COLUMBUS, Ohio — After a year of staying and eating at home, people are spending their vacation fund money, on luxurious items.
“Many couples were putting their proposals off, obviously couldn’t go to venues, couldn’t have gatherings and couldn’t go in groups,” said Daniel Gordon, the store director at The Diamond Cellar in Dublin. “We are seeing an uptick in engagement ring purchases and shopping. Even anniversaries are going through the roof.”
The Diamond Cellar has two other locations in Columbus, one in Nashville, Tennessee and one in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
"The entire wedding industry as a whole, as we read the reports, is experiencing a huge boom,” said Gordon. “They can now go on that trip, and they can get that ring to propose to make it special as opposed to in the living room or out on the front porch.”
Gordon says the family-owned company does have a healthy reserve of diamonds, and prices will not fluctuate at their locations because of the stock, but that might not be the case everywhere.
“We do keep in touch with the current market, and we are hearing stories that it is hard to get diamonds and it is hard to get the product,” said Gordon. “[There] has been a huge uptick in the lab-created ones as well. And those are much more plentiful.”
He has seen customers spend more per ring than in years past.