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De Beers Group announces intention to close Lightbox
Poast new message in this thread
Date: May 12th, 2025 3:00 AM Author: ''"'''"''"' They unleashed lab diamonds and it is coming back to haunt them
https://www.debeersgroup.com/media/company-news/2025/de-beers-group-announces-intention-to-close-lightbox-business |
Date: May 12th, 2025 3:01 AM Author: ''"'''"''"' De Beers Group today announces its intention to close its lab-grown diamond (“LGD”) jewellery brand, Lightbox, reinforcing De Beers Group’s commitment to natural diamonds in the jewellery sector. As part of the closure process, De Beers Group is discussing the sale of certain assets, including inventory, with potential buyers.
Lightbox, which was established in 2018, has highlighted that LGDs are a distinct product from natural diamonds, with different attributes and different value. The business was launched with transparent linear pricing of $800 per carat. Since then, LGD prices in the jewellery sector have fallen 90% at wholesale, tracking closer to a cost-plus model as they have diverged from natural diamond prices. Reflecting this sharp price decline, De Beers Group intends to discontinue the Lightbox business. |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 3:08 AM Author: the walter white of this generation (walt jr.) We discussed this when they first bought lightbox. It is one of the most brazenly cynical business moves I've ever seen and is designed to squeeze a couple more years out of the prestige and consumer demand for natural diamonds, which are inferior in every way to lab-grown diamonds under the criteria ("the 4 C's") recognized for centuries. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48923163) |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 3:15 AM Author: ''"'''"''"' The overall prestige of diamonds, no matter where it came from, is headed downhill. They are kidding themselves if people just see lab grown diamonds as falling in value.
“The persistently declining value of lab-grown diamonds in jewellery underscores the growing differentiation between these factory-made products and natural diamonds. Lightbox has helped to highlight the fundamental differences in value between these two categories. Global competition continues to intensify with more low-cost lab-grown diamond production from China. In the US, supermarkets are driving down lab-grown diamond jewellery prices. Overall, we expect both the cost and price of lab-grown diamonds to fall further in the jewellery sector. |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 4:35 AM Author: the walter white of this generation (walt jr.) Yes, this is completely obvious, but it spelled the beginning of the end for one of the world's most recognizable cartels (literally, 25 years ago, if you asked someone to name a legal global cartel, a plurality would name de beers... the company was founded by cecil rhodes and the rothschild family). Obviously they were never going to control LGDs the way they toiled and spent and swindled and killed to control the world's natural diamond supply, so they set out to portray LGDs as costume jewelry / kids toys -- which, again, there is a well-established way of judging diamond quality, and LGDs outperform naturals of the same size in every way. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48923191) |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 5:06 AM Author: ''"'''"''"' Oppenheimer family no longer has a stake in the company so De Beers can die out and it won't have effect on a grand Jewish family and whatever political campaigns they support (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48923195) |
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Date: May 13th, 2025 1:25 AM Author: https://imgur.com/a/o2g8xYK Diamonds are no longer useful as a means of moving wealth across borders. Transaction costs are high af with everyone using crypto instead. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48926058) |
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Date: May 13th, 2025 1:24 AM Author: https://imgur.com/a/o2g8xYK A plurality would have named OPEC and never heard of DeBeers (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48926057) |
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Date: May 13th, 2025 1:50 AM Author: the walter white of this generation (walt jr.) Yeah you're correct. DeBeers up there though. Rhodes and Rothschild is like the royal flush of sinister shadowy colonialist-globalist pedigrees. Also talk about blood diamonds was big back then. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48926072) |
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Date: May 13th, 2025 1:56 AM Author: https://imgur.com/a/o2g8xYK lmao ty for reminding me about blood diamondz. The thing about Africans is they're already missing multiple teeth, so one mule can have 3 or 4 hollow falsies (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48926078) |
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Date: May 13th, 2025 1:52 AM Author: .,..,.,,.,..,,,.,.,.,..,..,..,.,..,,.,.,.,. [not a Rhodes Scholar] (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48926074) |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 5:41 AM Author: ,.,..,.,..,.,.,.,..,.,.,,..,..,.,,..,.,,. their only hope is to completely flip around the desirability of 'perfection' in favor of hipster-style 'authenticity,' in which the gem is not cut at all, but is in fact still embedded in rock and other crap. a true mined diamond cannot be replicated in a lab because you'd need to somehow embed all the little chunks of silicate and feldspar and other shit into the diamond/junkstone interface. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48923202) |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 7:33 PM Author: .,.,,..,..,.,..:,,:,...,:::,.,.,:,.,.:.,:.,:.::,. It’s kind of unbelievable they thought it had a chance of working. There’s no way you are going to convince more than a small percentage of people they should waste thousands more on an inferior stone just because it is natural. If their friends can’t tell, it doesn’t matter. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48925231) |
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Date: May 13th, 2025 1:22 AM Author: the walter white of this generation (walt jr.) Yeah but this is 0:06 remaining in the 4th quarter, not the 2nd. You throw the hail mary regardless.
Also I had a thread about stainless-steel rolexes (which can be faked to near-perfection) the other day that really got me thinking about the value of authenticity. (My personal conclusion was that I would probably not buy another (real) rolex b/c of the situation, but obviously a whole market of consumers feels differently.) |
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Date: May 13th, 2025 1:27 AM Author: https://imgur.com/a/o2g8xYK The market for diamonds didn't need to be yuge, it just had to be liquid. It's been hard to sell diamonds for 20 years. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48926061) |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 12:30 PM Author: ''"'''"''"' DeBeers q1 25 sales drop by 44%
https://www.diamondworld.net/news/de-beers-q1-production-drops-amid-demand-slump-sales-slide-44 |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 12:31 PM Author: ''"'''"''"' Sales figures reflected the industry-wide slowdown. De Beers sold 4.7 million carats in Q1, generating $520 million in revenue—a sharp 44% decline from $925 million in the same period last year. The average realised price per carat also took a hit, falling 38% to $124, impacted by a shift in the sales mix and a 15% drop in the De Beers price index. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48923977) |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 12:38 PM Author: ''"'''"''"' Now De Beers, which has cut its production and is set to go public in the next 12 months after its parent Anglo American put it up for sale, is sitting on a $2 billion stockpile of unsold diamonds. As part of its cost-cutting measures, the company confirmed this week that it would shut down Lightbox, a fashion jewelry label it introduced in 2018 to sell synthetic diamonds at a time when a synthetic price discount was only 10 percent of their natural counterparts.
The gambit was pitched as a bold experiment to show consumers the difference between natural and lab-grown diamonds, offering lower than market prices in a bid to protect De Beers’s core business. But did it work?
“Kind of,” Mr. Cook said. Lightbox, he said, was designed to sell man-made diamonds at value pegged to what it cost to make them rather than metrics like carat, cut, color and clarity that guide the price of natural stones. Because of declining manufacturing costs, however, the wholesale price of lab-grown stones has fallen by 90 percent since the unveiling of Lightbox, which he said highlighted that gulf even further. |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 7:09 PM Author: the walter white of this generation (walt jr.) If it’s any consolation to de Beers, they won’t have anywhere *near* a $2B stockpile of unsold diamonds here 2-3 years from now. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48925165) |
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Date: May 12th, 2025 7:28 PM Author: .,.,,..,..,.,..:,,:,...,:::,.,.,:,.,.:.,:.,:.::,. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48925211) |
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Date: May 13th, 2025 1:23 AM Author: https://imgur.com/a/o2g8xYK Timing seems totally random (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5723964&forum_id=2],#48926055) |