Last Updated On: January 7, We get commissions for purchases made from our affiliates through links in this article. Learn More. You are far better off getting your diamond jewelry from a company like James Allen.
If you want more personalized help, feel free to contact us. We will ignore the issues with their certification more on that below and, for now, simply compare this diamond to an equivalent offering from James Allen.
Here is a stunning 1. It is GIA certified and the cut is perfect. The diamond is also significantly higher in quality.
The original store sold small appliances, cookware, cameras and, of course, jewelry. In the late s, Zales expanded into twelve separate locations. In the s, they began a major shift in strategy that would forever change the face of the diamond jewelry market in the United States: they moved into indoor shopping malls.
Zales Corporation now owns several jewelry chain store brands. Obviously, the most well-known is Zales itself which operates in almost stores across the 50 United States and Puerto Rico.
Zales also operates a network of Zales Outlet stores in over of the largest outlet malls in the United States.
2 Carat Diamond Ring: The Expert Buying Guide | The Diamonds Pro
The two store brands operate in a combined locations all across Canada as of the Zales Corporations Annual Report. All of these brands target a similar level of the market, offering diamond jewelry and a range of other jewelry products.
Piercing Pagoda, also owned by Zales Corporation, is a lower market jewelry kiosk operated in roughly locations.
I-J : These can be excellent value stones. These are extremely rare and sought after. Zales diamond rings rose color 3 diamond ring This is due to several factors, the biggest of which is that larger diamonds are rarer than smaller diamonds and, as such, are priced at a premium per carat. An online-only store only needs one stock.
Zales specializes in diamond jewelry and offers a large range of engagement rings. Compared to the loose diamonds and settings available from online retailers, Zales engagement rings are very expensive and generally not worth the extra premium.
Engagement rings from Zales come in a variety of cuts, types and styles. Zales offers several options for engagement rings.
If you have as specific diamond shape you like, you can browse the entire by shape, carat weight and other criteria.
Zales also offers the ability to shop for a loose diamond on its own, then add it to an engagement ring setting. Like other diamond jewelry retailers, Zales has an online engagement ring designer that lets you create your own engagement rings online.
The online designer includes all of the usual choices, from mounting, setting types, metals, side settings and more.
As for settings, Zales engagement rings come in all of the usual metals. As well as the usual 14k and 18k yellow, white and rose gold, many engagement rings from Zales are available in metals such as platinum.
Finally, Zales offers a decent selection of wedding bands. Zales also offers a lot of wedding bands in 10 karat gold.
As for strengths, Zales does have a few:. Now, do these strengths mean that Zales is a good place to shop for an engagement ring? Not really. The purpose of this review is to compare the offerings on Zales.
Zales has a very well-established operation of over 1, physical locations, which has a big impact on how the company works. According to their annual report, inZales.
As a company that mostly makes its money offline, Zales would never be so foolish as to undercut their in-store prices on their own website.
In the article, I explain why traditional bricks and mortar jewelry businesses will never be able to fully compete with online-only stores.
There are four primary reasons why this is so. I present them here as well:. Some of these websites focus on diamond wholesalers in a specific area.
Only when an order is placed by a customer does the online-only store purchase the diamond from their vendor.
Design Your Own Engagement Rings – Zales
This system works well for customers, retailers and suppliers because all of the parties benefit. The customer is happy, because he gets a low price.
And finally, the wholesaler is happy because he gets to tap into the retail market without displaying his inventory anywhere.
The wholesaler can still sell his diamonds whenever and to whomever he wants as the diamonds are only listed virtually on these sites. They are still physically located on his premises.
Even with the rest of their inventory, online-only stores are able to keep the sales process more streamlined.
For each quality and size combination, Zales must keep at least one pair available at all times at each store. In addition, at the main office, they need a significant number of backup pairs in the event they need to replenish the stock at a store.
Usually, the main office must carry close to 1, pairs of each quality and size combination of diamond studs. An online-only store only needs one stock.
They only need to maintain in their inventory at any given time the amount they might possibly sell within the week—not more than pairs, I imagine.
The inventory requirements would certainly be less for smaller sites, too.
Zales diamond rings rose color 3 diamond ring
The difference in inventory—1, to 40 pairs—is remarkable and certainly differs in cost. For a bricks and mortar jewelry store to have any kind of serious inventory of loose diamonds to offer ample selection to their customers, they need to invest very large sums of money—several million dollars at least.
In other words, they purchase their inventory of loose diamonds and other jewelry with interest.
The GIA and AGS are the two renowned and well-respected diamond grading entities that issue accurate and consistent reports for diamonds. right hand ring designs with round diamond stone A lower cut grade results in a diamond without brilliance—making such a large purchase worthless.
In such an agreement, a wholesaler or manufacturer will give inventory to a store to work with. Diamond manufacturers are reluctant to agree to such an arrangement for several reasons.
Because of these two issues, memo prices are typically significantly higher than regular cash prices. Just imagine for a moment the massive amounts of overhead that are expended in order to run a diamond jewelry retail operation with more than 1, physical store locations.
Each location has utilities. Each location pays rent. And each location has a team of employees. Their overhead is a significant chunk of their overall costs and is much higher than an online-only retailer.
Doing some simple math makes it clear that even though Zales averages a one-hundred percent gross profit margin, the company still could not manage to be profitable at the end of the year because of their astronomical overhead costs.
Online-only stores, as expected, suffer no such problems.
10.02.2020 – What you see with the naked eye is more important than the GIA grading. Select Diamond Certificate. Usually, the main office must carry close to 1, pairs of each quality and size combination of diamond studs. Open to Create Your Perfect Ring.
James Allenon the other hand, services the whole world with only two offices and about employees. Their overhead load per customer served is exponentially lower allowing them to price their diamond jewelry more competitively.
The above points explain why Zales cannot compete with the best online-only diamond stores in price. But the advantage of online-only stores is not limited to price alone.
The quality of the products offered at Zales is, generally speaking, notably inferior to that which is offered by the online-only stores.
Before the days of buying diamonds on the Internet, a potential consumer of diamonds had limited options when it came to educating himself before the purchase.
What would typically happen is that the customer would enter a store, and the salesperson would give the customer a quick education.
But as you can imagine, a salesperson is not going to give the unbiased truth about diamonds. He or she is invariably going to slant his lesson toward convincing the customer to buy his or her diamond and not the diamond being sold by the store across the mall pavilion.
For the major bricks and mortar jewelry store chains, the slated and bias education given by a sales associate still occurs regularly. The best possible customer for a retail chain like Zales is the uneducated customer.
After all, if a customer walks into a Zales store armed with the knowledge gained from reading the articles on a site like Diamond Prohe would never decide to buy there.
Unfortunately for Zales, the number of diamond consumers entering into the buying decision without first educating themselves on the internet is dwindling rapidly.
Zales, on the other hand, sells diamonds primarily certified by the IGI lab.
In general, prices for emerald cut diamonds of any size are less than those for round diamonds. Zales diamond rings rose color 3 diamond ring E : Colorless.
This is certainly not the case, as GIA diamonds maintain a higher standard and more consistent standard of grading. The Signature Collection solitaire ring from Zales can be found below.
Diamond carat weights CT.
Road zales diamond rings rose color 3 diamond ring wear
This is an important distinction, because in the regular certified diamond market, the moment you drop below 1. For purposes of this comparison, I will attempt to find an equivalent 1.
Is this a good price? You can see for yourself HERE. We are just trying to find similar diamonds so we can compare apples to apples. However, we need to keep in mind two very important things.
In most cases, the Zales diamond would be below 1. The second important thing to keep in mind is that if you buy locally at a Zales store or from Zales.
Paying tax is usually easy enough to avoid even if you live in the same state, since you can have the ring shipped out of state and held at a Fedex location for pickup.
We, fortunately, found a direct comparison on James Allen with an IGI certified stone of the same characteristics. You can find the James Allen comparable diamond here.
Size zales diamond rings rose color 3 diamond ring plus size
Assuming the James Allen stone would also receive an I VS1 at IGI most likely, it would receive a significantly higher gradeit would fit perfectly into the Zales generic program.
In that case, Zales is almost twice as expensive!
The question arises, though, of what to actually compare a Celebration Diamond to? We generally do not recommend purchasing a diamond that is IGI certified.
right hand ring designs with round diamond stone 