This past year has been marked with significant ups and down in terms of loose diamond and fine jewelry prices and sales. While the world is still attempting to recover from the 2009 global economic recession, experts claim that we may very well be heading into another serious recession and that the loose diamond and fine jewelry market is destined to take another hit in terms of its revenues. As such, diamond and fine jewelry retailers and designers the world over have made an effort to come up with recession friendly solutions for diamond and jewelry aficionados.
The upcoming holidays have prompted loose diamond vendors and fine jewelry retailers to offer their customers more cost efficient, ‘recession friendly’ pieces of high end jewelry. With rough and polished diamond prices skyrocketing, global fine jewelry retailers and distributors have turned to different sources for their fine jewelry products, replacing diamonds with more affordable precious gemstones such as sapphires, granites and citrines, and precious metals such as high karat yellow and white gold.
By using more cost efficient materials for their recession friendly, high end jewelry pieces, these retailers hope to bolster customer interest in their fine jewelry wares, an interest which had waned since 2009 following the global recession, thereby effectively boosting sales of these luxury commodities. Diamond and fine jewelry tycoons such as De Beers are now coming out with campaigns introducing more affordable diamond engagement rings, wedding bands, earrings, necklaces and pendants for those customers who are on a budget and who are looking for reasonably priced fine jewelry.
Amongst those who are producing recession friendly, moderately priced fine jewelry pieces are designers who have attempted to combine two of this year’s hottest trends: recession friendly jewelry and eco-friendly pieces. Many designers and retailers have found that cost efficient materials are also considered eco-friendly. For example, rough, unpolished diamonds are significantly less expensive than polished diamonds since they are usually of a lower quality and since they are left uncut and unpolished, procedures which both prove to be time consuming and costly. By using eco-friendly materials such as rough diamonds and organic or recycled metals and materials such as stainless steel and carved wood, a fine jewelry retailer can not only cut costs on his products, but can also produce a trendy, eco-friendly piece of fine, high end jewelry.
