Robbins Brothers, one of the first jewellery chains to embrace lab-grown diamonds, now wants to make sure it doesn’t give natural gems the short shrift.
This marks a change for the 14-store chain, which has often touted lab-grown diamonds in its communications in recent years, says Sue Hopeman, vice president of merchandising for the Azusa, California-based company.
“We got into the lab in 2013,” she says. “We were always very conscious that we didn’t want it to take over the business.
“Our business model is different from other jewellers. We sell to a wide range of consumers. We sell $1,000 diamonds and we sell $250,000 diamonds. I think we’ve done a good job over the years of balancing our natural diamond business with our lab diamond business. I have talked to retailers who sell 90% lab, and we are fortunate that we have never gone down that road.
But the company felt that natural diamonds – which tend to attract higher-end customers – were “getting lost in the conversation”, says Hopeman.
“People weren’t talking about natural diamonds. We decided to double down. We spent an additional 25% of our open-to-buy on natural diamonds. We retrained all our sales staff on natural diamonds. We put additional advertising resources into natural diamonds,” she says.
“Nobody else was doing that. De Beers was talking about it a little bit, and the Natural Diamond Council was talking about it a little bit. But we felt it was all being overshadowed by the labs. We wanted to step up to the plate and talk about natural diamonds.
Hopeman notes, “The younger generation who are getting their first engagement ring have been fed a lot of misinformation about lab diamonds being environmentally friendly. We believe that natural diamonds do really great things. Look at what’s happened in Botswana. Now we spend time talking about the good that natural diamonds do.
The continuing fall in lab-grown prices was not a driving factor in the decision to refocus on naturals, she says.
“We have been in the lab business for 10 years and have managed it all the time. It’s accelerated in the last two and a half years and we’ve been able to manage it better than new people coming into the business. We’re still selling more lab units than we were a year ago, but we’re also selling more natural units than we were a year ago. And that’s what we wanted – to keep that balance.
When Robbins Brothers first started selling lab-grown diamonds, salespeople would first show customers a natural diamond. Then, as lab-grown diamonds grew in popularity, they’d show both at the same time. Now it’s back to showing the natural first, unless the customer requests a synthetic stone or is on a limited budget.
“We’re the engagement ring store,” says Hopeman. “We believe in the romance and scarcity of natural diamonds. But we’ll sell you a lab if that’s what you want.
“We give the customer the pros and cons of each and let them decide. I’m not here to tell the consumer what they want. I’m here to sell the consumer what they want.
