More jewelers give lab diamonds a whirl

Gemesis Corp. produces lab-grown yellow diamonds but has plans to expand into pink and, eventually, blue. The company is slated to share more details on its color scheme this summer.

For Colleen Rafferty of San Mateo, Calif.-based Christensen and Rafferty Fine Jewelry, the decision to sell lab-created diamonds from Gemesis Corp. was based on a solid business relationship.

For Karl Shrode of Shrode Jewelers in Sarasota, Fla., it was an attempt to reach customers who wanted to buy a yellow diamond but couldn't afford the price tags on natural ones.

While their reasons vary, both are among the growing list of jewelers nationwide who have chosen to add a selection of lab-created stones to their natural-diamond merchandise.

Gemesis diamonds are currently available in 150 to 200 stores in the United States, Hong Kong and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a large jump for a company that had a foothold in fewer than 25 doors a little more than a year ago.

Shrode, who says he took a tour of the Gemesis factory and was "mesmerized" by the yellow diamonds, has been selling Gemesis stones for about three years. He sells the stones in custom pieces and also carries the Solaura collection, which is Diamond Trading Co. sightholder Michael Werdiger's branded line.

Price points range from $8,000 to $10,000. According to Gemesis, its yellow diamonds are about one-third the price at retail of a comparable natural yellow diamond.

Rafferty says she chose to carry the Solaura line in her store because she trusted Werdiger's cutting techniques and was a fan of Jennifer Phelps-Montgomery's designs.

She says Gemesis pieces net her about $30,000 a year, accounting for about 2 percent of the store's annual sales.

"We've done quite well with them over time," Rafferty says.

Sarasota, Fla.-based Gemesis uses the high-pressure, high-temperature (HPHT) process to develop its diamonds.

The stones are created in individual diamond chambers that squeeze graphite under 58,000 atmospheres of pressure at 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit until the material crystallizes into a diamond, atom-by-atom.

Gemesis Corp. has doubled its office space to 60,000 square feet and adds two new diamond chambers per week to keep up with growing demand for its diamonds.

In response to growing demand, Gemesis President and Chief Executive Officer Stephen Lux says the company recently added another 30,000 square feet of production space.

He says Gemesis has "several hundred" chambers now, compared with 40 to 50 just two years ago.

The company's carat production averages about 100,000 per year, five to six times the production levels from two years ago. And the average size of the Gemesis diamond also has increased; the company is now producing polished stones as large as 2.75 carats, Lux says.

At JCK Las Vegas this June, the company is slated to announce its pink diamond release date for sometime in 2008, with blue diamonds slated to follow about six to nine months later.

Both Shrode and Rafferty say their customers are requesting larger stones, and Shrode says that he is eagerly awaiting the Gemesis pink.

To those retailers who might be critical of lab-grown diamonds, Shrode says he sees it as the wave of the future, as natural-diamond supplies shrink and prices climb.

"They can be negative all they want, but 10 years from now, they'll be saying to themselves, 'I'm sorry we didn't start this many, many years ago,'" he says.

While Gemesis specializes in colored diamonds, Apollo Diamond creates colorless diamonds using chemical vapor deposition (CVD).

President Bryant Linares declined to discuss production capabilities, saying only that the Boston-based company has been "steadily increasing production capabilities over the past several years," but "this capability has for the most part been transparent to gem consumers due to the demand for its diamonds in advanced technology applications."

Apollo Diamonds are currently available through Boston-based Bostonian Jewelers, and the company recently began a pilot to sell jewelry through its own Web site. The stones are priced 15 percent less on average than a mined diamond of comparable size.

Apollo produces diamonds ranging from 0.10 to 0.70 carats but plans to make larger diamonds available to consumers in the future, Linares says.

The issue of what to term a lab-created diamond has been a topic of debate for several years now.

Cecilia Gardner, president and CEO of the Jewelers Vigilance Committee (JVC), says according to the Federal Trade Commission, legally, lab-grown diamonds must be called "lab created," "[manufacturer] name created," or "synthetic."

The JVC discusses the topic in "Buying Gemstones and Jewels with Confidence," a brochure that the JVC would like retail jewelers to distribute to their customers.
Source: nationaljewelernetwork