Within the United States, wholesale diamonds have been sold in the mainly in the New York and Los Angeles jewelry districts. Diamonds would trickle down towards the client who would generally go buy a diamond in a neighborhood mall. But that was then and this is now. The diamond business has rapidly evolved since the dot com era very first began inside the late 90’s.

Prior to the proliferation of the web, diamond wholesalers would import diamonds, both rough and polished, from several overseas sources. Places like South Africa, Belgium and India. Those diamonds would flow directly into the offices of main diamond wholesalers in New York and LA who would then market to other smaller regional sellers and diamond traders in major cities all over the US. Those smaller regional diamond wholesalers would then permit retailers to retailers borrow these diamonds on “memo” to place in their display cases hoping that the retailer would close the sale. It was a win-win relationship for both the smaller regional wholesaler that built a relationship with these merchants and could charge a premium for their service, and the retailer who in turn could stock diamonds to market with little to no up front investment.

And so began the chain of sellers that any specific diamond would turn out to be property to. From the time a diamond is discovered inside the ground, to when it’s purchased by a young lad looking to propose, it has changed hands at least eight times. These middlemen included the cutter, polisher, the lab the diamond is sent to grading for, numerous wholesalers and other traders, prior to it lastly gets to the jewelry keep and to the end client.

What made diamonds trade hands even much more was the practice of some diamond dealers to keep on sending exactly the same diamond in for grading at multiple labs to get even a much better grade. You see diamond grading is just an opinion of the grader working that day at any offered lab, and some labs are much more strict then others. In the event you were a big wholesaler that a lab was dependent on for business, it was not uncommon for that lab to grade their diamonds easier for fear of losing their business enterprise. This is why all jewelers in the trade know that EGL and IGI certified diamonds aren’t to become trusted 100% but must be visually inspected. GIA certificates on the other hand are like gold and are treated as such because that lab was the leader as well as the undisputed authority on diamond grading and still would be to this day.

Now enter the net age, as well as the diamond trade is forced to rapidly evolve. Now, consumers armed with an web connection need to have only to search on the web, sort by selling price, and suddenly they had thousands of diamonds to pick from. They became additional educated about the con game of non-GIA graded diamonds, and demanded each and every diamond for being GIA certified. And if they didn’t wish to shop on the web, all they had to do was bring a full print out with the results they discovered online and use that to haggle with their nearby jewelry store.

What then proceeded to happen, was the unthinkable for diamond dealers. Diamonds began becoming sold online as commodities, very easily comparable with a a lot better disclosure, and this of course ate into their profits considerably. Several jewelers have been forced to shut down, because their enterprise relied on selling much less then accurately graded diamonds to individuals walking in their doors. Then needless to say there had been all the middle men within the diamond trade who have been squeezed out too. Retailers had been forced to compete on quality and price, and necessary to search for the best sources with out relying on favorable terms from local wholesalers. Diamond wholesalers in Los Angeles and NY started buying directly from the cutters themselves. Exactly where will the diamond market be in ten or twenty years from now? We don’t know. But we do know that doing company hoping your customers are going to become ignorant isn’t a sound business model. Luxe Wholesale Diamonds, on the other hand, strives to broker the really finest quality diamonds to our clients at very competitive prices. We think the brokerage model and being honest with our clients is in which the diamond trade will ultimately wind up in, and we are extremely excited to be a part of this rapidly evolving business.

Luxe is a wholesale diamonds seller based in downtown LA that ships diamonds all over the world. Be sure to also check out our Los Angeles diamonds blog as well.