Consumer
De Beers Ditches Lab-Grown Diamonds as It Looks Beyond Anglo
- CEO Cook to stop selling synthetic stones as business revamped
- Anglo American is preparing to sell or separate De Beers
De Beers will turn its focus on so-called category marketing, where it promotes diamond jewelry in general rather than just its own branded gems.
Photographer: Taylor Weidman/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
De Beers will ditch a controversial experiment to sell lab grown diamond jewelry, ending a six-year program that broke one of its oldest taboos.
While the company long held the technology to make synthetic gems, it always refused to sell them as jewelry, fearing they would undercut the allure of natural stones. Yet as man-made stones gained traction and started competing directly with natural diamonds, De Beers launched its own jewelry brand in 2018.