NYT on the Diamond Business

[valeria101]

You must have heard most of the content on PS... but one NYT article brings the facts together nicely.

Funny quotes too

"i] of you>>

Martin Rappaport


"The discounters and Internet sites do not sell just cheap diamonds. The average price for an engagement ring on bluenile.com is close to $5,000 - about twice the national average - and one sold for $257,000 last fall"
Mark Vadon, Blue Nile''s founder

... interestingly, PS''s records do not fall far from that average.


One number seems weird: they say the price of rough has gone up 25% last year (not clear if 2003 or 2004 in text). What are they counting ?

 

[pricescope]

Nice find, Ana. To avoid registartion, guys, try this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/09/business/09diamonds.html

Mark Vadon said yesterday during the webcast that Blue Nile has 2.7% of the US engagement ring market. I guess I was correct that only about 5% of the diamond sales (engagement rings) are done via the Internet.

This chart is from NYT article Competition Is Forever Amaising how big WalMart share is. This is probably bigger threat to independent jewelers than the Internet.

 

[Iceman]

Thanks for the chart. Mark has done a great job. All his hard work has paid off. He had a really good artical written on him in Forbes.

 

[NewShiny]

What sources do you think make up the "other" category from the chart that Lenoid posted? Do you think Ebay counta as internet sales?

 

[codex57]

argh, all the links require registration. Anyone just copy and paste the text?

 

[pricescope]

Date: 2/9/2005 2

3:58 PM
Author: codex57
argh, all the links require registration. Anyone just copy and paste the text?

That would be a no-no

I registered and haven''t get any promotions yet (maybe because I selected the lowest income bracket)

 

[lostdog]

" Mark has done a great job. All his hard work has paid off. He had a really good artical written on him in Forbes"

Well, the stock spiked pretty well today. Despite missing expectations, too. The timing of the article didn't hurt anything.

 

[pqcollectibles]

Date: 2/9/2005 2

3:58 PM
Author: codex57
argh, all the links require registration. Anyone just copy and paste the text?

Where''s Deb/AGBF when you need her??!!

I heard part of the Blue Nile conference call yesterday, Leonid. BN wants to become a high end "Brand". They are dropping all "Holiday" types of sales at the $35 price point as they didn''t do well in that market compared to Wal-mart and Overstock. WM and Overstock rule in the lower end of the market and that''s fine with BN. They are after the high end consumer. It was also interesting that BN does little advertising in some parts of the world, the UK was specifically mentioned. And generally speaking, BN relies on word of mouth and repeat customers for the growth they''ve realized. Rather interesting stuff.