9 ms·
Ada Diamonds sells lab-grown diamonds and jewelers can't tell
- otterley 8y agoFlagging for clickbait headline
- protonimitate 8y agoHow is this clickbait? It is literally the article title.
- otterley 8y agoThe article title is clickbait ("This startup" instead of identifying the company name in the headline.) Repeating it in the HN headline exacerbates the problem.
- rpeden 8y agoI understand what you're getting at, but I respectfully disagree about this being clickbait. A clickbait headline would be something like 'He made cheaper diamonds using this one simple trick. Jewelers hate him!', because you'd have to click to find out what that one simple trick is. This headline seems to be literally true: A startup is making lab-grown diamonds that are 30% cheaper than mined diamonds, and jewelers can't tell the diamonds are lab grown. I think this might actually be the opposite of clickbait, because the headline is a complete summary of the story. You know what happened without needing to click at all. You only need to click if you want to learn more about the why and the how.
- mrob 8y ago"This startup" is clickbait. A non-clickbait title would be "Ada Diamonds is selling lab-grown diamond rings at a 30% discount and jewelers couldn't tell the difference."
- fghtr 8y agoI think it is reasonable to mention here that diamonds suck [0]. [0] http://diamondssuck.com/ http://diamondssuck.com/ via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12944464
- boudewijnrempt 8y agoDo people really _borrow_ money to buy engagement rings? That sounds so weird...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- shaftway 8y agoEven if you aren't "financing" it, you're "borrowing" from your future self. That's $X,000 that you've tied up in something that doesn't actually have the value you paid for it, and even if you did want to sell it, it likely has sentimental value, making it an illiquid asset. Like the site points out, most people getting married are not in a position to afford that kind of expense. But they do, and they try to make it work, because that's what's "expected".
- andrew_ 8y agoI financed my fiance's at 0% for 4 years on a "Luxury Credit Card" that a jeweler was offering on a special. In hindsight it freed up a lot of cash, but I found later that going to a private (not retail) jeweler would've saved me about 30%.
- notyourwork 8y agoWhere and how would you find a private jeweler?
- Topgamer7 8y agoIf TV has taught me anything, some guy has them strapped into a trench coat at your nearest alley.
- uspmm 8y agoGlass look as good for 99,9% less anyway
- exelius 8y agoFor real; my mother wears a glass replica of her real stone. What’s the point of owning the real thing at that point?
- jdietrich 8y agoGlass is a terrible diamond simulant. Even very specialised lead crystal glass has far lower refraction and dispersion than diamond, giving a dull gemstone with little fire. It's also far softer than diamond and quickly becomes dull and scratched with wear. Synthetic moissanite (silicon carbide) is optically superior to diamond at drastically lower cost. Even to an untrained eye, moissanite has visibly superior brightness and fire. Cubic zirconia is optically comparable to diamond and ludicrously cheap. Moissanite is only marginally softer than diamond and cubic zirconia is comparable in hardness to topaz, emerald and spinel.
- josefresco 8y agoGreat example of a startup (Ada Diamonds) getting valuable PR/press by piggybacking off of current news/trends. While the meat of the article has been discussed to death here at HN, the marketing success is something other startup founders should take notice of and attempt to emulate.
- ed 8y agoYou should NOT emulate De Beers. What they've done is illegal in most places, for one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers_antitrust_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Beers_antitrust_litigation And I'd love to believe most founders are motivated by value creation, not market manipulation.
- arkades 8y agoI believe gp was suggesting emulating Ada Diamonds, the startup, not DeBeers.
- josefresco 8y agoYou're right, I'm not sure how ed saw it differently. I was speaking specifically to the startup crowd, looking for creative ways to get press.
- ed 8y agoMy bad! I'm not sure either!
- tomatotomato37 8y agoPeople don't buy prestige items for value, they buy them to show off the fact they can drop x amount on items with no utilitarian value
- eximius 8y agoOnly if they're disillusioned. Many people have drunk the koolaid.
- josefresco 8y agoWhat's funny about this attitude is how little the value of your engagement ring matters once the wedding is over, and the dust settles. Maybe in certain social circles, the size/quality of an engagement ring continues to be important, but from my anecdotal experience, no one notices or cares about my wife's engagement ring, unless they are getting married soon.
- closeparen 8y agoThe traditional purpose is to make a demonstration of your means and seriousness; that purpose is fulfilled the moment your proposal is accepted. It really only matters for a few seconds.
- josefresco 8y agoThat's a good perspective. I'm not sure how relevant "demonstration of your means" is to modern society but "seriousness" certainly implies that it cost a significant amount. Most counter-arguments I hear object to the cost, without acknowledging that the cost is not created by the artificial scarcity of a diamonds, but rather the proposer's implied seriousness.
- kolpa 8y agoSure. But I'd prefer a $10K donation to the charity of my choice, or to my student loans, or a vacation, or a car.
- mywittyname 8y ago
- vilhelm_s 8y agoAnd De Beers now say they will sell lab-grown diamonds for 90% less. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17183603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17183603) So either De Beers will make a huge loss on each diamond, or the synthetic diamond startups must be making huge profits?
- shinryuu 8y agoI think the difference is that De Beers brands those diamonds as lab grown, to be able to differentiate it. That does not seem to happen with these diamonds.
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoDe Beers takes a huge loss b/c they want to devalue lab grown diamonds and keep their monopolisitc margins.
- jaclaz 8y agoI think that it is well worth underlining contents of the linked to article by Morgan Stanley (2016): https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/diamond-market-lab-grown-disruption https://www.morganstanley.com/ideas/diamond-market-lab-grown... >Morgan Stanley estimates that the capital costs for lab-grown diamonds are negligibly lower than minded [sic] diamonds: $343 per carat vs. $367 per carat for mined. >Yet, at the wholesale level, they may sell at a 30% to 40% discount to mined stone. This is in part because lab-grown diamond producers are a fragmented, independent channel, while the mined diamond industry is highly consolidated and coordinated, in terms of supply, distribution, marketing and pricing. The labs aren’t just competing with the mined diamond industry, but also with each other for market share. So costs are around 350 US$ per carat, and they sell retail the ring ".95-carat lab-grown stone" for US$ 4,000, let's say that US$ 500 are for the (white) gold and craftmanship (the ring seems a very simple one). It would be interesting to understand where the remaining 9/10th of the price go.
- mywittyname 8y ago> It would be interesting to understand where the remaining 9/10th of the price go. Preventing competition. I'm sure monopolies like this are expensive to maintain.
- kpennell 8y agoWish it said: This startup is selling lab-grown meat for 30% less and consumers can't tell.
- alangpierce 8y agoHopefully that'll happen soon enough! https://www.nanalyze.com/2017/10/7-startups-lab-grown-meat/ https://www.nanalyze.com/2017/10/7-startups-lab-grown-meat/
- _Codemonkeyism 8y agoIt's all in your head.
- andrew_ 8y agoChecking the prices on their site, I'm not sure where the article's author got his figures from. The price for a spec-identical set of earrings is nearly 7x what I paid six months ago. If you're ever in the market for diamonds, never ever ever go to a retail outfit. If they advertise, stay away. Ask around - someone will always know a private jeweler that works solely on referrals, and it will save you a ton. They also frequently have more personalized service and coverage for what you buy.
- Animats 8y agoThis is just a reseller. An overpriced one. "If you're only getting [a] 20, 30 percent price difference, just pick the right [mined] diamond." Gemesys (now "Pure Grown Diamonds") is the US's biggest manufacturer. New Diamond Technology is Russia's biggest manufacturer. Industrial diamonds you buy by the kilo on Alibaba. There are two main processes for making diamonds - High Pressure High Temperature, and Chemical Vapor Deposition. The first was developed at General Electric in 1955. With a big press, carbon can be squeezed down to diamond. Impurities used to color diamonds made this way, but that problem has been solved and now clear diamonds can be made.[1] CVD is a process borrowed from the semiconductor industry. The product has very regular crystal structure. This bugs the gem industry, which claims that the best diamonds are the ones which are a perfect crystal with "flawless" crystal structure. [1] https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2017-observations-hpht-grown-synthetic-diamonds https://www.gia.edu/gems-gemology/fall-2017-observations-hph...
- namibj 8y agoAre there any processes yet that can yield a blade for a kitchen knife? 8-12 inch/20-30 cm, for an affordable price? Due to the high hardness it would be possible to cut the edge very shallow, possibly even with a slight undercut near the blade. It could retain razor sharpness for days, possibly longer. This enables much sharper knifes at tool life suitable for normal usage. I'd even settle for a carbide blade, which, while I know one company made one [0], I am unable to find a source for such a knife. [0]: This is a publicity stunt, but from what I can tell, this does not need to be faked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcyluvvEfQo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcyluvvEfQo
- s0rce 8y agoIt would still be very brittle.
- iamgopal 8y agoYou coat carbon steel with diamond nano particle to give it nice hardness. They already do that on machine tool cutters. Same process also used for TiN or similar hard coating. I think unfavorable production price being the reason for it not being consumer product.
- abandonliberty 8y ago>With less than $1 million raised from friends and family . . . This seems written for an audience with very wealthy friends and family.
- Retric 8y ago50k from 20 people is 1 million. That's a big investment for most people, but not restricted to the wealthy.
- jsonne 8y agoI'm sorry but you're vastly overestimating the average person if you think 99% of people even in Western Europe or the US simply have 50k they can afford to put into a high risk startup as an investment. For most that is either a full year or close to it in income. Their friends and family are absolutely quite wealthy if they have this kind of capital to invest.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Retric 8y agoI think most people have more than 20 people that qualify as friends and or family. So, 99% is hardly need and when you get closer to retirement a risky bet that's not going to break you if it fails can also seem like a good investment. If it works awesome if not I work another ~3 years. I am not saying it's a good idea for most people, just it's more possible for a wider range of people than you might think.
- alpha_squared 8y agoWhile your perspective may be correct for you and others in similar financial/privileged/fortunate situations, the vast majority of America isn't. I can speak for myself personally, since I have no generalized data, but I have several _close_ friends earning within the top 5% of the nation. Even _they_ would have trouble parting with 50k on a risky investment. They'd _want_ to invest, but that's not an insignificant amount of money to part with for them.
- legohead 8y agoFrom their website: A "recommended" 1 carat is ~$5000. Still way too much. You can get a 1 carat moissanite for ~$400. They shine better, are nearly as hard, and nobody can tell the difference.
- Bartweiss 8y agoFrom the right sellers, actual lab diamonds are also vastly cheaper than this. I'm not sure if there are consumer sources yet, but the issue certainly isn't on the supply end. It looks rather like the startup is trying to undercut mined diamond cartel prices, but keep a hefty cut of that markup while the artificial market is still low on competition.
- exabrial 8y agoAny ideas for a source for lab diamonds at wholesale price? I see lots of jewelry makers undercutting the mined prices but are still pricey.
- Bartweiss 8y agoIronically, De Beers. They've promised a line of lab-grown diamonds this year at $800 for 1 carat, which is the lowest price I've seen. The line is starting with pink, blue, and white. Colorless is still a pain, though - apparently 1 carat gem-quality colorless is still about $4,300 at market rates.
- JohnnyConatus 8y agoI.e. the mattress in a box business model.
- Bartweiss 8y agoPrecisely. And I should mention, I don't actually blame anyone for this - capturing some profit before the market reacts is exactly what promotes competition, and as a startup they're taking a nontrivial risk that would be much larger if they simultaneously tried to run at cost. Still, I won't be interested until prices drop a lot further.
- psergeant 8y agoI wonder if a diamond could be fingerprinted and that shared on a blockchain to encode provenance data.
- Rotdhizon 8y agoThere was an article a while back on here I believe that talked about how lab grown diamonds, especially coming out of China have reached the point of being almost impossible to distinguish from the real thing. To the point of that the fakes fooled pretty much every human expert that tried to tell the difference, the only way to really tell the difference is using very expensive machinery. I welcome the flood of diamonds to the market. The only entities scrambling to combat this are the diamond companies who have everything to lose because they can no longer extort people.
- matte_black 8y agoCould they make a pink diamond?
- exabrial 8y agoI don't understand the allure of natural diamonds... I put synthetic oil in my vehicle.
- angel_j 8y agoImagine the title didn't have "startup" in it. Reads like a cheap advertisement for a scam.
- astura 8y agoThe whole article seems to be just an ad. That being said, this topic always generates a lot of discussion.
- technological 8y agoI am curious to know if current generation and future still interested in buying expensive items like diamonds, jewelry, watches. Because I notice is, you very rarely sell these when you need money unlike like other assets (like House, stocks). Wonder if only past generation people are the ones who still interested to buy these and feel like whole price is fall down once people loose interest in materialistic things.
- overcast 8y agoHonestly, this is really up to women to make a change. There is a zillion other beautiful stones out there, but for some reason they are all obsessed with the diamond. They want it at any cost. I'd much prefer to buy something uncommon for the woman I loved, maybe my birthstone?
- retrogradeorbit 8y agoThe "jewellers can't tell" is BS. Unless you put quotes around the jewellers (as most jewellers are now just importers/re-sellers). As someone who bought lab grown diamonds for some custom made jewellery and had them tested by the best jeweller in town (one of the few true jewellers still remaining) they certainly can tell. The lab grown diamond passed every test except conductivity. The jeweller found this curious as usually if a stone fails conductivity it also fails, for example, refraction tests. A bit of research on this topic led me to discover that the lab grown diamonds have a slightly higher metal content than natural diamonds which makes them slightly more conductive. TLDR; A good jeweller with the right equipment can tell.