Diamond jewellery marketers need to boost luxury demand among wealthy customers to trigger high-value aspirational sales following the misrepresentation of synthetics by retail jewellers, said Martin Rapaport, head of the Rapaport Group in a keynote address to the CIBJO 2026 Centenary Congress.

“We need to re-position the market,” he said, urging marketers to focus on the emotional value of natural diamonds.

“We need to be selling the feeling, selling the emotion.”

Mr Rapaport also said the scarcity of diamonds would help boost aspirational demand across the income scale.

“We are in a position where we will be available to have a Veblen product in diamonds,” he added, referring to luxury items such as Rolex watches, which have seen rising demand as their prices increase.

Addressing a crisis in the diamond market, in which natural polished diamonds weighing around one carat have dropped by some 50 percent since the period after the pandemic, Mr Rapaport explored ways to reinvigorate demand.

He said the increasing emergence of synthetic diamond jewellery in global markets in recent years was driven by their very low prices.

Misrepresentation of synthetic diamonds by retail jewellers boosted customer demand for synthetic diamond jewellery, he added.

“Jewellers sold the idea of the diamond, but they put it onto synthetics,” Mr Rapaport said, referring to a subsequent erosion in demand for natural diamond jewellery.

“Synthetics will die a natural death within three years,” he added.

He urged the global jewellery retail industry to increase efforts to stimulate luxury demand for diamond jewellery among wealthy consumers, adding that this would trigger aspirational demand among consumers lower down the income scale.

Mr Rapaport said a huge transfer of wealth from baby boomers through inheritances to their children in coming years represented an opportunity to boost sales of luxury natural diamond jewellery.

“We are in a very positive, powerful environment,” he said.

“Follow the money: we are witnessing a dramatic increase in wealth. There will be supreme demand for luxury products.”

Mr Rapaport also spoke of opportunities to boost sales of pre-owned natural diamonds, describing this as a more sustainable approach to retail that is popular with younger generations of customers.