DIAMOND CRITIC

To be honest, when I was first presented with the concept of buying a diamond online, I wasn’t sure it is a good idea at all. The web can be very tempting with promises of unbelievable deals, but the question remains – is it too good to be true?

Well, after more than a few online diamond purchases under my belt, I can say with confidence that you definitely cannot ignore this option. Nevertheless, the more educated you are, the better you can take advantage of this fabulous online market (and not get taken advantage of in the process).

The main reason anyone would consider buying a diamond online is price. This is relatively straight forward, local jewelry stores simply cannot compete with prices available online. The reason for that lies behind the scenes of how the diamond world works.

Consider the journey a typical diamond makes from manufacturing to finally being sold to an end customer. A mining company mines the raw diamond material and sells it to a manufacturer. The manufacturer cuts the material into the diamond shape and the diamond is polished. The polished diamond is traded inside the various diamond exchanges until being sold to a loose diamond distributor. It may pass another local distributor before being sold to a jeweler. The jeweler sets the diamond and prepares the diamond jewelry for final sale to the end customer. This chain can easily become even longer. The jeweler can easily be a jewelry distributor who wholesales to a local jeweler.

Since every link in the chain makes a profit (which in the world of diamonds can easily be as high as the cost), it is no wonder the price climbs heavily as you advance down the chain.

Traditionally, the manufacturers in the beginning of the chain were unable to sell directly to end customers. This requires a great deal of logistics: sales people, customer support, distributed brick-and-mortar stores in commercial centers, consumer marketing, advertising and more. The online era changed all this. In a global village you can reach virtually the entire world using one simple website. Actually, in the age of eBay, you don’t even need that.

To make a long story short, the Internet enables private customers to purchase directly from wholesalers in the beginning of the chain. Your local jeweler simply cannot compete with that. If you want to make the most of your budget, online diamond shopping is definitely worth checking out.

PS – online diamond purchase requires some skill and knowledge, and there are things you have to be careful of, but more about these issues in my next posts..