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New York Times
05-03-2025
- Business
- New York Times
A Rocky Patch for Lab-Grown Diamonds
The luster of lab-grown diamonds has continued to spread slowly in the midrange luxury watch market, with brands such as Breitling and Oris doubling down on their initial embrace of the synthetic gems. But as a capital venture investment, the synthetic gems have been a lot less successful, with millions of euros lost — and plunging prices for lab-grown diamonds, which the industry refers to as L.G.D. 'We're seeing a small handful of very large producers in China and India ramping up production with faster, better processes, and every time they do that, the per unit cost becomes lower and lower,' said Paul Zimnisky, a New York diamond analyst. 'From January 2015 through January 2025, L.G.D. prices have dropped by 85 percent,' he said. 'Today, you can get a nice one-carat ideal round lab-grown diamond for $900. The natural equivalent would be about $5,000. A three-carat synthetic would cost about $4,000, and for the natural, you're looking at $50,000 to $60,000. So they're now running about 90 percent less than natural.' To protect both their brand integrity and their core business, retailers and brands that sell high-end natural diamond jewelry or high jewelry watches have a vested interest in defending natural diamonds — so observers agree it is unlikely that houses such as Bulgari, Cartier and Chopard would ever use synthetic gems in their watches. As Stéphanie Sivrière, the creative director of jewelry and watches at Piaget, said in a recent interview, 'It wouldn't be authentic to the DNA of our maison.' But when it comes to midrange or entry-level luxury timepieces, lab-grown diamonds, used in small quantities for dial markers or accents on bezels, seem to make sense. 'The products we have that feature lab-grown diamonds are performing excellently in the market,' said Aurelia Figueroa, Breitling's head of sustainability, 'and even above our expectations.' And Oris' chief executive of the Americas, VJ Geronimo, echoed the comment for his brand's synthetic-set lines in the region. Lingering View The watch sector was far behind jewelry makers in embracing lab-grown diamonds, with Citizen first adding them to its L Ambiluna collection in 2020. As Marc-André Deschoux, founder of the online channel WatchesTV, said in a 2021 interview with The New York Times: 'This is still a taboo subject in Switzerland because of a lingering negative view of man-made diamonds.' But in 2022, Breitling introduced them in its Chronomat line, announcing that lab-grown stones eventually would replace natural diamonds in all its collections (the brand says it is now 43 percent of the way to that goal). That year TAG Heuer came out with a limited-edition Carrera Date Plasma Diamant D'Avant-Garde watch set with lab-grown diamonds and Oris incorporated them into its Aquis line; both brands have used them in more recent introductions, too. And last year, Raymond Weil dipped into the sector, setting synthetic diamonds into the lugs of its Millesime model. Oris and Breitling said these watches had been well received by consumers, noting that lab-grown diamonds can have a much smaller environmental footprint than mined ones, depending on production methods, and that the synthetic gems have the same optical, physical and chemical properties and emit the same sparkle as mined ones. Not in Nature As a capital investment, however, lab-grown diamonds have not fared well, something experts say is the result of oversupply and consolidation. In 2022, for example, LVMH Luxury Ventures, the private equity division of the luxury giant Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, and its partners invested $90 million in Lusix, a lab-grown diamond manufacturer in Israel. But the business struggled financially, and it was sold for $4 million in November to two other producers, Fenix Diamonds and Dholakia Lab-Grown Diamond. The failure of LVMH's investment 'has absolutely nothing to do with the strategy of individual brands' when it comes to using lab-grown diamonds, said Antoine Pin, TAG Heuer's chief executive. 'I see them as an opportunity to use diamonds in new ways,' he said, 'with one full diamond carved out to serve as the crown, for example, or a large solid piece carved as a bezel. 'We are thinking, what can we provide that is unique, different. We want to use them in a way that does not exist in nature. That's what we're looking at, rather than just duplicating the way natural diamonds are already used in watches. So although we don't have any new pieces at the moment, one interesting direction would be colored diamonds or special cuts, shapes and large sizes. So we're working on this.' Among other failures, Mirabaud Lifestyle Impact and Innovation, an investment fund run by David Wertheimer, a Chanel heir, was one of several firms that invested millions of euros in Diam Concept, a French synthetic diamond maker. It was the main supplier to Courbet, a synthetic-only jeweler also funded by Mirabaud that was founded in 2017 and had a showroom on Place Vendôme in Paris, the heart of the high jewelry industry. Diam Concept dissolved in June 2024; Courbet entered court-ordered receivership in December. Even Lightbox, the lab-grown gem subsidiary of the diamond giant De Beers, has faltered. After announcing in May 2024 that it would reduce prices by more than a third, it announced in June that it would transition to synthetic diamonds exclusively for industrial applications. In Retail The bankruptcies exposed the strange disconnect between the vaunted popularity of lab-grown diamonds with some consumers and their failure as a capital venture vehicle. In 2024, according to the diamond industry analyst Edahn Golan, 45.3 percent of the diamond engagement rings sold in the United States had lab-grown diamonds, and overall the gems were present in 14.3 percent of all diamond jewelry sold in the country. 'The average age of people getting married in the United States is 28 — broadly speaking it's 25 to 35 — so that tells us that young people are embracing lab-growns,' said Mr. Golan, who is the managing partner of Tenoris, a jewelry and diamond retail trend company that collects data each month from 2,500 retail jewelers in the United States. Despite the consumer interest in lab-grown diamonds, some retailers are wary of selling synthetics, mainly because of the overall impact on their traditional watch and jewelry business. Mr. Geronimo of Oris acknowledged that some retailers had been resistant: 'Their store policy is that they don't deal with lab-growns, period, and that's it. But we have others that totally embrace it. They don't care, even though they have a good customer base in natural diamonds.' Raymond Weil declined to answer questions for this article, with its public relations agency sending a message: 'I regret to inform you that Raymond Weil has decided not to participate in this matter. The C.E.O. mentioned that it is a sensitive topic in the U.S., and they are concerned about potential negative feedback.' Mr. Zimnisky, the diamond analyst, noted that the steep decline in synthetic diamond prices might hurt the credibility of some retailers. 'If I had a jewelry store and I sold a consumer a three-carat lab diamond for $20,000 in 2018, and now I'm selling it for $1,500, I'd be nervous that consumers are going to come back and say, 'You ripped me off.'' The consolidation occurring among lab-grown diamond manufacturers could stabilize the market eventually, experts say, and if the surviving producers adopt the right practices, it could strengthen the sector's sustainability credentials. Breitling is one of a growing number of companies tracing its supply chain, something that the European Union's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive will require many larger businesses to do, starting this year. 'The origin of our decision to use lab-growns is based completely in traceability and sustainability,' Ms. Figueroa said. 'We surveyed the market, and we understood that for us to go forward with true traceability, we weren't going to be able to achieve that with mined diamonds. We made the decision to switch to lab-grown. 'Then, we very carefully selected only a handful of suppliers: ABD Diamonds and Fenix Diamonds, both based in western India. Fenix is using already 100 percent renewable energy, and ABC is, so far, using 25 percent — we actually cofinanced the solar PV panels that they have on site, and they're working on finalizing their plan to source 100 percent renewable energy right now.' All of that effort notwithstanding, Mr. Zimnisky is among those who say that price trumps sustainability when it comes to watch and jewelry purchases. Ultimately, 'environment doesn't matter,' he said. 'Consumers don't care about that as much as the media talks about it. Consumers are buying lab diamonds because they're so cheap. It's all about the price.'
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Breitling Announces the Ultimate Navitimer Watch
Want more watch coverage? Get Esquire's newsletter, free into your inbox every Sunday. There's few things the luxury watch world enjoys more than celebrating a birthday. Any date in the diary will do, no matter how quietly the occasion may have shook the world. Forty-five years since the development of a particular movement. Sixty years of a partnership with some fictional character or other. Seventy-five years since someone climbed a mountain or dived an ocean or completed in some road race latterly associated with the brand. Last year, Breitling, the Swiss watchmaker known for its precision chronographs, sturdy craftsmanship and strong ties to aviation, had legitimate reason to get out the bunting – the occasion of the 140th anniversary of its founding. Yet you'd be forgiven for missing it. Where other brands would have taken the opportunity to create a year's worth of noisy "moments", Breitling's celebrations were curiously muted. Perhaps to underline a new emphasis on its serious watchmaking credibility – the wider company has announced it will bring back dormant watch geek brand Universal Genève in 2026; more recent rumours suggest the purchase of a third brand, Gallet – Breitling chose to celebrate the milestone by announcing a new movement. The calibre B19 was the brand's first perpetual calendar, the complication that tracks day, date, month and moonphase, and self-corrects for leap years, as well as months of 28, 30, and 31 days. This was the latest in a line of movements Breitling has been developing in-house, a series that began in 2009 with the calibre B01, an automatic chronograph, and has since been followed by a GMT, a split-seconds, and others. Perpetual calendars are among the most prized complications in any watchmakers' catalogue – typically the preserve of high-end haute horology brands, and with prices to match. Breitling chose to double-down on this idea for its anniversary by releasing birthday perpetual calendars across three of its watch models, the Premier, the Navitimer and the Chronomat, and positioning them at the top end of its catalogue. Each one was a limited edition (of 140, natch), made from 18ct gold and cost an eye-watering £48,000. That surely ruled out most passing Breitling fans. Still, movements cost a lot of time and money to produce – Brietling says the B19 underwent a 16-year aging simulation that included 100,000 crown winds, 3,456,000 weight turns and 60,000 shocks at 500G, 'among other extreme challenges' – and no one is going to go through all that faff for just three watches. A broader roll out of the B19 was surely on the cards. So, today the watchmaker has announced the arrival of the perpetual calendar movement in a more attainable stainless steel version of its flagship watch, the Navitimer. It also comes in one of the most attractive dial colours, ice blue. The rest of the specs for the Breitling Navitimer B19 Chronograph 43 Perpetual Calendar are: a 43mm case, a 96-hour power reserve, Super-Luminova luminescence on the indexes and the hour and minute hand, and water resistance to 30 meters. The watch comes on either a stainless steel seven-row bracelet, or a black alligator leather strap. As per the trio of gold models, it also comes COSC-certified, meaning it has been tested and certified by the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute, a mark of accuracy and quality that ensures it will keep within a daily rate of -4 to +6 seconds. For Navitimer fans, of which there are many, the perpetual calendar, with its ability to track days and months virtually uninterrupted, may represent the ultimate expression of timekeeping. Most compelling may be the price – a little over £25,000, for the leather strap version. It's hardly pocket money prices. But it's not mad for a perpetual calendar, either. And it's one announcement following on from last year's 140th anniversary that Breitling fans may feel like celebrating. Breitling Navitimer B19 Chronograph 43 Perpetual Calendar, on a stainless steel bracelet, £25,400.00. Breitling Navitimer B19 Chronograph 43 Perpetual Calendar, on a black leather Strap, £25,150.00. You Might Also Like The Best Men's Sunglasses For Summer '19 There's A Smartwatch For Every Sort Of Guy What You Should Buy For Your Groomsmen (And What They Really Want)
