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It is very fitting that possibly the world’s most iconic perfume brand would use the world’s most iconic gemstone, the diamond, to celebrate its centenary. It also draws a stark a contrast about the way in which these two diametrically different luxury products are marketed.
With a major portion of their resources being located in remote parts of the world, where infrastructure and services are often severely lacking, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic provided a special challenge for mining companies. Many focused their attention on strengthening and supporting community healthcare and social projects in the regions in which they operate.
Lesotho is a small landlocked country, encompassed within the border of South Africa with the unusual distinction of being the largest of the world’s three independent states completely surrounded by the territory of another country. The other two, incidentally, are Vatican City and San Marino. With a population of about 2 million, the mountainous kingdom covers an area of a little more than 30,000 square kilometers.
One of the basic tenets of the diamond jewelry market always was that it was one-directional. Once a diamond was sold to a consumer, it almost never made it way back into the public arena. A diamond purchase was an emotional act more than it was a financial transaction. Till death do us part was as much associated with jewelry as it was with marriage itself.
Prices of fancy yellow, pink and blue diamonds all dipped during the course of 2020, but given the economic fallout of the COVID pandemic it definitely could have been worse, said the Fancy Color Research Foundation (FCRF), in a recently released report.
Sustainability is possibly one of the most essential, although intangible qualities that any luxury product must possess today to attract the attention of the contemporary consumer, particularly if he or she is a Millennial of a member of Generation Z. Indeed, in the diamond trade, the right to claim a product as being sustainable often marks the battle lines between the natural and laboratory-grown diamond sectors.
Valentine’s Day, February 14, one of the most important diamond jewelry shopping days of any calendar year, may see lower than hoped for sales this year in the world’s largest market, predominantly due to the Americans not receiving stimulus checks in time.
While the COVID-19 crisis represented a massive challenge for the diamond industry, as it did for many other sectors, particularly in the luxury product business, on balance its consequences could have been considerably worse, according to the latest annual Diamond Industry Report, just published by Bain & Company and the Antwerp World Diamond Center (AWDC).
The long saga to decide the future of Ekati, Canada’s and longest-producing diamond mine appears to have drawn to an end, with the announcement by its owner, Dominion Diamond Mines that it has completed the sale of the facility and and associated assets to Arctic Canadian Diamond Company Ltd.
De Beers has revised its production forecast for 2021 to 32 million carats to 34 million carats, down from 33 million carats to 35 million carats. In a statement released to the media, the company said that this is subject to trading conditions, and is due to ongoing operational challenges and lower expected production from the final cut at its Venetia mine, in the northeast of South Africa.
After months on a slow burner, the rough diamond market appears to be roaring back. Reporting its results for the final three months of 2020, Alrosa, Russia’s state-controlled rough diamond mining company, has announced a 240 percent quarter-on-quarter increase in sales to 17 million carats, which also was 110 percent more than the figure reported for the same quarter in 2019, before the start of the global pandemic.
Despite the economic challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, retail sales during 2020’s November-December holiday season in the United States grew an unexpectedly high 8.3 percent over the same period in 2019 to $789.4 billion, exceeding the National Retail Federation’s holiday forecast, the organization has reported.
A broad diamond desirability survey conducted by the Natural Diamond Council (NDC) through 360 Market Reach in the final quarter of 2020 showed that diamond jewelry is the most highly desired “tangible” luxury product overall for Millennial and Generation Z consumers, among nine luxury items to choose from, if money were not a concern.
With the start of the new year, De Beers has reportedly begun implementing a long-expected shakeup of its sightholder system, with media reports suggesting that there will be a more than 10 percent reduction in the number of companies receiving a direct supply of rough goods from the diamond mining company.
America’s most storied jewelry brand is now…well…French. After a more than a year of twists and turns, Tiffany & Co has become another puzzle piece in the portfolio of the world’s largest luxury monolith, the Paris-based LVMH conglomerate.
Although the COVID pandemic is still raging in the United States, the country’s leading matrimonial publication expects the number of wedding that actually take place in 2021 to tick up. According to the The Knot’s 2020 Jewelry & Engagement Study, the November through February proposal season, which evidently is the most popular time of the year for couples to get engaged, is off to a strong start.
The news on January 3, 2021, that rebels loyal to the former Central African Republic president, François Bozizé, had captured the southern mining city of Bangassou were greeted with concern in several diamond trading centers. The landlocked country, which has suffered a string of coups and wars since it received independence from France in 1960, is considered by the Kimberley Process to be the only source of conflict diamonds in the world at present.
With Christmas 2020 in the rearview mirror and end-of-the-year sales in full steam, retailers are beginning to tally up the results of what traditionally is the most important shopping period of any calendar year. Final data is not yet available, but a picture is emerging, and that is one in which the still surging COVID pandemic is very much a factor.
It is far to state that, when history is written, 2020 will be remembered mainly for one specific event, and that is the COVID-19 pandemic. First reported on by Chinese health authorities on January 1, it continued to dominate the narrative all the way through to the end of the year. Even the U.S. election, which most would have pegged as the most important news item moving into 2020, took second place to the coronavirus crisis, and indeed was impacted by it, like all other facets of human existence.
On December 30, 2019, only two days before the new year, the Municipal Health Commission in the city of Wuhan, China, issued an urgent notice to city hospitals about a handful of cases of unusual pneumonia that had been linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. It was to be the start of a crisis that within months had engulfed the whole world.
With little fanfare, possibly because the COVID epidemic had tended to drown out most other news, 2020 marked the 20th anniversary of a landmark event in the diamond industry – the founding of the Kimberley Process (KP). It was an act that was to change the business, both in terms of its image to the outside world and the way in which its members saw themselves.
With the COVID pandemic causing havoc in the international markets, De Beers has reported its worst year of rough diamond sales in more than decade.
As they have for most of the pandemic-struck year, jewelry auctions continue to pull in impressive results in December. A case in point was Sotheby’s New York Magnificent Jewels sale in New York, which with $46.9 million of goods sold, was the the highest total for a Sotheby’s jewelry auction since 2017.
A floral-shaped ring set with 12,638 diamonds has earned a place in the Guinness World Records for the ring set with the most diamonds, and demonstrated once again the perennial popularity of the jewelry category as the preferred platform for the world’s most popular gemstone.
Sales data from the Thanksgiving weekend in the United States indicates that online sales were big winner. Adobe Analytic, which looked transactions from 80 of the top 100 U.S. online retailers, reported that consumer spending on Thanksgiving itself was up by 21.5 percent year over year, reaching $5.1 billion, a new record. This compared to online sales worth $4.2 billion on Thanksgiving Day in 2019.