Retailer margins on lab-grown are compressing faster than on natural

Falling wholesale lab-grown prices are compressing retail margins faster than on natural stones, pushing some retailers to rethink how lab-grown pieces are priced relative to labour and overhead.

• When the stone itself is a shrinking share of a piece's total cost, labour, setting and overhead become a larger share of the final price, which some buyers find counterintuitive.
• Retailers who price purely as a percentage markup on stone cost have seen lab-grown margins shrink in absolute terms even as percentage margins hold.
• Some sellers have shifted toward flat setting fees on lab-grown work rather than a straight percentage, to keep the economics workable as stone prices keep falling.

We price setting labour separately from stone cost so the breakdown stays transparent as lab-grown prices move. See a breakdown on any piece we quote.