For capital, love is eternal or not eternal is the diamond ring that decides.
Late one night more than seventy years ago, from the moment Miss Frances, a copywriter at the American Ayer Advertising Agency, wrote "A Diamond Is Forever" on paper, the classic line "Diamond is eternal, a diamond will last forever" is still the bearer of the advertising industry.
It is precisely because of this non-salty marketing slogan that young people courting marriage without a diamond ring are embarrassed to say that they are true love. A survey report released by NetEase Cultural Creation shows that diamond rings rank among the top five products just needed in the marriage between men and women, and it is not easy to say whether diamonds can symbolize the eternity of true love, but "one is bankrupt" is indeed the inner bitter water of countless passionate couples who have nowhere to sue.
But it doesn't matter, even if you can't afford natural diamonds, there are cultivated diamonds to act as "spare tires". Recently, the cultivated diamond concept stocks suddenly caught fire, the Red Arrow of the Chinese Soldiers, the Whirlwind of the Yellow River, and the Seiko of China National Machinery all rose and stopped, and the shares of ST Diamond, Power Diamond, Sifangda, and Yuyuan continued to soar.
Whether or not anyone struggles with the humiliating nature of cultivated diamonds for love, with a retail price of only 20% to 35% of natural diamonds, cultivated diamonds are killing in the romantic world of young people. At present, international jewelry giants Such as De Beers, Swarovski, Pandora, etc. have launched cultivated diamond series products.
In 2020, cultivated diamonds will produce about 7.5 million carats, accounting for about 6% of the global diamond market; supplier Statista estimates that its market penetration is expected to reach as much as 10% by 2030. Are diamonds really that important? Seeing the true love lie of natural diamonds come to an end, will cultivated diamonds continue this PUA game?
Natural diamonds forced to "scarce"
Diamonds have always been under the guise of rareness, traversing the consumer market, and the emotional core of "unattainable" has properly existed in the theme of love for so many years, harvesting countless infatuated men and women. The world's understanding of love is nothing more than a golden wind and jade dew, diamonds are not important, what is important is a rare encounter.
It has to be said that the integration of attributes between the two is the smartest trick of capital in the consumer market, and it has been tried and tested. As for how many diamond resources are there? Most people are blind.
Relevant data records that 3,000 years ago, India was the first region in the world to discover diamond resources, and the Krishna River, Penna River and its tributaries in India were the only places in the world where diamonds were produced. Most of the famous diamonds that exist only in historical legends come from India, such as the "Mountain of Light" that once caused India and the British royal family to fight each other.
Before about the nineteenth century, diamonds at that time were only used by royalty and nobility due to difficulties in development, natural diamonds were luxury goods even for royalty and nobles, and diamonds with names even represented the dignity of a country. The Mountain of Light is a stark example of the fact that countless emperors fought wars over this diamond, which in 1526 belonged to Sultan Babel, in 1738 it became the spoils of war for nadir Shah, the Persian king, and in 1850 it belonged to the British royal family.
The most recent appearance was in April 2002, when George VI's wife, the Queen Mary, was buried at Westminster Abbey in London, and the "Hill of Light" was placed on the Queen's coffin. Diamond resources were freed in 1870, when a huge diamond mine was discovered in the Orange River in South Africa, with tons of production, and it is reported that the production of a single pit is as high as more than 14 million carats.
Diamonds could have been reduced to cheap gemstones, but in order to monopolize the supply of diamonds, the British financier Cecil Rhodes bought the diamond mine and founded the De Beers Mining Company, together with several major diamond raw material manufacturers, jointly controlled at least 90% of the world's diamond resources, fixed mining every year, and hard-quarried diamonds into rare resources.
In 1946, De Beers bought 125 newspaper editions in one fell swoop and invited more than a dozen Hollywood stars to bring them, the most classic of which should be a scene in the 1953 Marilyn Monroe movie "Gentleman Loves Beauty", the goddess wearing a peach dress dress and singing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in the crowd.
De Beers' goal was achieved, and according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index, the cumulative inflation rate of the dollar was 711% between 1960 and 2016, while the price of rough diamonds rose by more than 1100%.
Decades later, Monroe and diamonds were perfectly copied by Cartier at Christmas, ostensibly as a tribute to the goddess, but in fact to promote the new necklace. It seems that in any case, diamonds are inseparable from true love, dreams, and happiness. NadirShah was obsessed with the "Mountain of Light", and in modern times, every appearance of natural diamonds has caused an uproar in high society.
In May 2017, Sotheby's held a jewelry auction in Geneva, Switzerland, where a pair of colored diamond earrings set a new record for $57.4 million, or about 395 million yuan. Among them, the pink one is named "Artemis" and the price is 106.7 million yuan, and the blue "Apollo" is twice that of pink diamonds.
Pictured: Cartier advertising
Such a sky-high price can't help but make people wonder how many "rare" diamond resources there are? How "door-cutting" is De Beers, who controls most of the world's diamond resources?
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the world's diamond reserves in 2019 were about 1.4 billion carats, but only 55 million carats were mined. It is worth noting that with the improvement of modern prospecting technology, almost every year there are new mining areas appear, Baidu Encyclopedia data show that the current global diamond resources from 1.4 billion carats in 2019 to 2.5 billion carats, the largest Kimberley diamond pit, a pit produced a full 3 tons of diamonds.
More than 30 countries have diamond resources, with an average annual production of about 100 million carats. The top five countries in terms of production are Australia, Zaire, Botswana, Russia, South Africa, taking Australia as an example, since the discovery of potassium magnesium porphyry in western Australia in 1979 containing diamond, to 1986, Australia's diamond production has been the world's first, of which only the Argyle deposit reserves are as high as 5. 500 million carats.
China is no exception, China's diamond proven reserves and production are ranked 10th in the world, with an annual output of 200,000 carats. In addition to India, China also has a famous history of sky-high diamonds, Jinji diamond weighs 281.25 carats, unfortunately disappeared during World War II, 1977 found Changlin diamond weighs 158.786 carats, is currently the largest existing diamond in China.
It is conceivable that it is not nature that is miserly, but the capital that "kidnaps" nature.
Diamonds are losing their marital love "C bit"
Natural diamonds are too expensive, and cultivated diamonds are an affordable alternative.
In recent years, the price of cultivated diamonds has become lower and lower, and migrant workers can also have a romance. Bain & Company data shows that in 2020, the price of cultivated diamonds in the 1-carat (GVS) grade of loose diamonds was 35% of that of natural diamonds, and four years ago, this figure was 80%.
But when prices come down, will young people pay for it? Earlier, CCTV Finance launched a vote on Weibo, "Will you buy man-made diamonds?" "A total of 3,000 people participated, of which 54% chose to buy, 19% thought natural diamonds were more meaningful, and the rest may think that any diamond is an IQ tax."
Regardless of price, in fact, diamonds have been popular for so many years, and the most important consumer market is Europe and the United States. De Beers data shows that as early as 2016, U.S. diamond demand rose 4.4% year-on-year to more than $40 billion, accounting for half of global diamond demand. Even excluding the dating market, american women buy diamond jewelry for themselves at more than 50 percent, with an average price of between $1,000 and $5,000.
According to incomplete statistics, the size of the US diamond consumption market accounts for 60%-70% of the global share, while the size of China's diamond consumption market is only 20%. The reason can be imagined, overseas marriage love flower balloon plus diamond ring, green lawn on the male protagonist kneeling on one knee, in 1951, the United States every 10 brides have obtained diamond rings, but the country since ancient times is the phoenix crown Xia Shuai, thousands of gold to buy laughter.
Although Western-style weddings have been popular among young people since the Republic of China period, in the tradition of domestic marriages, diamonds are always ranked second in front of gold. From this perspective, the domestic and the United States are just the opposite. The survey shows that the size of the gold jewelry consumer market in the United States has fallen to 6%-7%, and China's current gold jewelry consumer market is as high as 60%.
There may be couples who get married without buying diamond rings, but few young people marry without buying gold, according to the survey, the traditional marriage customs in many regions have increased from "three gold" to "hardware". "Anxin Securities Research Center" report data show that in 2019, the size of China's gold jewelry market was 109.7 billion US dollars, the world's largest jewelry consumption market, Chinese consumers prefer gold products, in 2019, the domestic jewelry market in the gold consumption accounted for as much as 60%, diamonds accounted for only 14%, compared to the global 47% of the diamond consumption accounted for more than a star and a half lower.
According to data from the World Jewelry Association, the diamond purchase rate of newlywed women in first-tier cities in China is 61%, and the penetration rate in third- and fourth-tier cities is only 37%.
Not only the marriage market, the entire domestic jewelry consumption is inclined to the gold market, once felt that gold jewelry tacky young people especially love to buy gold, small red books, ancient gold jewelry blood washing fashion field, even the investment community has a gold figure.
It is not difficult to understand that the preservation properties of gold increase the desire to consume, natural diamonds are ridiculously expensive, and the price of cultivated diamonds is not necessarily cheap.
There is a set of data comparison, the current price of cultivated diamonds on the domestic market is 20,000-30,000 yuan / carat, diamond giant De Beers launched the cultivated diamonds also need 800 US dollars per carat, according to the average annual price of gold 300 yuan / gram to calculate, in the domestic buy a carat of diamond money, almost can buy 100 grams of gold.
The data shows that this year, in the Taobao Tmall station, the entire gold category broke out more than 1700%, and the proportion of the post-90s population reached 50%. In 2017, the market size of ancient gold was only about 3.042 billion yuan, and in 2019, the market size rushed to 30.3 billion yuan, and the market size of China's ancient gold jewelry is expected to reach nearly 100 billion yuan in 2024.
It is not difficult to see that the fate of cultivated diamonds is very different from that of natural diamonds, the latter can dominate the consumer market for decades with the aura of true love, but the former is obviously not so lucky. Nowadays, cultivated diamonds lack a kind of opportunity to burst into flames, and capital is gradually realizing this and is riveting enough to create various consumption gimmicks.
Previously, victoria's secret show used 2,100 cultivated diamonds from Swarovski to create a million-dollar Fantasy Bra to brush the fashion circle; just a month later, Apple's chief design officer personally designed the "fully cultivated diamond" ring at auction for $256,000.
However, according to the current situation of diamond consumption in China, it is difficult for cultivated diamonds with high prices to be truly popular.
It may not be consumption that props up the cultivation of diamond stocks
The first area of popularity of artificial drills was in industry, not in the fashion circle.
In 1953, a Swedish electrical company successfully synthesized microcrystalline diamonds, and in 1954, a research team in the United States also cultivated synthetic diamonds, and today, artificial diamonds in Henan, China, contribute more than half of the world's share. In fact, the original intention of domestic man-made diamonds has nothing to do with the jewelry market.
As an excellent optical and semiconductor material, diamonds are indispensable to a country's industry. In the 1960s, domestic diamond resources mainly relied on the import of the Soviet Union and the Congo, and under the condition of being subject to people, the development of precision manufacturing and defense industry was restrictive and passive. The emergence of the three giants of man-made diamonds, Yu Diamond, the Yellow River Whirlwind, and the Red Arrow of the Chinese Soldiers has just filled this gap.
It is worth mentioning that the world's industrial diamond resources are not very rich. According to the U.S. Geological Bureau, by the end of 2017, the global industrial diamond reserves were 1.2 billion carats, and the industrial diamond reserves of Russia, South Africa, Congo, Australia, and Botswana accounted for 90% of the world's total reserves.
In several major industrial countries, including China, manufacturing demand depends largely on imports. The data shows that the peak of global industrial diamond production was in 2013, and since 2013, industrial diamond production has continued to decline, and four years later, production has dropped to 6.7 thousand tons.
China's industrial diamond imports once reached more than 200,000 carats, and before diamond consumption formed a certain scale in the jewelry market, it was actually industrial manufacturing that supported the diamond concept stock. Especially in recent years, the progress of high-tech emerging fields such as microelectronics, optoelectronics, communications, aerospace, semiconductors and consumer electronics cannot be underestimated.
The main business of the cultivated diamond giant since its establishment is still the industrial field, such as Yu Diamond around the superhard material industry chain in China, Ukraine and India has three major R & D teams; in 2018, Sanmu has aimed at large single crystal diamond in electronic functional materials, and invested more than 80 sets of equipment.
Since last year, domestic man-made diamond orders have soared, not because domestic diamond consumption has driven the upstream industrial chain, mainly because the production capacity of other countries in the entire production chain has dropped significantly since 2020. India, in particular, used to have a production capacity of 1.5 million carats of cultivated diamonds, or about 20% of global production.
After 2020, several diamond factories in India were shut down. Diamond cultivation equipment in the United States is also very little because of the external environment.
According to Forbes, in February this year, the diamond planting machine in the United States was snatched up, and many companies' orders were lined up until 2022, and the global diamond cultivation industry could only rely on China, which had little impact.
In 2020, China's man-made diamond production accounted for more than half of the world's total output. Entering 2021, diamond stocks have brightened their eyes in the A-share market, of which the Yellow River Whirlwind rose by 10.05%, the stock price was 11.5 yuan / share, a new high in the past 5 years, and the strength of diamonds, Red Arrow, and Sifangda rose by more than 7%.
However, with the increasing spending power of young people, gem-grade cultivated diamonds have gradually become a new dividend for the major cultivated diamond stocks. According to Henan Business Daily, the sales share of gem-grade cultivated diamonds in the main business of the Yellow River Cyclone has risen from 8% in 2019 to 30% in 2020.
Yu diamond annual output of gem-grade diamonds in about 2 million to 3 million carats, in 2016 also raised 4.567 billion yuan, for the construction of an annual output of 7 million carats of "gem-grade diamonds" project; in March 2018, Huajing diamonds launched corporate asset restructuring, to the consumer end of the industrial chain business expansion.
Of course, as for whether young people can support the cultivation of diamond stocks, it is probably too early to draw conclusions, but the issue of "IQ tax" has been paid more and more attention by them.
The Tao is always reasonable, and has used the name Crooked Dao, the Internet and the new media in the science and technology circle. This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.