10 Minute Read
Without question, the most important issue in the gems and jewelry world today is the issue of synthetic diamonds. We at IGS strive to offer content that presents accurate information from all perspectives. Regarding natural diamonds, we are fortunate to count Kunal Shah, owner of Pristine Gems and former VP of the Indian Diamond and Colorstone Association (IDCA), as a friend.
For the third time, we spoke with Shah at the 2026 JCK show in Las Vegas about changes made in the natural diamond sector in the last year, where things stand now, what future actions are planned, and the steps that he thinks still need to be taken for the natural diamond trade to thrive.
Shah is part of an ancient tradition in which India is a major player in the international gemstone industry. For two millennia, India was the only known source of diamonds, and its many mines produced some of the most important and beautiful stones ever uncovered. But the country had more to offer; , , , and are just some of the varieties native to India that were exported globally prior to all mines becoming dormant.
With so many indigenous gems, India developed a massive gems and jewelry industry over the centuries that employs individuals at all levels of the supply chain. Even now, with the native diamond mines exhausted, Shah says that about 95% of all faceted diamonds, both natural and synthetic, are cut in India. Estimates show that a total of 1.5 million Indian citizens currently work in the trade.
The not-for-profit IDCA represents over 1,300 members and affiliates and promotes industry-wide "ethical" practices. Leaders like Shah - who remains active even as his two-year tenure as Vice President ended last year - have a uniquely complete view of how the meteoric rise in quantity and popularity of synthetic diamonds has impacted the trade and what actions need to be done for natural gem sellers to survive.
We begin our discussion with some bad news. With tens of thousands of diamond growers worldwide, one of the only ways producers of lab-grown stones can distinguish their goods to buyers is by offering their product for the least amount of money. However, this view of grower to consumer misses a vital step in the supply chain - professional diamond cutters.
The number of diamonds sold annually is finite. As synthetics continue to represent higher percentages of that finite number, those are the gems that are presented to cutters. Since synthetic diamonds are identical to mined diamonds in all but origin, faceting them takes the same amount of time and skill. Thus, the number of stones an individual cutter processes stays the same, as do the costs associated with the work. What is different is the value of the materials they are working with. So, when faceting with lab-grown material, cutters are paid less for the same effort.
Unfortunately, Shah says that the rapid decrease in per-carat value of synthetics has driven many Indian cutters out of the profession entirely as "there simply is no path to profitability for them." These highly trained craftspeople, many of whom are part of multi-generational gem-cutting families, are forced to seek employment away from the industry.
Here arises a very serious industry-wide problem that threatens to intensify quickly - a significant exodus of the world's diamond cutters means that less inventory can be processed overall. If there are not enough professional cutters in the trade to facet the total number of diamonds demanded by the market, a bottleneck in the supply chain will occur. Such a situation would have wide-reaching consequences.
Our conversation with Shah now turned to faceted mined diamond retailers. The pace at which synthetic diamonds swept into the market caught everyone off guard and many sellers were left feeling stunned and powerless. Faced with an immensely popular, lower-cost product that looked exactly like their inventory, quite a few sellers of natural stones lacked the flexibility in their business models to survive. Fortunately, Shah says that sellers have options to find new revenue if they are willing to make some important changes.
Last year, Shah proposed a simple solution - diamond sellers must diversify their inventory. As demand for natural diamonds was decreased, sellers needed to stock gems that were still selling to keep their businesses afloat. That meant expanding into the colored gemstone sector. For Pristine Gem's inventory, Shah began with Zambian emeralds, a gem he is partial to. Reflecting on this decision, he told us, "Colored stones have been a blessing to Pristine Gems! I am seeing firsthand how well they are doing."
Following this initial success, Shah made the decision to fully commit to diversification and further expand his business by offering sapphire and ruby. While there are other companies that carry multiple gemstones, Shah is proud that Pristine Gems' inventory is unique in that all gems are carefully calibrated.
Shah explained that curating a collection like his is extremely difficult to accomplish - "Each gemstone type is from an entirely different world with their own unrelated supply chains. Not only are they mined in different places, but each variety has to be cut according to a unique set of parameters to maximize the beauty of their crystals. This is all done in separate, specialized factories. Not many people have the capability to organize this."
We have spoken about the people embedded in the global diamond supply chain. Now we can discuss the end consumer. The challenge that mined diamond sellers must contend with is that they need to make their product as desirable as possible to the public to justify the higher per-carat value compared with lab-grown gems. They can't compete with synthetic in terms of value, but are there other changes that can be made?
One of the complaints voiced by diamond jewelry buyers about the natural diamond industry is a perceived cloudiness behind valuation. Within the trade, there are spreadsheets updated daily that provide estimates of individual natural diamond values based on their unique combination of the 4C's. That is a lot of movement to keep track of, and while the system is in place to encourage fairness on a global scale, it can actually undermine consumer confidence. Additionally, there is the perceived issue that "knowing someone in the business" can allow insiders to "get a better deal" on stones.
These two concerns have proved to be highly detrimental to consumer confidence and have ultimately contributed to driving many diamond buyers away from naturals to lab-growns. Shah says that these fundamental problems in the minds of buyers must be addressed and corrected - "if we do nothing about these beliefs, we are just rearranging chairs on the Titanic. The ship that is the natural diamond industry will go down."
Shah's answer to these issues is an online platform launched in the US which provides his characteristically perfectly calibrated diamonds along with similarly calibrated Zambian emeralds, Mozambique rubies, and Ceylon sapphires. Pricing is clear, stable, and non-negotiable. The logistics of a single company having the ability to offer a stable supply of multiple species of calibrated mined gemstones was a massive undertaking to aspire to. However, with the infrastructure now in place, Shah can value his stones at a lower price point. He hopes that such transparency and fairness will give buyers the confidence to make purchases even if they don't "know someone".
Not only is Shah's online platform forthright about values, but it is unique in that some orders can be filled in a matter of hours. Some regions can purchase gems in the morning and receive them by end of the day. Shah proudly declared, "It's like Amazon Prime on steroids!"
Looking towards the future, there is a demographic that current marketing strategies are failing to reach - women. Shah is one of many people we spoke with who believe that natural diamonds would regain traction more quickly if younger female voices were better represented.
The reality of the current state of the trade is that it is largely run by older men who retain antiquated ideas about natural diamonds and diamond jewelry. They often lack an understanding of how to use social media to promote their gems. "Twenty years ago," Shah said, "their ideas propelled sales. That is not the case anymore. The voice that needs to be heard is that of financially independent women. They make their own decisions and are now making more self-purchases."
Happily, the demographics are indeed beginning to change, and Shah highlighted The Clear Cut, which was recently acquired by Signet Jewelers. The Clear Cut was founded in 2016 by husband-and-wife team Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon. In the last decade, Landau, whom Shah counts as a personal friend, has done a great deal from her position of being a natural diamond seller to champion natural diamonds to other women. Shah credits her with modernizing natural diamond marketing tactics, saying "what she has done is a step in the right direction."
The impression given by Shah and other natural diamond sellers is that the initial shock caused by the success of lab-grown diamonds has eased. While some sellers couldn't survive the first several years, those who did are being rewarded with increasing stability in the marketplace; demand for natural gems has begun to level off which has allowed for per-carat values to also stabilize. Additionally, the retailers who made the decision to diversify their inventory now have healthier and more resilient businesses.
Moreover, the presence of synthetics forced many natural diamond sellers to remove some of the ambiguity of their pricing systems. Shah's new online platform which offers all four of the major gemstone categories is an excellent example of improved supply chain organization allowing for highly consistent pricing and secured availability.
Another positive development is that strides have clearly been made in bifurcating the marketplace so that mined and lab-grown diamonds are considered separate products with different price-points among both retailers and consumers. As people make informed decisions whether they care about the issue of gem origin or not, the products can be advertised differently - synthetic diamonds are used to make beautiful lower-cost jewelry while mined diamonds are an ancient and limited natural resource.
The shakeup in the wider diamond market has also forced the people who lead the industry to evolve. Specifically, there has been a surge of younger people in leadership positions who are better able to speak with new types of buyers. In particular, the industry is learning how to speak to women who purchase their own jewelry in their own time, sometimes without a benchmark occasion to celebrate.
While things have largely settled with mined diamond sellers and their buyers, the vulnerable position in the supply chain that is going to require increased attention is with cutters. Cutters are skilled craftspeople who need to be paid a living wage which, at least presently, isn't possible with lab-grown stones. The industry can't afford to lose these workers, but needs to find a way to pay them.
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Without question, the most important issue in the gems and jewelry world today is the issue of synthetic diamonds. We at IGS strive to offer content that presents accurate information from all perspectives. Regarding natural diamonds, we are fortunate to count Kunal Shah, owner of Pristine Gems and former VP of the Indian Diamond and Colorstone Association (IDCA), as a friend.
For the third time, we spoke with Shah at the 2026 JCK show in Las Vegas about changes made in the natural diamond sector in the last year, where things stand now, what future actions are planned, and the steps that he thinks still need to be taken for the natural diamond trade to thrive.
Shah is part of an ancient tradition in which India is a major player in the international gemstone industry. For two millennia, India was the only known source of diamonds, and its many mines produced some of the most important and beautiful stones ever uncovered. But the country had more to offer; rubies, emeralds, , and are just some of the varieties native to India that were exported globally prior to all mines becoming dormant.
With so many indigenous gems, India developed a massive gems and jewelry industry over the centuries that employs individuals at all levels of the supply chain. Even now, with the native diamond mines exhausted, Shah says that about 95% of all faceted diamonds, both natural and synthetic, are cut in India. Estimates show that a total of 1.5 million Indian citizens currently work in the trade.
The not-for-profit IDCA represents over 1,300 members and affiliates and promotes industry-wide "ethical" practices. Leaders like Shah - who remains active even as his two-year tenure as Vice President ended last year - have a uniquely complete view of how the meteoric rise in quantity and popularity of synthetic diamonds has impacted the trade and what actions need to be done for natural gem sellers to survive.
We begin our discussion with some bad news. With tens of thousands of diamond growers worldwide, one of the only ways producers of lab-grown stones can distinguish their goods to buyers is by offering their product for the least amount of money. However, this view of grower to consumer misses a vital step in the supply chain - professional diamond cutters.
The number of diamonds sold annually is finite. As synthetics continue to represent higher percentages of that finite number, those are the gems that are presented to cutters. Since synthetic diamonds are identical to mined diamonds in all but origin, faceting them takes the same amount of time and skill. Thus, the number of stones an individual cutter processes stays the same, as do the costs associated with the work. What is different is the value of the materials they are working with. So, when faceting with lab-grown material, cutters are paid less for the same effort.
Unfortunately, Shah says that the rapid decrease in per-carat value of synthetics has driven many Indian cutters out of the profession entirely as "there simply is no path to profitability for them." These highly trained craftspeople, many of whom are part of multi-generational gem-cutting families, are forced to seek employment away from the industry.
Here arises a very serious industry-wide problem that threatens to intensify quickly - a significant exodus of the world's diamond cutters means that less inventory can be processed overall. If there are not enough professional cutters in the trade to facet the total number of diamonds demanded by the market, a bottleneck in the supply chain will occur. Such a situation would have wide-reaching consequences.
Our conversation with Shah now turned to faceted mined diamond retailers. The pace at which synthetic diamonds swept into the market caught everyone off guard and many sellers were left feeling stunned and powerless. Faced with an immensely popular, lower-cost product that looked exactly like their inventory, quite a few sellers of natural stones lacked the flexibility in their business models to survive. Fortunately, Shah says that sellers have options to find new revenue if they are willing to make some important changes.
Last year, Shah proposed a simple solution - diamond sellers must diversify their inventory. As demand for natural diamonds was decreased, sellers needed to stock gems that were still selling to keep their businesses afloat. That meant expanding into the colored gemstone sector. For Pristine Gem's inventory, Shah began with Zambian emeralds, a gem he is partial to. Reflecting on this decision, he told us, "Colored stones have been a blessing to Pristine Gems! I am seeing firsthand how well they are doing."
Following this initial success, Shah made the decision to fully commit to diversification and further expand his business by offering sapphire and ruby. While there are other companies that carry multiple gemstones, Shah is proud that Pristine Gems' inventory is unique in that all gems are carefully calibrated.
Shah explained that curating a collection like his is extremely difficult to accomplish - "Each gemstone type is from an entirely different world with their own unrelated supply chains. Not only are they mined in different places, but each variety has to be cut according to a unique set of parameters to maximize the beauty of their crystals. This is all done in separate, specialized factories. Not many people have the capability to organize this."
We have spoken about the people embedded in the global diamond supply chain. Now we can discuss the end consumer. The challenge that mined diamond sellers must contend with is that they need to make their product as desirable as possible to the public to justify the higher per-carat value compared with lab-grown gems. They can't compete with synthetic in terms of value, but are there other changes that can be made?
One of the complaints voiced by diamond jewelry buyers about the natural diamond industry is a perceived cloudiness behind valuation. Within the trade, there are spreadsheets updated daily that provide estimates of individual natural diamond values based on their unique combination of the 4C's. That is a lot of movement to keep track of, and while the system is in place to encourage fairness on a global scale, it can actually undermine consumer confidence. Additionally, there is the perceived issue that "knowing someone in the business" can allow insiders to "get a better deal" on stones.
These two concerns have proved to be highly detrimental to consumer confidence and have ultimately contributed to driving many diamond buyers away from naturals to lab-growns. Shah says that these fundamental problems in the minds of buyers must be addressed and corrected - "if we do nothing about these beliefs, we are just rearranging chairs on the Titanic. The ship that is the natural diamond industry will go down."
Shah's answer to these issues is an online platform launched in the US which provides his characteristically perfectly calibrated diamonds along with similarly calibrated Zambian emeralds, Mozambique rubies, and Ceylon sapphires. Pricing is clear, stable, and non-negotiable. The logistics of a single company having the ability to offer a stable supply of multiple species of calibrated mined gemstones was a massive undertaking to aspire to. However, with the infrastructure now in place, Shah can value his stones at a lower price point. He hopes that such transparency and fairness will give buyers the confidence to make purchases even if they don't "know someone".
Not only is Shah's online platform forthright about values, but it is unique in that some orders can be filled in a matter of hours. Some regions can purchase gems in the morning and receive them by end of the day. Shah proudly declared, "It's like Amazon Prime on steroids!"
Looking towards the future, there is a demographic that current marketing strategies are failing to reach - women. Shah is one of many people we spoke with who believe that natural diamonds would regain traction more quickly if younger female voices were better represented.
The reality of the current state of the trade is that it is largely run by older men who retain antiquated ideas about natural diamonds and diamond jewelry. They often lack an understanding of how to use social media to promote their gems. "Twenty years ago," Shah said, "their ideas propelled sales. That is not the case anymore. The voice that needs to be heard is that of financially independent women. They make their own decisions and are now making more self-purchases."
Happily, the demographics are indeed beginning to change, and Shah highlighted The Clear Cut, which was recently acquired by Signet Jewelers. The Clear Cut was founded in 2016 by husband-and-wife team Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon. In the last decade, Landau, whom Shah counts as a personal friend, has done a great deal from her position of being a natural diamond seller to champion natural diamonds to other women. Shah credits her with modernizing natural diamond marketing tactics, saying "what she has done is a step in the right direction."
The impression given by Shah and other natural diamond sellers is that the initial shock caused by the success of lab-grown diamonds has eased. While some sellers couldn't survive the first several years, those who did are being rewarded with increasing stability in the marketplace; demand for natural gems has begun to level off which has allowed for per-carat values to also stabilize. Additionally, the retailers who made the decision to diversify their inventory now have healthier and more resilient businesses.
Moreover, the presence of synthetics forced many natural diamond sellers to remove some of the ambiguity of their pricing systems. Shah's new online platform which offers all four of the major gemstone categories is an excellent example of improved supply chain organization allowing for highly consistent pricing and secured availability.
Another positive development is that strides have clearly been made in bifurcating the marketplace so that mined and lab-grown diamonds are considered separate products with different price-points among both retailers and consumers. As people make informed decisions whether they care about the issue of gem origin or not, the products can be advertised differently - synthetic diamonds are used to make beautiful lower-cost jewelry while mined diamonds are an ancient and limited natural resource.
The shakeup in the wider diamond market has also forced the people who lead the industry to evolve. Specifically, there has been a surge of younger people in leadership positions who are better able to speak with new types of buyers. In particular, the industry is learning how to speak to women who purchase their own jewelry in their own time, sometimes without a benchmark occasion to celebrate.
While things have largely settled with mined diamond sellers and their buyers, the vulnerable position in the supply chain that is going to require increased attention is with cutters. Cutters are skilled craftspeople who need to be paid a living wage which, at least presently, isn't possible with lab-grown stones. The industry can't afford to lose these workers, but needs to find a way to pay them.
