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Diamonds: What is the Average Markup on Diamonds?

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What is the typical markup on jewelry? When you are buying diamonds, especially diamond engagement rings, jewelry stores would add up on their markup prices on the different pieces of jewelry that they are selling. Now some high branded stores could get away with this because you are essentially also paying for the brand, like Tiffany and Cartier, but oher diamond merchants are facing a whole different battlefield. If you are shopping for a wholesale diamond in Dallas, TX, visit Shira Diamonds for the next priced wholesale diamonds that you could find. With that being said, what is the average markup on diamonds?

How much profit do jewelers make on diamonds?

Different jewelers profit depending on who they have made their transactions with, and here are some examples:

Manufacturer to Broker

When you go to a rough diamond consultant, they usually are the people you go to when you need general ideas for various markups for diamonds as the diamond that you are planning on buying progresses through the various stages of being purchased, from the manufacturer itself, to the wholesale end.

A diamond manufacturer makes roughly about 30 percent to 40 percent in gross margin when they are converting the rough stone to a polished diamond in order to stay in business.

When the wholesalers then would have to sell the polished diamond to all of the other wholesale brokers, then their profit would then margin to 1 percent to 15 percent or an average of 5 percent. But if they sell to a retail shop, then the profits would increase to 10 percent to 30 percent, or maybe about an average of 20 percent.

Internet Loose Diamonds

The earliest practices of making up diamonds 100 percent or more would give way to much slimmer markups in the under 20 percent range, according to the diamond industry educator Truth About Diamonds, with the advent of the internet.

The people who sell loose diamonds online save on overhead costs, which is why they could keep the makeup value low, because the internet retailers do not have to carry around the merchandise in-house themselves but instead, they have the supplier ship it to the customer directly.

These retailers have forced physical retailers to bring down their make-ups as well because of the transparent buying process, according to the Gemological Institute of America-accredited jeweler industry commentator, iDazzle.

Retail Store Diamonds

The diamond that you have been wanting would have been marked up by 1.6 times to three times the original cost by the time the diamond reached a physical retail jewelry store, ready to be sold to a walk-in customer. The larger and more expensive the diamond is, the smaller the markup, but the exception is relatively rare for the rare diamonds. This is because of the scarcity command for a larger “cut” for the jeweler.

There are some competitive brock-and-mortars that decide to sell their diamonds close to the prices that the internet diamond sellers offer but even retail stores could not go as low as them because of all of the expenses that go into maintaining sales staff and trying to keep some diamonds on consignment.

Other Facets

There are other facets that go into the markups like the clout that the diamond company has in the industry where there are the so-called carriage houses that are able to charge big markups for their diamond engagement rings for no other reason than fame and visibility that other retailers could not match.

The choice of setting another opportunity for the jewelry to profit is always a choice. Diamonds do not sell themselves, and a simple platinum setting could be marked up to 50 percent.

There are a lot of factors to consider when you are a jeweler, and when you are the one buying the diamonds yourself. Whether it be a diamond engagement ring, or simply a diamond earring, there will always be markups involved.

This information usually goes for the naturally mined diamonds, and diamonds that are laboratory created are a completely different story. What’s the markup on lab grown diamonds? On average, you will most likely only get up to 20 percent to 60 percent of the original purchase price when you resell your naturally mined diamonds, and when you are buying a lab created diamond, you could expect to pay between 50 percent to 80 percent of the price of a natural diamond, depending on the quality and the size of the stone.