Internet-Only Jewelers

The original Internet-only jewelers were Polygon.net. It’s a wholesale platform for jewelers and pawnshops and they predated the world wide web. Subscribers could, and still can, advertise or hunt for particular stones and buy things from any other customer worldwide. It revolutionized the wholesale diamond business. People quickly learned. Blue Nile started as no more than a repackaging of the Polygon data that was made available for consumers with a markup. It was a BIG hit. It was one of the dotcom survivors in 2002. They’ve gone public and then private twice and are currently owned by SignetJewelers.com, the biggest jewelry company in the world.

The success of Blue Nile led to dozens, nay hundreds, of internet-only jewelers, as well as a few competitors for Polygon. They were all using the same ‘virtual’ business model where the selling jeweler would list 10’s of thousands of diamonds for sale and they didn’t have any of them. They didn’t buy it until you did, and they didn’t have a single diamond in inventory. Your purchase would ship from a completely different location depending on who did own it.

Internet-only jewelers were a cool magic trick, but it didn’t really work all that well. There were lots of bait and switch type of claims, it was hard to keep tracability and there were a lot of complaints. This led to a new model. Stores like Diamondsbylauren.com have merchandise and a global reach but the location is in a secured location. I’m not even certain you can visit them, but they’re certainly not what you would call a jewelry store.