According to Kent Wong, managing director of Chow Tai Fook Jewellery Group, in an interview with Rapaport News, Chow Tai Fook has no idea to develop lab-grown diamonds at this moment because they don’t see any market for it right now. The emphasis on natural products being real and authentic is too strongly embedded in the local consumer mindset and Chinese culture, he explained.
To illustrate the point, Kent Wong noted Chow Tai Fook’s Monologue brand. When the brand first launched about a year ago, it excluded diamonds from the product line and focused on low-priced materials, such as crystal stones set in silver, so that it could sell at an average retail price of CNY 1,000 ($146) — compared to a group average of CNY 3,500 ($510).
Chow Tai Fook’s Monologue brand, targets younger Generation Z consumers.
However, sales stagnated, forcing the company to fine-tune the collection to include pieces with small diamonds and 18-karat gold, even if it meant the average price would go up. The result is that they saw a sharp increase in sales, and the diamond pieces now contribute 40% of Monologue’s revenue, according to Wong. It’s important to understand that Chinese consumers value natural as real, and there’s no grey area in China when it comes to man-made diamonds.
Diamond products set in 18-karat gold by MONOLOGUE, MIX earing, priced at RMB 2658.
Meanwhile, more US jewelers are moving into the lab-grown-diamond space. Earlier this month, Notable US retailer Signet Jewelers, currently running about 3,500 stores, said the company was closely monitoring the category and would make sure it was well positioned to participate in the synthetics market if there was enough consumer demand. Similarly, De Beers is scheduled to start selling its line of Lightbox lab-grown-diamond jewelry in the US via its website this month.
Despite the growing interest in lab-grown, the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) has not seen a rise in the number of synthetic diamonds being submitted for grading at its labs, but an increase in finding synthetic diamonds mixed in the parcels of small diamonds.
News from: Diamonds.net
Pictures from: Chow Tai Fook
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