This session of young people can not, are going to buy artificial diamonds, resulting in the performance of natural diamond giants continue to decline ...... artificial diamonds are more pure, more beautiful color, the price is cheaper 90%, DeBeers said natural diamonds have impurities to be a symbol of status, Yiwu boss said this is not easy, I add impurities to you into the line.
It's a standard 'cool' story, a collection of popular elements such as price butcher, hanging on to seniors, and Yiwu can do anything, easily catching everyone's attention. But cultivated diamonds are more of a less 'cool' story. Cultivated diamonds have revolutionized the way diamonds are produced and the price, but this innovation is still very difficult to 'downgrade' natural diamonds in terms of price and positioning.
Cultivating diamonds, still not cheap
Zircon and Moissanite diamonds, this is what some people understand by man-made diamonds. They are indeed man-made, but they are not cultivated diamonds.
It's like the concepts of meat, artificial meat, and vegetarian meat, which can always cause a lot of misunderstanding. Meat is real meat, artificial meat is real meat, it's just lab-grown real meat, and vegetarian meat is fake meat, it just strives to be closer to meat in terms of taste and texture.
Zircon and Moissanite diamonds are 'fake meat' in this sense. They are 'imitation diamond' products, and unlike the pure carbon of diamonds, zircon and moissanite diamonds are essentially zirconium oxide and silicon carbide.
▲ Imitation Diamond
Cultivated diamonds are more like 'artificial meat', they are synthetic diamonds that have been grown in a laboratory to simulate the natural environment in which natural diamonds form. Lab-grown diamonds are chemically, physically, and optically 'real' diamonds, but instead of taking hundreds of millions of years to form, like natural diamonds, the environment in which they can form is simulated in a scientific and efficient way, and the time is drastically reduced.
There are also two methods of cultivating diamonds, the high temperature and high pressure method (HTHP), which uses graphite and diamond powder as the carbon source to simulate the diamond growth environment, and the CVD method, in which thin slices of diamonds are placed in a vacuum chamber filled with hydrogen and methane and a uniform diamond coating is formed under specific pressure.
Both have to be done in a lab and cost more compared to imitation diamond products, so the overall price is not as maddening as zircon and moissanite diamonds.
Data from Ping An Securities data shows that 1 carat of cultivated diamonds costs $8,000 to $15,000, while 1 carat of loose diamonds of medium quality costs $30,000 to $50,000. That is to say, the price of cultivated diamonds is still not cheap, and will be the same as natural diamonds with the same standards, only it may be in the 4C natural diamond price of about 10% ~ 40%, part of the backing of the big brand of cultivated diamonds prices are only a little cheaper than natural diamonds.
Of course cultivated diamonds still have a lot of room to grow in terms of price - after all, it doesn't take hundreds of millions of years to cycle. And as the technology gets more sophisticated, lower prices for cultivated diamonds are a predictable change. According to statistics, the retail price of cultivated diamonds has been reduced by 30% from 2017 to 2020 alone.
As a laboratory product, increased production efficiency is profitable for natural diamonds, and it is not impossible for the price of cultivated diamonds to fall when their production efficiency increases.
There are more cultivated diamonds, there is still a market for natural diamonds
Since cultivated diamonds are also real diamonds, it seems logical that natural diamonds would also be hit by cultivated diamonds and that prices would fall.
But on the contrary, natural diamonds are more expensive.
According to the IDEX International Diamond Trading Platform, the January 2022 Finished Diamond Price Index jumped 5.67%, surpassing the 4.35% increase in December 2021 and making it the largest one-month increase since December 2011.
▲ Promotion of Natural Diamonds Real is Rare
The reasons for this are complex. First, the existence of the epidemic so that the global mining industry shut down production, the supply side can supply less natural diamonds, the price naturally went up; second, the supply of less demand is not less, and even more demand changes, the epidemic led to part of the retaliatory consumption and the inability to travel abroad to inhibit the enthusiasm of consumption was moved to the diamond, the demand is strong supply exceeds demand.
In December 2020, De Beers began raising the price of rough diamonds, and six more times in 2021. The overall price change curve is not at all similar to that of cultivated diamonds, which can be said to play out in their own way.
In an interview with Bazaar Jewelry, Lian Guoyan, author of the book "Diamond Investment Buyer's Guide", also said that the price of natural diamonds is unlikely to fall. "According to the historical trajectory of more than three decades, it seems that once the price of diamonds has sharply adjusted upwards, it is unlikely to correct sharply downwards again (unless major international impact factors occur), and will probably do selective parts and small waves of climbing in the future while remaining in a relatively stable state.
In addition to changes on the supply and demand side of the market, users may also be eating more of the older, more expensive and more prestigious option of natural diamonds.
Soda Cake, who got married two years ago, said she also purchased a natural diamond ring when she got married, and even though it was stuffed in a drawer after the wedding, it was still an essential wedding expense. In her area of southern Minnesota, the traditional customs of marriage are taken very seriously, and there is a higher budget for consumer spending, and even relatives and friends will directly ask about the price of jewelry during the wedding, so buying natural diamonds is a natural choice in this case.
The man will indirectly and unintentionally say how much money spent on diamond ring ...... diamonds in addition to the newcomers themselves to wear, in Minnan is more of an attitude of the male elders to the female elders, to show my family's economic strength as well as sincerity. Diamond is a recent fire, Minnan more gold, just are so spell gold jewelry (face problems), the diamond is also not let go.
In this case, natural diamonds may be sold at a higher price than cultivated diamonds, and are not "in the same league".
Natural diamond brands have not been idle in nurturing diamonds to be more widely known, and many have joined forces to launch the 'Real is Rare' campaign, telling you that pure natural diamonds are much more precious. Coupled with the fact that natural diamonds themselves are a non-renewable type, taking hundreds of millions of years to obtain, there are many people who will be impressed by this natural gemstone that has been formed over hundreds of millions of years.
Just as the original diamond advertisement "Diamonds are forever, one will last forever" has touched young people for half a century, perhaps "Real is Rare" can also retain new young users.
It's not cultivation that's affecting natural diamonds, it's the new quest of the young
Just in the face of natural diamonds hundreds of millions of years of time condensed gemstones and pure natural properties propaganda, cultivated diamonds are not defenseless, because cultivated diamonds in energy saving and environmental protection can completely take natural diamonds. Without the need for large mining equipment or underground excavation, cultivated diamonds in the laboratory have become an environmentally friendly, low-carbon option for some young people.
And the other part of the young people, they are not obsessed with diamonds.
"It's not just that I don't want diamonds, I don't want to get married straight away." Fang, a recent graduate, says she is not a fan of the romance and long-lasting meaning behind diamonds. For her, diamonds are something she never expected to spend, and she has no intention of saving up to buy herself a diamond.
Having worked for four years as an advertising professional, Douban's knowledge of not buying diamonds is more out of her understanding of marketing.
Diamonds are more of an artificially created scarcity I guess! I admire it as one of the most famous marketing examples in advertising, but I also think it's a bit like paying an IQ tax to spend that much money on a gem that is forced to be scarce. I think it's a bit like a blind box of scarcity wares that can go very high or very low in price, an investment that doesn't really hold its value.
Douban herself likes bright diamonds, but doesn't feel the attraction of natural diamonds can make her spend so much money. She said she would not even choose cultivated diamonds if she bought them, but would choose what everyone sees as fake diamonds moissanite, and wear them as ordinary accessories without a lot of psychological burden.
Oranges preparing for marriage are also in the stage of life where they are choosing a wedding ring, diamonds are among their options but not the only one. Diamonds, coloured gemstones, platinum and gold are all considered, but when buying they give more priority to suitability and price, and diamonds have to be compared to other materials.
In fact, gold, which retains its value, has become the choice of more and more young people than diamonds, which young people are familiar with through marketing. Orange, for one, has grown to love gold: "I used to think it was rustic, but now I think it looks best."
According to the World Jewellery Association, the diamond purchase rate of newlywed women in China's first-tier cities is 61%, while the penetration rate in third and fourth-tier cities is only 37%. China's jewelry consumption is tilted to the gold market. And in this year's Taobao Tmall station, the entire gold category exploded more than 1700%, with the post-90s population accounting for 50%.
It is true that there are still people who see diamond rings as a standard part of marriage, but there are also people who are beginning to think more about preservation of value and personalization options when acquiring these keepsake accessories. Moving away from the gemstone category, young people have a different need for accessories, and the ability of diamonds to be the most important part of that need is far more important than cultivating diamonds for natural diamonds.
After all, in addition to being constant, a diamond's existence needs someone to recognize its value.
Only by being recognized by more people can a diamond's brilliance be given more meaning.