This is the Laher Engagement Ring Journal.

Today, we’re talking how to allocate budget accordingly…

DESIGN ARBITRAGE

You’ve heard use this term before.

Admittedly, it’s a bit of a course, technical term to be feeding into engagement ring design, however, it’s acutely accurate.

We use it internally a lot. So we figured, we may as well build it into our customer facing dialogue.

The unique thing that I love about engagement ring design, is that the vast majority of the budget is allocated to the centre stone.

This may seem like a limitation, but it’s not.

What it allows is for couples to distribute as much budget as they are comfortable spending to the centre stone and still utilise the design of their choice.

This is specifically different from other industries or shopping experiences in which, the higher cost is generally associated to features that make it attractive and often, unattainable.

The design and overall aesthetic appeal of a car for example, will be drastically downgraded if the budget doesn’t allow for a higher price point.

Now of course, if you are unwavering on a type of top tier centre stone, then the budget may need to be slightly more bloated. However, in our experience, this primarily comes from the lack of education around ‘what is possible’ within your budget.

This has naturally lead us down a route of uncovering a whole world of undervalued diamonds and gemstones. Often discounted through bizarre industry tropes that have deemed types of stones, as less desirable.

Now of course, I’m not here to battle against genuine market forces of demand. But, back to my previous point - most of these undervalued stones have their price tag due to a broad effort to make sure they never have the right exposure. This became clear to us once gauging our couples reaction when seeing these options for the first time.

So, to ‘Design Arbitrage’.

In this particular approach, we are highlighting the ability to take a design that you love the look of and secure stones that fetch are far lower price point as your focus and still able to enjoy the key features of the design that make the piece beautiful.

We recently launched a small batch of three stone designs, that still showcase all of the classic features of a three stone setting, for sub 4k.

Round bucket set centre stone, pear cut accent stones with ‘V’ caps, into a tapered shank.

We’ve seen this design come in at well over 10k prior, due to a high ticket centre stone and now due to this specific design alternative, our couples are able to find an amazing engagement ring utilising this design arbitrage.

It may seem like an obvious association to make, however it’s an important one to keep in mind when clocking the available options online.

I’d simmer this entire piece down to one thing; you can have everything you dream of in your engagement ring, with some subtle manipulations of that budget absorber - the centre stone.

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