With the holiday season approaching, there's likely someone on your shopping list who's asking for something sparkly this year. But rather than zigging and zagging your way through shopping mall jewelry stores, one Chicago startup wants you to consider buying a lab-grown diamond for your special someone.
Mine, a Chicago startup that officially launched in September, offers a range of different jewelry products featuring diamonds grown in a lab. The startup outsources its diamonds from labs in Russia and China and designs the jewelry in-house.
Mine was founded by Biren Bhansali and Josh Navon, who both come from families that have experience in the jewelry industry and operate diamond wholesale distribution companies on Chicago's Jewelers Row.
The two noticed the rise of lab-grown diamond startups over the last few years, and decided to launch a consumer business that targets customer who prefer the ethical and sustainable nature in which lab-grown diamonds are produced. From startups like San Francisco-based Diamond Foundry, which has raised $100 million in funding from Leonardo DiCaprio and other high-profile backers, to large legacy jewelers like De Beers jumping into the lab-grown trend, to smaller diamond upstarts like Ada Diamonds and Kimaï, the nascent industry is poised for growth.
"In 2018, in the diamond industry, it was sort of the year of the lab-grown diamond," Bhansali said. "The industry, as a retail industry, went form zero to $2 billion-plus in annual retail sales ... Lab grown diamonds, we think, are an absolute disruptor in the diamond industry."
Unlike most other lab-grown diamond upstarts, Mine doesn't offer engagement rings or other high-priced jewelry with large stones. Most of its jewelry is in the $300 to $600 range, and the largest diamond it offers is a half carat.
"We're offering high-quality diamond jewelry at a not-so-high-quality diamond jewelry price point," Bhansali said.
The lab-grown diamond industry, while still a small piece of the overall diamond market, is growing. Three years ago lab-grown diamonds made up just 1% of diamond sales. Today, analysts estimate that it's closer to 2-3% of the market.
But there remain lab-grown diamond skeptics who wonder if the ease in which a laboratory diamond can be produced lowers its value. And the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has its eye on the industry too, writing warning letters to eight companies earlier this year to make sure their advertisements clearly distinguish diamonds from mines versus those made in a lab.
Navon, Mine's co-founder, stressed that diamonds produced in a lab are chemically, optically and physically the same as a diamond that comes from a mine.
"It's like ice grown in a freezer versus ice grown outside," he said. "It's quite literally the exact same product. The only difference is where it comes from."
Due to the amount of diamonds on the market that come from conflict regions, as well as movies like Blood Diamond that highlighted the violence in the industry, socially conscious consumers are warming to diamonds they know are conflict free. And Mine, whose tagline is "Mine, Not Mined," believes there's a market for shoppers---especially millennials---who want accessible and ethical jewelry.
And the startup isn't worried about the lab-grown trend eventually surpassing the traditional jewelry industry.
"In early 2018, the natural diamond world was scared this was going to threaten their livelihood and take over the industry," Navon sad. "But I think that there’s certainly a world where the natural diamond trade and the lab-grown diamond trade coexist."
