The R&M “Lettre”

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is anticipated to be the busiest shopping day in 2015 both in terms of shopper numbers and total sales, according to analytics company ShopperTrak.

Everyone agrees: The diamond market, and the way diamonds are sold, is a mess. The system has broken down. While producers continue to post strong profits, manufacturers’ margins have been whittled down to nothing, and the middle market’s woes have brought the industry to a crisis point.

In September 2015, the House of Chaumet opened its Pop-up Museum. The museum sits alongside the brand’s store in Place Vendôme, Paris, and invites us to wander both through their rural creations and their history.

The Gemological Institute of America has invalidated 1,042 grading reports issued by its grading lab, as they bear grades that were altered after its system was accessed without authorization by former employees of its database support contractor, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS).

Low rough diamond demand expected through 4Q. De Beers will allow sightholders to defer their entire November allocations until December as diamond manufacturers remain under pressure from weak market conditions.

This week, the Diamond Producers Association, the group formed earlier this year by the world’s major miners, announced that it has tapped longtime jewelry industry marketer Sally Morrison as its new managing director of marketing, bringing her back to where she started in this industry.

Alrosa Vice President Andrey Polyakov has been tapped as the next vice president of the World Diamond Council, the organization announced following its annual general meeting last week in Russia.

De Beers’ International Institute of Diamond Grading & Research (IIDGR) is to begin offering its melee testing service in Surat, India and Antwerp, Belgium.

LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton reported an 18 percent increase in revenue to $28.8 billion (€25.3 billion) for the first nine months of 2015, with its watches and jewelry business jumping 22 percent.

Gold, platinum, and silver prices have all done an about-face in the last month, just as many forecasters had given up on precious metals.  

Tiffany and Cartier are the most recognized jewelry brands among wealthy consumers, according to a new survey by the American Affluence Research Center.

Traders of mined diamonds are divided over how to best respond to the growth of their laboratory-grown counterparts. Last week, India’s Bharat Diamond Bourse (BDB) became the second exchange to ban trading of man-made diamonds, ignoring a section of the industry