The really poor performance of low-end jewellery at the JCK Las Vegas show has got people wondering whether, like the Windows operating system in computers, they need to just shut down and start again. “We have to literally redefine the way we sell low-end jewellery,” one Indian exhibitor told me, “we’re going nowhere like this.”

While the high end has done pretty well in an otherwise lacklustre US market, it has the advantage of still being able to use the emotional market brand of expensive diamonds. Low end jewellery, on the other hand, featuring mainly diamonds that are termed ‘Indian goods’, has had to drop all such pretences and scramble for survival in the mass market, where behemoths like Wal-Mart couldn’t care less what it stands for as long as it is offered at the lowest possible price in the world.

A great deal of the jewellery coming out of India, set with small, inexpensive diamonds, is also made by diamond manufacturers trying to move downstream in an effort to improve almost unworkably low margins in cutting and polishing. Having taken all that trouble and sunk so much money into jewellery production, a majority are now discovering that this doesn’t necessarily improve margins.

The ballyhoo about the ‘diamond dream’ that De Beers – and even Martin Rapaport in his breakfast talk this morning – have been trumpeting, has no bearing on the low end. They’re going to have to dump it and come up with a brand new value proposition – something related with self-purchases and lifestyle statements.