Illustration by Brian Stauffer

Illustration by Brian Stauffer

Aether Diamonds makes its precious gems out of thin air—literally. The three-year-old company uses carbon dioxide drawn from the atmosphere to synthesize stones that are chemically identical and shine just as brightly as the mined variety that are formed within the earth’s crust over billions of years. The company calls its gems the world’s first “carbon-negative” and “positive-impact” diamonds and says that for each sparkling carat, Aether commits to removing 20 tons of greenhouse gasses from the environment, which is approximately the equivalent of a year and a quarter of the average American’s carbon footprint.

While it feels like a technological magic trick in an industry known for tradition rather than innovation, it may not even be the startup’s most impressive conjuring: Aether’s proprietary process also seems to have created a market out of thin air. “We have customers who have come to us and said, ‘I never previously considered a diamond because of the impact,’” says Aether’s cofounder and chief marketing officer Robert Hagemann (MBA 2011). “That is a consumer who was not in the marketplace before.”

What these modern shoppers want is the sense of power and romance that has been associated with diamonds since the 15th century, but without the environmental and ethical concerns of mining. How to give them that is the $80 billion question for the jewelry industry. According to a 2021 Bain report, 68 percent of millennial and Gen Z consumers in the United States say these impacts could stop them from purchasing diamond jewelry entirely. In India, where the market is expected to grow 10 percent annually when the pandemic ends, that figure is 76 percent. Diamond-mining companies have responded to these worries by emphasizing green energy use and decreased water consumption.

Meanwhile, lab-grown diamonds, which first entered the commercial jewelry market in the late 1980s and are forecasted to be 10 percent of the market by 2030, have positioned themselves as an ethical alternative. Yet, according to Bain, consumers—perhaps wary of greenwashing in the notoriously opaque industry—have thus far not discerned the difference between the sustainability of the two methods of production.

With Aether, Hagemann hopes to change that. Convincing the next generation of jewelry buyers to consider diamonds is going to require “radical transparency,” he says. “Every single aspect of what we do, we share with our customers so that they feel empowered to make a better decision.” That means being up front about the environmental challenges that come with lab-grown diamonds, and what Aether has and has not yet been able to do to address them.

Other lab-grown diamonds can pollute the environment in two main ways, Hagemann explains. All diamonds are made of carbon, and creating one in a reactor requires electricity. A few producers rely on renewable energy to run the reactors, but that still requires fossil fuels, extracted by mining or drilling, for raw material. Aether’s innovation is sourcing the building blocks for its diamonds from pollution already in the air, through a carbon-capture company in Switzerland. In addition to the impact it makes through its diamonds, Aether is also buying carbon offsets to account for the energy used in transportation and logistics.

“Our diamonds are carbon negative, but as a company we’re currently carbon-neutral,” Hagemann explains. He’s not content with that: “Our goal is to be carbon negative as a company by 2023. We want to set the tone for other companies out there in the world, whether or not they’re in the diamond industry.”

For Aether, that means vertical integration, including the production of on-site wind and solar energy. And it means finding responsible partners such as Fairmined, an assurance organization for gold, and the companies that create Aether’s luxurious packaging. (Only the vegan suede exterior of each jewelry box isn’t biodegradable, but it is recyclable.) “True sustainability is not just something that is sourced responsibly and that you can dispose of responsibly. It can also be something that has a very long lifetime of use,” says Hagemann.

Consumer education is a long and ongoing process, but Hagemann has reason to be hopeful. When Aether unveiled its brand and its first collection, in late December 2020, the company received $3 million in orders over the first 12 weeks and had to institute a waitlist. In the spring of 2021, Aether closed a seed round of $2.6 million to focus on scaling.

“It’s not really about selling jewelry,” says Hagemann. “It’s really about focusing on an industry that has for so long been allowed to use the planet as a bank that it will continue to borrow from and never pay back.” The luxury product that Aether is selling isn’t diamonds; it’s sustainability. “The idea of making a purchase that gives you a feeling of security of what tomorrow looks like and your hand in that future, that is the mark of luxury now.”

Post a Comment