Lab-Grown Diamond Marketing Is Hurting Industry, CIBJO President Says

By Rob Bates | January 06, 2025

Lab-grown diamond companies are marketing their products in ways that could damage consumer confidence in the overall industry, World Jewellery Federation (CIBJO) president Gaetano Cavalieri said during a keynote address to the 2024 Global Gems & Jewelry Development Conference last month in Hainan, China.

“The early decision to benchmark laboratory-grown diamond prices against the price of natural diamonds…proved to be a critical error over the longer term,” said Cavalieri. “It should always have been apparent that the economic principles governing a natural product, where there is always a finite production ceiling, was different to that of a manufactured product, where there is no production ceiling and where we inevitably would see a sharp reduction in production overheads as economies of scale were reached.

“So when decisions were made to conflate the two, and then worse, to differentiate the products by making negative marketing claims about the other, consumer confidence in both categories was undermined.”

Natural and lab-grown diamond producers should “disengage and go back to their drawing boards,” Cavalieri advised.

“Each needs to clearly brand its product in a realistic and positive way so that consumer confidence will be restored,” he said.

The jewelry industry depends on consumer confidence, Cavalieri stressed.

“The items we sell do not necessarily have inherent value—such is the nature of luxury products,” he said. “They have perceived value, created by the brands and through cultural and historic associations. If the consumer loses confidence in our products, then their value is discounted. Without consumer confidence, a diamond, a ruby, an emerald, or an exquisite piece of jade is simply a colorful stone.”

(photo courtesy of CIBJO)