The biggest scam in the world, crashed!

"A diamond is forever, and one goes bankrupt".

An eldest sister in Anhui was full of joy and took the diamond ring she bought for 18,000 more than 10,000 years ago to recycle, and the boss offered 180 yuan.

Netizen Rui commented: This is still the money given by the abstinence.

The depreciation rate of diamonds is not 99%, but it must be 98%.

A ten-point broken diamond, the mall asks for more than 10,000, but as long as it leaves the cabinet, the value is basically equal to a few waste beer bottles.

The price of diamonds has plummeted this year, and has already fallen below 40%, and the fox girl feels that there is still room for decline.

The diamond ring star brand I Do declared bankruptcy at the beginning of the year, and Li Houlin, who once had a net worth of 3 billion, could not even pay off the 230,000 yuan in decoration debts; DR, an emerging brand supported by thousands of girls, has also seen its business dismal this year, with first-quarter revenue down 42% year-on-year and net profit plummeting 73%.

The "love" story of diamonds finally can't be told.

Marketing "scams"

With the phrase "Diamonds last forever, one lasts forever," De Beers turned a small, hard, ordinary mineral on Earth into a priceless treasure.

Say, more than 200 years ago, diamonds were indeed rare because of technical problems. But since then, many diamond mines have been discovered around the world, with reserves of more than 2.5 billion carats, and the scarcity of diamonds has disappeared.

So De Beers started a monopoly. Pocket 90% of the world's diamond resources. Not only strictly control the annual production, but also cleverly bind diamonds to love.

In this way, the "IQ tax" of hundreds of years of newlyweds around the world was harvested. The phrase "A diamond is forever" has been voted the greatest slogan of the 20th century, and it has also been accused of being the most brilliant marketing scam of the 20th century.

Everyone scolded and paid money, and finally made this company a legitimate monopolist.

It wasn't until 1998 that a report called "Violent Trade" exposed the bloodshed behind the light of this business.

The report pointed out that many of these diamonds were mined by local South African residents under duress by warlords, and unarmed African residents scoured the pits day and night, and even a small one in possession would be shot on the spot.

The blood under the muzzle, mixed with muddy water, continued to flow into the pit, washing away the beauty and purity of the diamond...

After taking the "blood diamond" storm as the fuse, it was constantly excavated with one new mine after another. De Beers' business myth is beginning to falter, and the percentage of global diamonds it controls has fallen by 49.2% in 24 years.

But capital's marketing scam about diamonds hasn't gone away.

Decades later, one company in China repeated De Beers' glory: DR, Dia Shares' diamond engagement ring brand.

They orchestrated an unprecedented romantic marketing campaign that rivaled De Beers. The purchaser can only be a man, must sign a true love agreement, and can only customize one diamond engagement ring in his life with his ID card.

When you hear it suddenly, you think that you are protecting the unswerving love until death, but in fact it is just a part of capital marketing.

How rare a relationship that never deteriorates today, DR's brand premium dares to rise.

The same 0.5 ct diamond, DR is sold for seven or eight thousand yuan higher than the competition, and the gross profit margin is as high as 70%.

So, what's the good true love? Behind fairy tales is business.

It's just that they overlooked one point, and today's young people are not easy to deceive.

The lie is punctured

Open an e-commerce platform at random, grab a handful of dozens of free diamonds, and buy a basket for a hundred.

This is thanks to our fellow villagers in Henan, one out of every 2 jewelry-grade man-made diamonds in the world comes from Henan.

Now, we use seed wafers and methane to make artificial diamonds, and each gas tank can grow a diamond the size of a carat in a week.

Not only the output is the first, but the process level is also beaten by other countries.

Seeing that the international diamond price was knocked down by Chinese manufacturing, De Beers couldn't sit still!

In 2015, the slogan was changed to: Real is rare, real is diamond.

In order to combat man-made diamonds, he even spent more than 40 million US dollars to painstakingly develop a "man-made diamond grader".

Many people mistakenly think that lab-grown diamonds are fake diamonds, but in fact, they are real diamonds.

In 2018, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission revised the definition of diamonds to remove the word "natural." Scientifically speaking, natural diamonds and artificial diamonds are no different, they are diamonds.

For example, what is the difference between the ice in the yard in winter and the ice in the refrigerator? You let the expert go to identify, his CPU burned dry, I'm afraid you can't tell the difference.

If anything, lab-grown diamonds may be purer than natural diamonds.

But on what basis is the price more than 10 times worse, isn't this a pure pit person?

And diamonds can't buy a brand premium like shoes and bags. Because the diamond is so small, there is no place for the logo to be printed.

This is the same reason as consumers spending money on luxury goods, if you can't see what brand it is at a glance, then the money is meaningless.

For this alone, the diamond loses, and loses completely.

There is no scarcity, and there is no brand attribute, which creates another Achilles heel of diamonds - no recycling value.

In the past, capital desperately equated diamonds with love, but now retribution has come.

No one likes second-hand love, so the secondary market for diamonds is also blocked by their own hands.

The price took a big plunge

Diamonds are a hammer sale, and sooner or later the price will collapse, it is only a matter of time, and this day has finally arrived.

Today, even the diamond giant De Beers is not arrogant.

Over the past year, De Beers' sales have continued to decline. In the first half of this year, profits plummeted by more than 60%, and it had to discount its mainstream products by six.

He used to sell $2,400 for a 1-carat diamond, but now it's down to $850, a 65 percent drop in price, but still not anyone buys it.

However, it was not just De Beers who was injured; the entire diamond market began to languish.

The international diamond price index, which fell from 158 last year to about 110 this year, hit a new low in nearly 5 years, a decline of almost 30%.

And the price of lab-grown diamonds is even more volatile, with the continuous advancement of technology, the price has dropped again and again.

As one industry insider put it: "Maybe if you buy soap in the future, you may give diamonds." ”

Of course, it is okay for rich people to spend money on an emotional value, but young people with tight finances should stop blindly following the trend. Do you have to waste money to prove your great love?

Resources:

Huanyu Zhi, Creator, Northern Hemisphere Bulb Flower, Immortal JUMP, CCTV Finance

Editor: Chacha