Seven years after its introduction sent shock waves through the industry, De Beers is closing the Lightbox lab-grown diamond business.
As part of the closure process, De Beers will sell certain assets, including inventory.
At press time, Lightbox’s site was still up, but De Beers CEO Al Cook tells JCK it will cease functioning within the coming months.
At JCK Las Vegas last year, Cook announced that De Beers would no longer produce diamonds for Lightbox and that its Portland, Ore., factory—originally meant for Lightbox—would instead grow industrial stones for De Beers’ tech-oriented subsidiary, Element Six.
At the time, Cook was noncommittal about Lightbox’s future. But a few months later, De Beers relaunched the brand, after dropping its entry-level price point to $500 a carat.
Cook says De Beers ultimately decided it made no sense to continue.
“Over the last year, the price of lab-grown has continued to fall sharply,” he says. “We have now gotten to the point where you can buy lab-grown in supermarkets for $200. Our decision was to proactively simplify the business rather than hang on to parts of the business that were no longer core.”
He says that by turning over the Portland plant to Element Six, “we ended up with the world’s best facility for creating technology diamonds, in the right place and the right country.”
A company statement said that Lightbox’s “closure will enable De Beers Group to reallocate investment to initiatives focused on reinvigorating desire for natural diamonds through category marketing.”
According to its most recent financial statements, Lightbox lost $101.3 million in 2023, up from a $22.3 million loss in 2022. Cook says the increase was likely related to the factory’s construction.
He views De Beers’ foray into lab-grown as largely successful […]
Source : jckonline READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
Image : a Lightbox pop-up store (photo courtesy of Lightbox)
