Less Perfect, More Practical: Diamonds’ New Path Forward

While the latest financial results of LVMH (watches and jewelry sales +3%), Richemont (jewelry +24%) and Kering (jewelry +106%) once more highlight jewelry’s brilliant performance in the first half of the year, the diamond business fails to shine as brightly.

On July 7, Bloomberg reported that De Beers Group cut the price of its rough diamonds and reduced its number of sight-holders (the wholesale clients invited to buy its goods) by about a third to approximately 45-50.

Then, on July 13, De Beers Group announced a pause in production at its Venetia mine in South Africa, citing cost reductions and a redirection of funds on its underground project. Two weeks later, the diamond giant reported a 32% drop in average diamond carat cost to $105, down from $155 last year — even lower than in June 2020, when it stood at $119.

All of this movement follows a deal De Beers signed in February committing more of the diamonds mined in Botswana to the state-owned Okavango Diamond Company, which will sell the diamonds independently, lessening De Beers’s supply. Anglo American, De Beers’s parent company, put the company up for sale in 2024.

In an official note accompanying the pausing of the Venetia mine, De Beers acknowledged the challenging conditions in trading rough diamonds. As for the sight-holders cuts, a De Beers spokesperson linked it to “lower anticipated availability” and a “focus on deeper, more strategic partnerships”, adding that “in the new contract period, we will work with a more focused group of clients”. De Beers did not comment on the price cuts.

De Beers Group accounts for about 30% of global diamond output and is considered the industry’s bellwether. Across the category, simultaneous pressures of rising operating costs and weakened demand following the post-Covid boom has strained the structural foundations. Inflation and tensions in the Middle East made mining diamonds more expensive and led consumers in much of the Western world to cut discretionary spending. Sanctions on Russia-owned diamond miner Alrosa, which also accounts for about 30% of the market, have rocked the prices of rough diamonds.

According to the figures provided by the Kimberley Process (the global certification scheme for mined diamonds), global diamond production has contracted by a fifth, down from approximately 125 million carats in 2014 to about 99 million in 2025.

Meanwhile, the growth of laboratory-grown diamonds has dealt another blow. “The lab-grown diamond threat is very serious,” says Bernstein luxury goods analyst Luca Solca. A study by bridal platform The Knot, published in February 2026, shows that 61% of 10,000 US couples surveyed opted for lab-grown, a 239% increase since 2020. In an interview with the Financial Times on August 4, Duncan Wanblad, the CEO of Anglo American, which owns 85% of De Beers Group, acknowledged that the lab-grown diamond threat has been underestimated.

As the diamond industry grapples with external forces and declining demand, it needs a new game plan. Much of that comes down to how the diamond is marketed today.

“For decades, we have told just one story,” says Amber Pepper, CEO of the Natural Diamond Council (NDC), the body representing diamond miners and manufactures, which has mainly revolved around the diamond engagement ring. “We need more stories.”

Injecting funds in category marketing is, according to Pepper, a top priority. “Fashion, beauty, and watches [brands] typically invest 5-15% of their revenues into demand creation, while the diamond industry has historically invested only a fraction of that,” she says.

Pepper added that the NDC is working on a Natural Diamond Trustmark, a symbol to immediately distinguish natural from lab-grown diamonds, while increasing customer awareness and clarity. Moreover, the NDC is investing resources to improve how natural diamonds are represented in generative AI platforms. “AI is rapidly becoming the world’s new discovery layer,” she says. “If AI gets diamonds wrong, consumers will, too.” The NDC declined to share specifics at this stage, but says more is to come.

Aligned on the same strategic vision outlined by the NDC, De Beers Group is also pouring marketing dollars into its new A Diamond Is Forever social media campaign and educational platform, which seeks to celebrate the everlasting appeal of the diamond as well as introduce a new way of thinking of the gemstone beyond the engagement ring. A Desert Diamond Campaign, meanwhile, aims to celebrate diamonds of all colors — even imperfect ones — moving beyond the previous focus on the importance of the 4Cs (carat, clarity, color, and cut). The campaign, live in the US, India and China, has driven sales of diamonds in the more accessible K to Z color range (marketed as Desert Diamonds) by 15% and 19%, respectively (diamond colors are classified on a scale from D, colorless, to Z, brown).

Sahag Arslanian, founder of his eponymous jewelry brand, also sees grounds for natural diamonds, particularly colored ones.

Partnerships with Frieze Art Fair and the National Geographic, as well as spotlighting celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny wearing Desert Diamonds for events, are all part of the efforts to rebuild diamonds’ cultural cachet and position in society, while working to win Gen Z.

Such initiatives, alongside its grip on supply and a fresh focus on a smaller group of sight-holders, suggest De Beers Group is pushing diamonds’ positioning of all colors and quality further upmarket, and is having a positive effect on the price of rough diamonds more in line with that of cut and polished ones. The strategy, analysts concur, is likely to future-proof not only De Beers Group, but the industry as whole.

“The industry does seem to be in the early stages of repositioning its products as a proper luxury good, with physical proprietary marking, elevated merchandising, and more limited and exclusive retail distribution,” observes independent diamond analyst Paul Zimnisky. Diamonds’ positioning was diluted after years of being sold almost as commodities following the rigid 4Cs criteria and an exclusive focus on flawless stones. The juxtaposition to less expensive lab-grown diamonds had further confused consumers.

The 5.50-carat, fancy-vivid-blue-green Ocean Blue diamond.

Sahag Arslanian, the third generation of the Arslanian Group, diamond dealer and manufacturer, as well as the founder of his eponymous jewelry brand, also sees grounds for natural diamonds, particularly colored ones of a considerable size, to appreciate more than lab-grown and become an “extra-luxury”. By way of example, he mentions the 5.50-carat, fancy vivid blue-green Ocean Blue diamond, which his family sold for $2 million in 2004 and went on to fetch about $8.7 million at auction in 2012, and $17.6 million at Christie’s this year.

Moreover, Arslanian is convinced of the untapped potential of unusually colored diamonds (the ones promoted by De Beers Group as Desert Diamonds). “I believe in natural diamonds,” he says, “otherwise, I would have not launched my own brand and put them at the heart of it.”