After 30 Years Selling Engagement Rings, Here Is What Is Finally Changing

I started in the jewelry business in 1996. Third-generation jeweler, trained by my father, who was trained by his father. For most of my career, the engagement ring customer walked into a store, listened to the jeweler explain the 4Cs, trusted the price, and walked out with a ring.

That is not what is happening anymore.

Over the past few years I have watched the entire customer conversation shift. The questions I get now are not the questions I got ten years ago, or even five. Buyers are showing up more informed, more skeptical, and more demanding. Honestly, it is about time.

Here is what I am seeing on the ground in 2026.

Buyers are asking about markup

This never happened. Ever. In 30 years I cannot remember a single customer asking me directly what my profit margin was on a ring. Now I get the question almost weekly.

Part of this is the internet. Part of it is the backlash against luxury pricing that started with fashion brands publishing their cost breakdowns and letting consumers decide if the markup was fair. Part of it is just a generation of buyers who grew up questioning everything and see no reason to stop at jewelry.

Whatever the reason, the question is here to stay. Jewelers who dodge it are going to lose business to jewelers who answer it honestly.

Colored stones are competing with diamonds for the first time in a generation

For most of my career, the colored stone business meant mothers rings and birthstone pendants. Engagement rings meant diamonds. That line has basically dissolved.

Sapphires, emeralds, and even black diamonds are now serious contenders for the center stone position. Buyers want something that feels personal to them, not something that looks identical to every other ring on every other hand.

I am not predicting the diamond disappears. It will not. But the days when a non-diamond engagement ring was considered unusual are gone.

Lab-grown has created a two-tier market, and buyers finally understand the difference

Lab-grown diamonds have been around a while, but 2026 is the year where the average buyer actually understands what they are. They know the stone is chemically identical to a natural diamond. They know it costs significantly less. They know the resale value is close to zero.

And they are making the call with their eyes open. Some pick lab-grown and put the savings into a bigger stone or a nicer setting. Some pick natural because they want the stone that came out of the earth. Both camps know what they are choosing and why.

That is a huge improvement from where things were five years ago, when most buyers did not even know the two options existed side by side.

The jewelers who are going to win

I run a brand called TrueSanity, which was built around the idea that customers deserve to see what their jewelry actually costs to make. Every ring on the site shows the stone cost, the metal cost, the labor, the shipping, and the margin on the product page itself.

I know how that sounds to people inside the industry. A lot of them think it is a bad idea to put that information in front of a buyer. My view is the opposite. The customer who sees exactly what she is paying for is the customer who buys with confidence, tells her friends, and comes back for the anniversary band two years later.

If you want to see what this looks like in practice, our Engagement Rings Shop lays out every cost on every product page before you add anything to a cart. No other jeweler in the country does this at the full product level. I know because I checked.

Where this goes

Thirty years in, my view is simple. The customer has access to more information than ever before. The jewelers who adapt by giving her even more information, more honestly, are the ones who will build the brands that matter over the next decade. The ones who keep hiding behind mystery pricing and prestige theater will slowly fade.

I am betting my company on being on the right side of that shift. Ask me again in another 30 years how it turned out.