You take the bus?
If it’s good enough for Keanu Reeves, it is good enough for me.
AYYYYYY we got another homie back
Odd piercing: the little indent just below the centre of the nose. Natch, this girl had about 4 piercings in each ear and in a nostril and the lower lip.
fascinating article. i honestly thing debeers is killing themself. hilarious.
When De Beers shocked the industry with its U-turn in May, a 1 carat synthetic diamond cost about $4,200 while an equivalent mined gem sold for $6,000. But since September, De Beers has been selling gem-quality man-made stones for just $800 a carat.
But so far, De Beers’ strategy has been working. According to analyst Paul Zimnisky, the average discount of a 1 carat generic lab-grown diamond to a natural diamond had widened to 42 percent by mid-November from 29 percent in January.
At the same time, production costs to make high-tech diamonds in a laboratory have plummeted to as little as $300 a carat from about $4,000 over the past decade, according to consultants Bain & Company and two former De Beers’ employees.
That means De Beers has plenty of scope to cut prices further, to reinforce the cachet of natural gems and to undermine synthetic diamond rivals that have been earning substantial margins in recent years, analysts say.
“The cost of these synthetic diamonds will go down to production costs plus a competitive profit margin. There is no shortage,” said Martin Rapaport, who publishes a list of natural diamond prices regarded by many in the industry as a benchmark.
‘SUBSTITUTION SCENARIO’
De Beers is also investing $94 million over four years to build a U.S. factory that will churn out 500,000 carats of lab-grown gems a year and Chinese producers are stepping up their output of cheap manufactured diamonds.
“I think De Beers will keep the pressure up and may even cut prices further from the $800 level once they get their new factory up and running,” a diamond industry executive who used to work for De Beers said on condition of anonymity.
“It’s a very high-risk gamble that De Beers is taking that so far we don’t see working out, because they have primarily legitimized the man-made category,” Roscheisen said.