Engagement and Wedding Rings: A Booming Market with Few Truly Conflict-Free Gemstones
An engagement or wedding ring is meant to be a celebration of love, a promise to care for another human being, and a financial sacrifice that demonstrates how much our partner means to us.
Unfortunately, the story behind many of the beautiful engagement and wedding rings displayed in shop windows is not as pretty as the sparkling stone in the setting. In an industry that is largely unregulated, dealers of fine jewelry procure their wares from a long supply chain in which the gemstones themselves are mined in conditions of slavery, forced child labor, and environmental damage.
AZEERA: A Family-Owned Jewelry Company with a Difference
When AZEERA was created, I began with a totally different mindset to the large retail companies that supply the bulk of America’s rings. As the grandson of professional gemstone artisans from Jaipur, India, I grew up with a deep appreciation of conflict-free gemstones, the people who mine them, and the techniques used to cut each gem to bring out its intrinsic fire and brilliance.
How Do We Ensure Conflict-Free Gemstones?
As the gemstone jewelry industry is mostly unregulated, it’s difficult to know whether an “ethical” jeweler really knows whether his “conflict-free gemstones” are ethical or the products of slavery. At AZEERA, we have had the unique opportunity to keep our jewelry business as a family affair—working only with trusted suppliers who we and our family know personally.
Where Our Gemstones Come From
All of the conflict-free gemstones we use at AZEERA besides ruby, sapphire, emerald, and diamond are delivered directly from the mines to our workshop in Jaipur, India, where they are cut and graded by our own skilled craftsmen before they are shipped to our office in New York. Our precious stones are sourced exclusively from our families’ trusted suppliers.
Each gem passes through seven inspections before being approved for use in our jewelry and this standard of excellence is reflected in the wages that we pay our artisans. In addition to paying fair wages, we also donate a portion of every sale to the Jewelers for Children foundation to provide educational opportunities for seriously ill and disadvantaged children.
Fairness and Affordability
Our customers often ask us how we keep the prices of our conflict-free jewelry so low when we accept only the top 1% of gemstones and pay our workers so decently. The answer to this question is that by removing the middlemen and conducting our business completely online, we are able to offer you a superior quality of product at up to 40% off the recommended retail price.
When you order personalized rings online using our conflict-free gemstones, you can be confident that every miner, cutter, molder, and artisan involved in the process has infused their work with passion and joy to create a ring that truly celebrates love without compromise.
