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The Super Bowl, the American football game played each February, pitting the champions of the National Football League’s two conferences against each other, has long been associated with diamonds. But maybe it was a little more so in 2023, because of a halftime show featuring Rihanna.
While the luxury markets began 2023 on a cautious note, in the United States at least retailers remained optimistic about what traditionally is one of their key sales opportunities, Valentine’s Day, according to according to the annual survey released by the National Retail Federation
The attractiveness of the laboratory-grown diamond industry as an investment vehicle quite possibly has less to do with jewelry than it has with electronics. And it’s not only a question of applicability, but also of total market value.
For its part, De Beers cited strong operational performance across its assets, with the mining company reporting that its production increased by 6 percent to 8.2 million carats for the fourth quarter of 2022, when compared to the same period in 2022.
First discovered in 1600, one of the most celebrated diamonds ever to have been mined at India’s Golconda mine is a today the subject a very public court battle involving two sides of the Qatari royal clan, the al-Thani family.
There are 35 fancy-colored diamonds, ranging in size from 0.35 carats to 1.52 carats in the Tiffany Collection, which is the first and almost certainly the last time that Argyle curated a collection named in honor of a jeweler.
When De Beers launched its A Diamond Is Forever campaign in 1947, sending the trade in engagement rings into super-drive, it was not inventing something new, but rather elevating a tradition that had been followed by royal families and aristocrats, into a mass consumer practice.
A primary reason for it being a mystery is a Russian decision, taken relatively soon after the start of the conflict, to shut down coverage of what was happening its diamond sector, where the overwhelmingly dominant rough diamond producer, Alrosa, is effectively controlled by the central government.
The subject that will almost certainly get the most attention be the revision of the “conflict diamonds” definition in the KP Core Document. It is an issue that, in one form or another, has been on the KP’s agenda for more than 10 years. Politically charged, little progress has been made to date.
Scanning technologies that are able to look deep into a stone could be adapted to measure automatically what before was done visually by a gemologist. What then was required was understanding data and interpreting it into a standard grade on a grading report. That is where artificial intelligence came in, for the machine could be taught to fulfill the interpretative role of the gemologist, and arguably produce results in a more consistent manner.
One of the debates that raged throughout the diamond industry about a decade ago, when it became apparent that laboratory-grown stones were not a curiosity nor a passing phase, was the degree to which they would come to challenge demand for natural diamonds, or whether they would constitute a new category, essentially expanding the jewelry market in general.
From a price perspective, the polished diamond trade seemed to end 2022 on a downward slope, this despite the fact that major dealers were generally satisfied with the holiday season, although they remained cautious about their short-term prospects, reported the Rapaport news service.
The 2022 end-of-year holiday season has drawn to a close, and the sales results are now trickling in. According to Mastercard SpendingPulse, U.S. retail sales excluding automotive increased 7.6 percent for the period year-over-year, running from November 1 through December 24. But jewelry sales dipped 5.4 percent.
In terms of value, the report was deliberately circumspect regarding the sales of Russian goods, which reportedly are being offered at discount to as to skirt sanction that have been imposed because of that country’s war against Ukraine. Nonetheless, it notes that the dominant Russian diamond producer Alrosa appears to have revived exports to pre-war levels.
Almost none of the auction houses’ highly anticipated sales achieved the results that seemed within their grasp, and some did not even take place, as diamonds on offer failed to achieve their reserve price, and one was withdrawn from a sale under a bizarre cloud of suspicion.
Moving its South African Sightholder Sales operation from Kimberley to Johannesburg was a logical but poignant move. But in many respects it ended an era dating back more than 135 years, much of which Kimberley was the very center of the world diamond trade.
The largest conflagration between East and West since the end of the Cold War and an ill-conceived public health policy that is isolating the world’s second largest economy would seem like a recipe for a less than sterling business environment. But diamonds and diamond consumers often react counterintuitively.
It was a year that many expected to be very different. The COVID crisis, which has dominated events though most of 2020 and 2021 appeared finally to be fading in the rearview mirror, and the almost all indicators were facing upward.
By many accounts, 2021 may be remembered as the year that Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, came into its own. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey, it was the age group that posted the largest increase in jewelry demand in the United States, purchasing almost four times more than it had in 2020.
A report in a Belgian daily newspaper, associating a shadowy Russian mercenary force involved in the war in Ukraine with the trade of conflict diamonds, has highlighted the caution that needs to be exercised in handling gemstones and other minerals that may have originated from the Central African Republic (CAR).
The total number of shoppers grew by nearly 17 million from 2021 and is the highest figure since NRF first started tracking this data in 2017. According to the survey, 76 percent of consumers say they shopped over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, up from 70 percent in 2021.
The indication on Black Friday Adobe Analytics that general retail sales in the United States were outpacing those recorded on the same day of the year both in 2021 and 2019, matched what De Beers research reported in the recent Diamond Insight Report, which indicated an increasing readiness of consumers to purchase diamond jewelry online.
Black Friday, the official start to the holiday season appeared start of the right foot, with overall sales rising 12 percent year on year in the crucially important U.S. market, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, and the strongest category performer being apparel, including jewelry, where sales were 19 percent higher than last year.
The global luxury goods market took a further leap forward during 2022, despite highly uncertain economic conditions and consumer sentiment, it is poised to see further expansion next year, and for the rest of the decade to 2030, the just released 21st edition of the Bain & Company–Altagamma Luxury Study has reported.
Asked whether the diamond jewelry they purchased during the course of 2021 was branded or unbranded, the American questioned said that about that two-thirds of all diamond jewelry acquisitions were branded. That was twice the proportion seen in 2015 and represents almost 80 percent of women’s diamond jewelry sales by value.