I recently walked into a Spence diamonds store at a local high end mall. As they are known for “artisan-crafted” MMDs, I asked the salesperson about how their stones compare to the cheaper Lightbox alternatives. At which point, the rep directed me to a case of Lightbox earrings and pendants. I am not sure if they deliberately used different lighting in the Lightbox case, but to my untrained eye, the stones looked abhorrent (dull, dark, lifeless) compared to Spence’s home-grown. I then proceeded to ask the sales rep if she knew which lab DeBeers used. To my surprise, the rep replied that Spence’s labs grow diamonds for the Lightbox brand, which is why they carry in their store. Then I asked why such a drastic difference in quality and she advised that Lightbox is meant to be affordable entry into diamond fashion jewelry, but not meant to compete with their own e-ring quality pieces. That made sense to me since don’t want to canabalize own business and still have avenue to get rid of sub-par product. In the end, I think DeBeers and Spence are going to make a killing from the new venture as the Lightbox stones are what I would consider rejects not even worth the price they’re going for. A comparable analogy would be that Lightbox is the white chocolate of MMDs; merely a derivative created from the leftovers of premium product that is packaged and sold to squeeze every penny from the consumer. And there are plenty of people who love white chocolate (I’m not one).
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