As summer gives way to autumn and the inevitable start of the holiday season, I’d like to take a break from talking about promoting lab-grown diamonds, dissing lab-grown diamonds and pricing lab-grown diamonds to talk about natural diamonds.
A few weeks ago, I had the chance to talk to Kwiat CEO Greg Kwiat about a new initiative the company has just launched called “Mine to Shine”.
Billed by the brand as the first retail offering of its kind, Mine to Shine allows consumers to see the entire journey of their diamond, starting when it was a piece of rough pulled from the earth.
For the programme, Greg said the company works with a select group of long-standing partners, sourcing its diamonds primarily from Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada.
These partners, he confirmed, source their rough primarily from De Beers Group and Lucara Diamond Corp, which operates the Karowe mine in Botswana.
Using the companies’ respective technologies – Tracr (De Beers) and Clara (Lucara) – Kwiat and its partners are able to track diamonds from the rough stage and document their progress through the cutting and polishing process.
At the retail level, Greg says Kwiat’s mantra is to “meet the customer where they are”.
Customers can come in and select a rough diamond that will result in the size and shape of diamond they want. Or they can choose a diamond that’s already cut and polished, and Kwiat will tell them the story of the stone.
“Luxury today is a broader concept than it was 20 years ago. Today, there’s an authenticity that you have to have to really present yourself as luxury,” says Greg when asked to explain the genesis of Mine to Shine.” are now more interested in the journey of the products they buy and the good they may have done along the way… It’s not just about the price or the end product; it’s the story and the journey of how that product was created.”He says part of the change in luxury buying behaviour can be attributed to a generational shift.
Millennials (now aged 27-42) and their younger predecessors, the up-and-coming members of Generation Z (aged 11-26), are said to be more concerned about the social and environmental impact of the products they buy.
Greg attributes this in part to the fact that there’s a lot more talk about the environment at the moment, although I would argue that in this summer of record heat and historic flooding, it’s a talk that everyone is at least listening to, even the supposedly disaffected members of my generation, Gen X.
But he pointed out: “This generation is the first to really have this as a starting point for their journey. For people coming of age today, it’s not new; it’s [just] the way it is”.
The claim that younger consumers are more socially conscious is one I’ve been hearing for well over a decade, and while I don’t necessarily disagree with it, I do wonder how often this interest in ethical sourcing and environmental responsibility translates into retail.
After all, aren’t these the same consumers who have embraced fast fashion and fuelled the rise of companies like Shein, now a $100 billion business?
Whenever I’m at a trade show or conference and the subject comes up, jewellers tell me that none of their customers really ask about the origin of the diamonds, gold, etc. used to make the jewellery. They’re more concerned with #1, price, and #2, style.At Kwiat, Greg said that by and large customers don’t regularly ask about origin either, although he noted that this may be because they don’t know to ask. He also pointed out that country of origin information for raw materials wasn’t available until very recently.
Now that it is, Kwiat wants to be one of the first to share it with consumers, because he believes they will start asking soon.
“We want to be ahead of them,” he says.
While answering customer queries is obviously important for retailers, it’s worth noting that knowing the country of origin of a rough diamond will soon have a more practical application.
As we reported in February, tighter sanctions on Russian diamonds are on the way. According to a New York Times article published this week, a formal announcement is expected next month, with the new sanctions taking effect in January.
The tougher sanctions won’t initially include diamonds smaller than 1 carat – which, incidentally, is a lot of what Russian mining giant Alrosa produces – but they will put pressure on diamond companies to be able to prove that their larger gems didn’t come from Russia.
Although I started this article with the intention of not mentioning lab-grown diamonds, I had to ask Greg if Mine to Shine was at all a response to the growing consumer interest in man-made stones.
While lab-grown diamonds are not generally in the same league as Kwiat, he acknowledged that the company “lives in the same diamond industry as everyone else” and therefore has to pay attention to the lab-grown market.
“Mine to Shine wasn’t done specifically in response to lab-grown, but given where we think lab-grown is going, it’s a good way to stand behind the meaning of natural,” he said.
He concluded that “the lab-grown diamond industry has gotten ahead of the natural diamond industry in telling a certain story”, which is “unfair” because natural diamonds have a positive impact on people around the world.
