: Grading Labs Uncovered” has generated many responses from the industry, and we are very pleased with the feedback and comments it has generated.

The study was conducted purely using numbers from the IDEX Online diamond trading network, with a sample examining 12 million diamonds. Obviously, the sales trends of polished diamonds vary between the online and offline markets. We could not conduct a survey of the offline market because these numbers are not widely available.

The diamond grading labs are private companies who are not obliged to release their numbers. However, we are working very hard, in conjunction with the labs, to obtain these figures and when we do, we will certainly publish them.

Here again is the exact methodology as it appeared in the magazine:

"Research Methodology – A Huge Sample

Our analysis was extracted from the IDEX Online diamond trading network. The IDEX Online diamond database includes the inventories of industry players that account for approximately 80 percent of the global diamond trade; that’s by far a large enough sample from which to draw conclusions.

Further, our sample of just under 12 million diamonds covered more than 100 individual days of trading. The value of the diamonds in our sample was just over $100 billion; that’s five times the annual polished diamond sales for the global diamond industry.

Each day’s diamond sample was independent of every other day. This means that diamonds that remained for sale over a multi-day period were counted multiple times. Our methodology took that into account. In other cases, we could see that diamonds were put up for sale, apparently sold and that those same diamonds were later brought back into the market for sale again.

With a sample of about 12 million diamonds, however, all those little trading idiosyncrasies tend to smooth out and become meaningless."

Two other points: we used the word "market" throughout the article in reference to the IDEX Online diamond trading network, on which we based our research, rather than to the diamond market as a whole. Other than when their names appeared in alphabetical order through the focus, the order of the labs was completely random and does not suggest anything about the size, strength, popularity or market share of each of the labs.