are of vegetable or animal origin ii) they are considered to be "foodstuff"
        icebraining 8y ago
        That's not true, though, there are authorized exceptions, like copper. See Annex II, table 3: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=uriserv%3AOJ.L_.2016.116.01.0008.01.ENG https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=uriserv%...
  - 21 8y ago
    Right, don't forget about people who are opposed to nuclear because of Fukushima. A good filter of people who don't understand science and how safe the nuclear industry is.
    - sametmax 8y ago
      I'm pro nuclear, but given that the side effects on the oceans and hence the entire planet are still to be accounted for and that we won't know before decades, I find that comment quite arrogant. It's also discarding the real suffering of all the people that were affected by the 3 major nuclear accidents. I have a friend of mine who his medicated for life because of Chernobyl. Black and white are rarely the winning colors.
      - Jedd 8y ago
        I suspect parent's comment was actually sarcastic, rather than arrogant. Nuclear is a term burdened with ambiguity - most people mean nuclear fission, some people mean nuclear fusion. As far as filters for scientific understanding, it's probably better than 'GMO is bad'.
      - Turing_Machine 8y ago
        > I'm pro nuclear, but given that the side effects on the oceans and hence the entire planet are still to be accounted for and that we won't know before decades, I find that comment quite arrogant. The ocean already has about 4.5 billion tons of naturally-occurring uranium in it, as well as many other radioactive substances. Fukushima wouldn't have made a significant difference in that figure if they'd ground up the entire reactor to a powder and dumped every single bit of it in the ocean. You could perhaps produce localized contamination by doing that, but not on the scale of the oceans as a whole. For that matter, the Soviet Union used to dump their scrap submarine reactors straight into the ocean. They did that with a bunch of them.
        sametmax 8y ago
        > The ocean already has about 4.5 billion tons of naturally-occurring uranium in it Intensity and locality are important factors. You can eat a spoonfull of sugar everyday for a year and be ok, but eating 365 in one day is going to be a different story. Because ocean are very complex an interactive system, and local intense event can then have a domino effect on the rest. Now as I said, we don't know the effects yet. I'm not pretending I know if it's bad either. That's the meaning of "we don't know". But given we have only one planet and we kinda sitting on it, it seems very silly to me to state "nah, we'll be fine" and discard risks. That's how teenagers react.
  - p1necone 8y ago
    Lots of smart people have problems with Monsanto's business practices rather than GMO specifically.
    - KC8ZKF 8y ago
      Maybe we should have "Non-Monsanto" labels then, instead of "Non-GMO."
    - sametmax 8y ago
      Also, the fact is that Monsanto, which has had trouble with its ethical reputation, is very adamant about GMO. So if you don't trust Monsanto for most things, you will especially not trust it to tell you the truth about the safety of its products nor about the completeness of their tests to ensure said safety.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > Also, the fact is that Monsanto, which has had trouble with its ethical reputation, is very adamant about GMO. It's adamant about the safety of its GMO lines and (in the case of Roundup Ready) the pesticide products that are complementary to them. It's, OTOH, also a big producer of non-GMO seed and actively markets products to the organic food industry.
      - nradov 8y ago
        What specifically has Monsanto done that was unethical?
        sametmax 8y ago
        It creates seeds you can't harvest, plant and grow again to maintain a captive market. When it can't do that, it sues farmers that harvest, plan and grow the seed it wants to protect. This includes Monsanto's crops contaminating other crops like in the Vernon Hugh Bowman case. It also promoted (at least in France) round up as biodegradable but we eventually found out it didn't, and went to contaminate the drinking water. Which is a problem, given that glyphosate based products are currently in the process of being banned in Europe. The answer from Monsanto to that has been ghostwriting reports and pretend they didn't come from them.
  - redstripe 8y ago
    That's not saying much. Most of us don't understand most science behind anything outside of our limited specializations. These beliefs are manifestations of people's distrust of large institutions. People believe GMO is bad because they believe that large corporations would do anything for a buck regardless of long term consequences. Alien abduction, anti-vaxers, 9/11 inside job and other conspiracy theories are just ways for people to express their distrust of government. Global warming deniers don't trust the liberal media. The pattern is: I don't trust X. What is the worst thing I could believe about X.
    - cgag 8y ago
      There's a world of difference between a proper conspiracy and thinking GMOs and powerful pesticides might not be a good idea. I don't avoid them but I don't think it's all that unlikely they'll turn out to have negative effects.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Educated people who hate GMO are instant signal that they don’t understand science. Not actually being familiar with the science in a particular domain and not understanding as science are very different things.
  - ksec 8y ago
    And you just filter out most of of the world. Most in EU are against GMO, China is against imported GMO ( They only allow certain GMO options / products ) The only nation on earth that is a large proponent of GMO food is US. But even US consumers are divided on this issues At one point in time I thought GMO was a necessary evil, in order to feed the world better. Simplot used to pride their GMO potato that has much better yields then anyone else on the planet. But climate changes proves no breed is best for all time. In the mean time, a few European companies ; failing to combat the GMO production yield and had comparatively worse climate to grown potatoes, manage to outrun any US companies potato yield with machine learning. This is of course an over simplify version of it, but the story proves we don't need GMO to feed the world.
- sametmax 8y ago
  GMO are a very powerful technology. Like anything powerful, an intelligent person calls for caution. A lot of people are worrying about GMO in food because we don't have enough data about them. We are changing things that could have important biological, health and ecological impacts, but the companies producing them are not willing to test them extensively for safety during 20 years before selling them. We don't know what are the long term effects of cross breeding the GMO species with non GMO ones. We don't know the long term effects of the fauna. We don't known the long term (on decades) effects of ingesting any of them. What we know is that if you give mouses the GMO food in isolation for a short time, they don't develop apparent problems. That's not a lot to go on, especially since very simple products, like processed meat, revealed themself as being carcinogenous on the long run (http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/ http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/). That's not science to me. That's business as usual. I don't trust business. History taught me that for profit entities don't make the right decisions on this. After all, we knew asbestos was dangerous in 1920, but had to wait 1980 to act on it. After all, we fed cows with meat while knowing it's an herbivore, leading to spongiform encephalopathy. After all, we used the least safe nuclear technology we knew about because it was more suited for our military ambitions. On a technology as complex as GMO, with a lot of interactions in different systems, it can take a lot of time to realize something is wrong. If it happens, it will take even more time before we act. The companies creating GMO will then, as usual, protect them-self to the extreme, and eventually just pay some money to get out of trouble, money they already earned by selling the GMO anyway. So yes, whether it's GMO in food, nano-particles or anything that is very potent, I think it's fair to say "hey, slow down, we are not doing our homework here" when the other side is just trying to sell it to everybody. It's a matter of agenda.
  - girvo 8y ago
    And yet none of the food we farm hasn’t been modified, genetically. None of it is natural. Are you as worried about new strains of rice? I can see a good argument to worry about all of it, but picking a particular method and demonising it confuses me. But perhaps it’s because I’ve not been exposed to the anti-GMO propaganda (and pro-) that the USA is flooded with that I’m not “intelligent”?
tehlike 8y ago
The diamond love itself was a result of marketing dollars from the same company.
- jacksproit 8y ago
  References https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo... https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bullshit https://priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-bulls...
labster 8y ago
A diamond is forever, even if your climate is not. Using diamonds for carbon sequestration seems like the wrong approach, though.
- officialjunk 8y ago
  diamonds can burn, and temperatures reached in house fires are sufficiently hot enough to burn diamonds. cubic zirconia, on the other hand, will survive a house fire.
  - caf 8y ago
    My experience of a housefire is that there is far more water and smoke damage to contents than heat.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      That depends on the response time of the firefighters, ie. how long the fire is allowed to rage. If it's an old house, there is going to be a bit more "stuff" in the wallpaper and furniture. Airborne cooking grease in the kitchen, and as disgusting as it sounds, human sweat and grease in the soft furniture. A well-used armchair with a decade or two under its belt is going to go up in flames disturbingly fast when it catches on fire. Depending on oxygen availability, you're right that smoke will do most of the initial damage, but as soon as the windows blow out, things heat up dramatically.
dylan604 8y ago
At the risk of diverging into politics, it's amazing how "influencers" can do this with social media posts without spending lots of money. As long as the information is from someone (company/individual/etc) perceived as reputable, people will believe almost anything at face value. It's much easier than researching something on their own. Whatever the message, say it loud and often, and it becomes accepted as true. Call it spin, call it PR, call it marketing, it works.
- ballenf 8y ago
  Some people value information and being right less so make a trade off. If I found an “influencer” who was right on product recommendations 95% of the time it would be a relief and I’d be so happy to get all that research time back. I think the bar for right enough varies among different people. And for some people it applies to everything from politics to science. These people are also likely to believe the topics too complex to follow in detail. If they choose a good person to follow they may be more right than if they researched themselves. What you attribute to laziness could perhaps be seen in a different light: economizing time plus intimidation/fear.
  - pishpash 8y ago
    Put another way, not "lazy" then, but "slow". Because if you're "fast" enough (in understanding something new or different), you can do more of your own research and thinking and demand a higher bar on the outsourcing accuracy.
- daryllxd 8y ago
  Yes, I agree, and it really is a feature (flaw?) of human psychology. As much as I want to say that I want to make sure that I research something before doing or buying it, more often than not I just choose something based on emotion. Even for something like programming, I wonder if I use libraries based on their utility or on the star power of the guy who built it. It takes a lot of mental power to weigh pros and cons versus just choosing and hoping for the best.
everyone 8y ago
Read about that business in detail in this good book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
BurningFrog 8y ago
That's not how disbelieving works. People disbelieve facts that would cost them to believe. If I believe in climate change, I have to make expensive life changes (sell the SUV, buy a Tesla, etc). Therefore I will not believe in it. This belief is 100% honest, BTW. This is key to understand! For diamonds, the incentives are reversed. If I believe that artificial diamonds are as good as the natural kind, I can get a wedding ring much cheaper. So I will probably believe that! If I have already bought natural diamonds, I might believe something else. But it doesn't matter much, since I'm not buying more diamonds.
- goodpass 8y ago
  Erm, I think it’s more like “I have a certain worldview that is only consistent if climate change isn’t real” or “this belief is part of my identity, which means the idea that it could be wrong is threatening to my identity”.
  - BurningFrog 8y ago
    Yeah, those are also important. This is a big topic :)
  - ballenf 8y ago
    Or, believing in X empowers the opposition and weakens the party who cares about the people I care about.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > If I believe in climate change, I have to make expensive life changes (sell the SUV, buy a Tesla, etc). In part this is true, but none of those are necessary, but what is neceaary for most deniers if they flip is “abandon my political tribe, whose leaders have defined the belief in climate change as outside the bounds of the tribe.” That's really very nearly the only factor that matters.
  - lopmotr 8y ago
    The tribalism goes both ways. Sadly, it's hard to be a pragmatic optimist and say "Yea it's probably going to change but there's also nothing we can do about it without killing millions of people through economic destruction and we'll likely adapt anyway (humans can adapt their civilizations in the time scales of climate change - see the rapid growth of Chinese cities), so let's not worry too much." Then everyone sees you as their political enemy.
briandear 8y ago
We don’t dispute climate change. We dispute that man-made CO2 is the cause of it. Still waiting for the apocalypse promised in An Inconvenient Truth that was promised by 2016.
BjoernKW 8y ago
I don't think that's such a good example. Climate change should be debated. Not if it's happening but to what extent and effect. Science after all is about questioning findings and theories. Discussing climate change shouldn't be about politics first and foremost but about science. As for De Beers, throwing marketing dollars at misinformation pretty much has been their business model since the 1930s. Diamonds are a girl's best friend ...
- Deestan 8y ago
  > Climate change should be debated Yes, by people who are trained scientists and researchers. We don't need more poorly informed, mathematically weak, statistically challenged, dilletantes yelling into the mix.
lopmotr 8y ago
If you're going to bring politics into it, don't forget the left's denial of the well established race-IQ and gender-IQ relationships.

on_and_off 8y ago

Well, their entire business model depends on persuading their clients that natural diamonds are a rarity and better than human-created ones. So I don't really expect them to offer a non biased view here, even though their audacity is astounding.

colanderman 8y ago
Yep. I've seen lots of marketing spam on my elevator's "Captivate" box "educating" viewers on colored diamonds and how "natural" impurities make them that way. Very obvious ploy to increase the desirability of mined diamonds.
- John_KZ 8y ago
  Well, the whole point of diamonds is to show off wealth. Natural diamonds and their defects are more expensive and very hard to replicate crystallographically , so they're not doing anything unexpected.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    But they are more expensive in many cases because of artificially reduced supply, not because of actual rarity. Now, for a whole bunch of people that makes absolutely no difference (if anyone needs evidence, look at the Birkin Bag, which NPR's Planet Money covered well), but for others it does. In this case the market needs the average consumer to buy into that status symbol, and enough of them are price conscious that a cheaper alternative that almost nobody can tell is cheaper is quite a draw.
  - on_and_off 8y ago
    Somebody needs to persuade rich assholes that trying to make the world better is the new trendy way to show off.
- distances 8y ago
  Off topic, but I'm not sure I got this -- you have advertisements in an elevator?

TylerE 8y ago

Diamonds are forever... unless dropped from waist height onto a hard surface.

draw_down 8y ago
Hmm?
logfromblammo 8y ago
Four planes of perfect cleavage. That's why my favorite stones are corundum and nephrite.

Iv 8y ago

Interestingly enough, the way to differentiate man-made from natural diamonds is to look for flaws and impurities: man-made diamonds are much more likely to be purer and flawless. If you want a natural stone that is "forever", look into the nature shop, they have tons of beautiful solid stones. If you want a shiny, pure gem stone, lab-grown is going to give the best quality. Natural diamonds are hopefully becoming a commodity for wealthy and misguided hipsters. It is a good thing that the bloodstained business is failing.

adrianratnapala 8y ago
> man-made diamonds are much more likely to be purer and flawless. Hmm, both natural and man-made stones have price/quality trade-offs. I am no expert in the field, but I think both kinds are post-sorted into quality grades based on what flaws are found. And I guess labs can also tune their growth parameters for different trade-offs. So yes, for a given price and size, the artificial stone will have better quality -- but that is just another way of saying they are cheaper.
- jjeaff 8y ago
  That's actually not my understanding. I have heard that most man-made stones are nearly flawless (at least when it comes to occlusions). Some processes have actually started introducing "fake" occlusions just to make them impossible to distinguish from the natural variety.
  - hessenwolf 8y ago
    Nah, you need all sorts of quality grades for drilling, polishing, etc.
    - CydeWeys 8y ago
      No you don't. Those aren't the hard parts. You use the same high quality, industrial machines to cut and polish synthetic diamonds as you do natural diamonds, and you get the same result. The only quality grades that make sense are color and perfection for natural diamonds, or maybe cutting grades for antique hand-ground diamonds that weren't done well.

ggg9990 8y ago

What if even below Moissanite? If they are selling artificial diamonds for $1 each that might be the best way to protect the mined diamond price.

jjeaff 8y ago
It would. But I think the real threat is that man-made diamonds will likely become impossible to distinguish from natural, even with the expensive, specialty equipment that debeers has created. At that point, natural and man-made will reach a price parity... Far below the current cost of natural diamonds. Because there will be no way of knowing where your diamond comes from.
- ggg9990 8y ago
  Well, at that point they can create a "guaranteed provenance" diamond with papers like a show dog or a Mickey Mantle autographed baseball. That will help shut out even other mined diamonds vendors since all the marketing will be for the DeBeers branded diamond.
  - peatmoss 8y ago
    Though that could backfire. “This diamond was mined in a certified conflict zone.”

kenning 8y ago

Very reminiscient of the intentional devaluation of Crystal Pepsi by Tab Clear (see the second paragraph here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Clear#Post-discontinuation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tab_Clear#Post-discontinuation)

GalacticDomin8r 8y ago
More like Hedging, either way Sergio Zyman looks like a genius: Doesn't stick = Intentional devaluation Sticks = Brilliant capitalization of the market. Tab back then was far more popular than today. It was at today's level of Dr. Pepper.
gowld 8y ago
That's absurd. People just didn't go for the colorless cola fad that year. Why did "Tab Clear" "kill" Crystal Pepsi, but not Sprite or 7-Up? The person who tried to copy Crystal Pepsi failed, and made up an excuse to cover his failure.

ISL 8y ago

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 than diamond. SiC has a greater index of refraction, which improves the properties of total-internal-reflection as well! (Edit: It is also birefringent, which does require care when choosing a cut, size, and setting) Cubic zirconia, too, can be stunning. Order a handful of 10-15mm stones and see for yourself. Or, for a little more money, synthetic rubies and sapphires can transform how you think about nature (they're the same crystal, except for differing defects). The real beauty of many stones is in the cut, not the base material. Diamond absolutely has its place, but it is but one in a spectrum of really cool offerings. It is the rarity of materials that give them cachet, but the physical properties that make them beautiful. Platinum is a boring metal, visually, difficult to distinguish by eye from steels, aluminum, and titanium. The bloom of the commonest flower is far prettier, but we barely notice because they seem so commonplace and ephemeral. Every one of these materials was born in the heart of a star or in the heat of an astrophysical cataclysm, each just as natural as the next. Disclaimer/Caution: I've lost (so far) large fractions of small amounts of money betting long on SiC as a business venture.

thaumasiotes 8y ago
>> Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made diamonds down to the price of Moissanite, and create a artificial distinction between natural and man made dimaonds. > Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion than diamond. SiC has a greater index of refraction, which improves the properties of total-internal-reflection as well! As an investor you probably know this, but for the benefit of everyone else, Moissanite is a marketing term for (crystalline) silicon carbide. Similarly to how sapphire is a special term for crystalline aluminum oxide, but the word "sapphire" has a bit more tradition behind it.
- wlesieutre 8y ago

propogandist 8y ago

The slogan "a diamond is forever" is one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time. It encourages people to voluntarily limit circulation of a rock that's mined by the tonnes, whose supply is carefully controlled to keep profits high. The links they've made with the slogan to love also helps keep the money flowing.

KozmoNau7 8y ago
It is deviously brilliant. Play on people's emotions, equate a diamond with "till death do us part", make it almost shameful to even consider reselling that stone. Is there any other product where resale is "voluntarily" limited like that?
- lawlessone 8y ago
  bitcoin? "HODL"
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    Oh dear yes, that was certainly something. At least diamonds didn't see that type of rabid frenzy.
- CydeWeys 8y ago
  It's widely considered one of the best marketing campaigns of all time, and used frequently as a case study in business school, for good reason.
mkirklions 8y ago
Eh, there is an obvious difference in quality between the brown diamond crumbs and clear rocks.
- xienze 8y ago
  They scoop up tons of the gem-quality diamonds as well. OP is correct about how the industry operates. This is a great article (from 1982!) that goes into great depth about the diamond scam: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...

mirimir 8y ago

I think that "may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" is not about the stone, but about the attitude of the giver and receiver. But experience doesn't support an association of diamonds with relationship stability.

sixothree 8y ago

My guess there are doped with detectable elements as to ensure they are never confused with real diamonds.

perfectstorm 8y ago

the skeptic in me thinks these man made diamonds they make are made so that it won't last forever. I bet in 5yrs these diamonds would somehow fade or even break so they can keep selling natural long lasting diamonds.

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

Exactly. Just wait for their counter-blow. They have enough money, resources and incentives to try to destroy man-made diamonds for at least a few more decades.

Animats 8y ago
Not like they used to. De Beers used to have a monopoly on distribution, but that's been broken. You can get synthetic diamonds on Alibaba now. Some of which really are diamond.
- pnathan 8y ago
  now I am wondering about getting a multi-carat synthetic diamond on the cheap. :-)
- hospes 8y ago
  How do you distinguish if they are real diamonds on Alibaba? Edit: Typo

SkyMarshal 8y ago

Yup, exactly. The man-made diamond industry should just counter by talking up how they can make perfectly "pure" diamonds with zero imperfections in color or clarity, superior in quality to mined diamonds, and with no human lives lost. Just keep drilling that point home in all their sales and PR until it changes the dynamic. I'm sure the millennials will be receptive to that - cheap, better, not immoral.

tcgv 8y ago
That would be a marketing battle, which is often won by the side with the biggest marketing budget, probably the well established natural diamond industry. Besides, I personally feel that "lab grown diamonds" have more weak (marketing) points than "natural, made by stars, millennial diamonds". Could be wrong though.
mr_toad 8y ago
They should introduce imperfections, and market them as real. Bad money drives out good.

rebuilder 8y ago

They're not the same. Physically, man-made diamonds tend to be superior to natural ones, or so I'm tood. But that's beside the point for consumers - they mostly don't buy based on physical criteria beyond size. They buy dimonds because it's the done thing, because they're expensive. If diamonds lose that exclusivity De Beers have gone to such lengths to uphold, I think they'll also lose their appeal.

Bad_CRC 8y ago

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

Steeeve 8y ago

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

nailer 8y ago

> affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever... ...is also a lie. The man made diamonds will last just as long (or longer, as they're generally more perfect) than mined diamonds.

manojlds 8y ago

Reminds me of what Coca Cola did to get rid of Crystal Pepsi.

onetimemanytime 8y ago

Yp, De Beers has a monopoly of sorts in the natural diamonds but anyone can create synthetic ones. Just like a "Diamond is forever" they will malign the man made ones. To be fair, diamonds have value because of rarity and marketing. Not sure how many normal people can tell the difference between a diamond and a cubic zirconia, so it isn't just how it looks.

konschubert 8y ago

I'm optimistic that their strategy will fail. People buying diamonds to show off to others will still buy the artificial ones since they're indistinguishable.

praptak 8y ago

Protecting the price of a product by selling its cheap substitute? Sounds pretty dumb to me. Hedging sounds like a more sensible explanation.

markatkinson 8y ago

My exact thoughts, this statement made me chuckle: 'Synthetic diamonds, which can be produced in about 500 hours, share the same physical, chemical and optical characteristics as natural stones. But they are not nearly as valuable.' So... the two items are identical in every possible way that matters except in the way that lines De Beers pockets? It almost feels like De Beers sponsored this article in a desperate campaign to make dirty mined diamonds more valuable.

knieveltech 8y ago
Considering the De Beers cartel basically fabricated the entire ritual around engagement rings from thin air through paid marketing and op-ed pieces this would hardly be surprising if true.

snarf21 8y ago

Obviously they will fight to keep their monopoly and protect their cache. Just like lab grown meat is gaining traction, I think synthetic companies have the ability to push the social angle. "Identical in composition to the diamonds mined by slaves and used to finance terrorism." Just need an English major to turn that into a catchy slogan! :)

dredmorbius 8y ago
NB: cachet vs. cache: https://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/cache-cash.asp https://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/cache-cash.asp
- snarf21 8y ago
  Sorry, my statement was vague. I did mean cache as in horde. They have stockpiles of "value" that they will protect at all costs.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    Ah, thanks, though yes, unclear ;-)

vilhelm_s 8y ago

I guess De Beers must be selling the synthetic diamons with a much smaller profit margin? A couple of years ago, makers of synthetic diamond jewelry said they would cost about 60% of natural ones ("Baruch says savings may be as high as 40 percent in some cases; this is especially appealing to savvy millennial shoppers." --https://www.racked.com/2016/6/14/11872830/lab-grown-diamonds-synthetic https://www.racked.com/2016/6/14/11872830/lab-grown-diamonds...), and now Lightbox will sell them at 10% the price of natural ones. Unlike mines you can't really establish a monopoly in vapor deposit ovens, so in the long run competition should drive down costs. It makes sense that De Beers would want to fast-forward that process, particularly since the price of natural diamonds is kindof arbitrary anyway.

ghostbrainalpha 8y ago

This reminds me of the story about how Coke launched an intentionally bad competitor to "Crystal Pepsi" in order to confuse the marketplace. http://11points.com/coke-made-intentionally-terrible-clear-cola-take-crystal-pepsi/ http://11points.com/coke-made-intentionally-terrible-clear-c... The strategy is called Kamikaze marketing... and can result in fantastic stories like this, but it is almost never successful. Unfortunately I think DeBeers might have the ability to pull it off.

gowld 8y ago
That story is one executive's excuse for why his product idea failed.