Mel Moss, president of Regal Imports, says as long as synthetic diamonds are disclosed, the diamond industry should embrace them. What to call them is also a bone of contention, he adds.
“The diamond industry would really like ‘synthetic’ to be the term because consumers think that word means they’re fake,” he explains. “As a diamond dealer, I see lab-growns as an alternative. If people are selling silver as an alternative to gold, why wouldn’t you sell lab-growns as an alternative to naturals.”
Speaking of gold, Bruce Audley, national sales manager for Beverly Hills Jewellers, says yellow gold is slowly making a comeback in the bridal category.
“When we go through our casting room, we see that yellow gold is starting to pick up,” he says. “We are also doing more in rose gold. We started out with accent pieces, but now we’re making rings all in rose gold.”
In the fashion category, movable diamonds are coming on strong, he says. “There was a time that when a diamond was loose in the setting, we wouldn’t consider it a good thing, but this design seems to be very much in demand right now.”
A popular time of year for couples to get engaged, the holiday season is usually a bright spot. However, the big news in the diamond sector is that rough and polished prices have not kept up with each other; the former is high, while the latter is not, making for very slim margins. Mining companies are making their return on rough, but manufacturers are struggling, says Diamond Bourse of Canada (DBC) president, David Gavin.
“It’s a concern in terms of businesses trying to sustain themselves from a capital standpoint,” he explains. “Buying rough requires so much money, as does manufacturing it into polished. The time it takes from mine to showcase is the problem.”
Gavin says members of the World Federation of Diamond Bourses (WFDB) are brainstorming to come up with a solution to widen the gap between rough and polished prices. DBC recently became a member of the bourse, a move, he says, that raises Canada’s profile as a diamond-producing nation.
“Although we’re in our infancy, we’re also the third-largest producer of rough in the world. With the move toward social responsibility in mining being in the forefront of consumers’ minds, Canada is the perfect model to be able to sustain such a paradigm.”
Branding Canadian diamonds is one of the initiatives the Canadian Jewellers Association (CJA) is working toward, says its president, J. David Ritter. He says Industry Canada has formed a working group to look at developing a branding strategy.
