How Lightbox Became a Bust

By Rob Bates | May 13, 2025

I first started having reservations about De Beers’ lab-grown brand Lightbox when I kept hearing diamond people talk about what a brilliant strategic move it was. Truly brilliant strategic moves shouldn’t be that obvious.

That points to one of the central problems with Lightbox, which De Beers announced last week it was shutting down: it seemed like De Beers could never decide if Lightbox was a real brand or an attempt to shape the market.

For years, De Beers executives would say privately that if lab-grown ever became a serious competitor, they would enter the fray. That made sense. Pre-Lightbox, De Beers’ Element Six subsidiary was one of the few companies that actually knew how to produce gem-quality lab-grown diamonds. (Yes, other companies were starting to make them, but De Beers hoped it could sue them out of existence.)

One of De Beers’ original plans for lab-growns was to sell them private-label to companies that would agree to use them only in lower-priced fashion pieces. There were quiet—and eventually abandoned—talks with Swarovski. Then the lab-grown market began to expand, and some believed it was time for bolder action. But there were business considerations, too.

In 2018, when De Beers introduced Lightbox, the natural diamond market was showing modest year-on-year growth. The created diamond sector was growing far quicker, and diamond jewelry didn’t have much penetration in the under-$1,000 price point.

So why not enter the business, stake your claim at a popular price point, and try and set the terms for the market going forward? De Beers believed that its size, stature, war chest, and diamond-growing expertise would knock out competitors and lead the lab sector where it wanted it to go—toward fashion, away from bridal (and standard diamond price points).

Execs tell me that De Beers really did intend to make money with Lightbox; that’s why they invested close to $90 million to build its factory in Oregon. They set the $800-a-carat level to make a profit—De Beers was careful not to sell under cost, as that might bring flak from regulators.

In the end, though, Lightbox never accomplished its financial objectives. What about its strategic ones?

When The New York Times asked De Beers CEO Al Cook if Lightbox achieved them, he answered, “Kind of.” That seems right. Lightbox probably did help drive prices down, though—judging by what happened to lab-grown colored stones, as well as lab-grown colored diamonds—that likely would have happened anyway. Created diamonds were easier to produce than many people had figured, and once it was clear there was a market for them, Indian and Chinese growers began churning them out en masse. (All the intellectual property suits went nowhere.)

But the biggest issue was that Lightbox never convinced consumers that lab-growns were suitable only for fashion. And by staying away from the bridal market, Lightbox left it open for competitors, who felt De Beers’ move increased acceptance of their product.

“De Beers thought that consumers would think the same way they did—that lab-grown wasn’t a competitor [of natural], that it wasn’t made for bridal,” says one executive involved in the Lightbox launch. “That turned out to be all wrong.”

Lightbox was supposed to lead the market, but it ended up following it. The brand was introduced with very precise contours, few of which De Beers stuck to. At first Lightbox only sold smaller stones, for less than $1,000. Then the stones got bigger, and the jewelry got pricier. After saying its stones didn’t need to be graded, Lightbox added quality parameters, then something resembling reports. It briefly experimented with engagement rings, which made sense from an economic standpoint but was a disaster PR-wise.

Maybe if Lightbox really mass-produced lab-grown, it would have had more of an effect on market pricing. But it needed consumers for that. Creating a brand is expensive and difficult—as De Beers has now learned three times. It’s particularly difficult when your parent company is ambivalent about the product it’s selling. Why spend money promoting a lab-grown brand when the natural diamond business needs a boost?

Missing from all the debate around Lightbox is that several people did consider it a promising brand. The colors were fun. The marketing was zippy. Its pricing scheme was probably ahead of its time. It had potential. Perhaps if Lightbox had a less ambivalent owner, the brand would have worked better.

Since Lightbox was introduced, many in the trade have wondered: What if De Beers hadn’t created that brand? Would lab-grown prices have fallen? Would lab-grown diamonds have taken off? Alternate universes don’t exist, so we’ll never know. But the things that have made lab-growns attractive to jewelers (high margins) and consumers (lower prices) wouldn’t have changed. Nor would the fundamental economics that have caused lab-grown prices to drop. While Lightbox made a lot of noise, it’s not clear whether it made much of a difference.

(Photo courtesy of Lightbox)