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Lab-Grown Diamond Brand Lightbox Cuts Prices by 25 to 40%
The move follows a price-drop test run in Q4 and comes with the addition of a “quality assurance card” from GIA for some loose diamonds.
nationaljeweler.com
Gresham, Oregon—Lightbox has cut prices by as much as 40 percent, bringing its lab-grown diamonds even farther below the market average.
Lightbox tested reduced prices in the fourth quarter 2023 and announced Friday it had officially adopted price cuts across the board, with the steepest drop coming for its highest-quality goods.
It is now selling its “Finest” lab-grown diamonds—D-F color, excellent cut, and VS clarity—for $900 a carat, 10 percent lower than the price offered in the Q4 trial ($1,000 per carat), and 40 percent off the original price of $1,500 per carat.
Prices on I-J color lab-grown diamonds were cut 38 percent, from $800 to $500 a carat, while G-H color stones are going for $600 a carat, down 25 percent from $800 a carat.
Even before Lightbox announced it was making its price cuts permanent, its lab-grown diamonds were priced well below the retail average, observed industry analyst Edahn Golan, co-founder of data analytics firm Tenoris.
He said in April, the average retail price of a 1-carat lab-grown diamond was $1,093, which is 27 percent more than Lightbox was charging for its standard lab-grown diamonds (G-J color and VS clarity).
Retailers paid $364 when they purchased that diamond, giving them a 67 percent gross margin, he said.
“It looks like De Beers is continuing with its effort to pull down lab-grown diamond retail prices by offering them for far below market prices,” Golan said, while noting that even under the new pricing, Lightbox is still selling well above its costs.
“We should expect continued lab-grown diamond price declines, especially considering the large margins through most of the lab-grown diamond pipeline, and the oversupply of goods,” he concluded.
Also on Friday, Lightbox announced it would now be obtaining batch quality verification for its lab-grown diamonds through the Gemological Institute of America.
Lightbox said GIA will assess a “statistically significant” sample in each production run to ensure they meet the lab’s quality criteria for color, clarity, and cut. A downloadable GIA “quality verification card” then will be available for each diamond in the batch.
A GIA spokesperson told National Jeweler that the batch verification service launched Friday. It is a service GIA is providing for Lightbox only, just as it does pre-owned jewelry authentication for eBay only.
The service will start with the Lightbox’s D-F color white round brilliant-cut loose lab-grown diamonds, though it could expand to the blue and pink lab-grown diamonds in the future.
Lightbox CEO Antoine Borde said: “Lightbox led the lab-grown diamond jewelry sector six years ago with its $800 a carat linear pricing, and, today, we are pleased to introduce even lower prices, that more closely align with current jewelry industry dynamics.
“Equally, we’re very proud to be working with the GIA to verify the quality and consistency of our stones, which supports purchase confidence and allows us to continue our mission of providing clarity, transparency, and value to our customers.”
I'm reminded of that Marshall Lucky commercial from the movie Used Cars. CAUTION: Foul language toward the end, and perhaps lowbrow humor throughout.
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