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Summary of Ritani Review
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Ritani rises to our review top in 2022 with unbeatable and transparent prices, excellent customer service, and as the best place to create your own diamond jewelry.
Ritani is perhaps best known for marrying online and offline diamond shopping. They do this by offering the benefits of shopping online on their website and offering to send the jewelry order to a local jeweler where you can preview the final product. If you like it, you can purchase it right there and then. If not, you can “walk away” and not buy it. No strings attached.
The benefit of seeing the diamond jewelry at a jeweler is that you can then ask for further advice and have them help you inspect it. However, you still have to invest time in research and finding the perfect diamonds (before they’re sent to the local jeweler).
The buying experience is incredibly transparent and informative. Ritani not only suggests better and more expensive alternatives but often lower-priced diamonds too. They even tell you the profit they are making! The lab-grown diamond inspection features fall slightly short of what James Allen offers but are similar to what you see at our other top-rated diamond sellers, such as Brilliant Earth and Clean Origin.
Like James Allen (see our James Allen vs. Ritani comparison review), Ritani sells both mined and lab-created diamonds. And while they’re not specialized in lab-grown diamonds, they offer both a broad and reasonably priced lab-grown diamond inventory. Ritani also provides excellent service, particularly post-purchase (such as free annual precious metal preservation).
Ritani is for anyone who values low and transparent prices, high-quality premium diamonds, and excellent service. In addition, Ritani is the perfect choice if you love the physical jeweler experience and in-person customer service but also want the convenience, broad selection, and low online shopping prices.
In our Ritani review, we award Ritani 5 perfect stars out of 5 for their outstanding service, excellent prices, flexible options for creating your own jewelry, and a massive selection of lab-grown premium diamonds.
Ritani review in a nutshell: Gorgeous and sustainable lab diamond design jewelry – but you pay a brand premium.
Pros and Cons of Ritani Diamond Jewelry
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Learn more about the buying experience and why we recommend them in our Ritani review.
- Summary of Ritani Review
- Ritani Company history (the whole story)
- Ritani bridges online and offline shopping
- Ritani's factory and leaner supply chains
- The Ritani lab-grown diamond buying experience
- Ritani lab-grown diamond selection
- Ritani lab-grown diamond prices
- Ritani diamond shipping
- Ritani return policy
- Ritani post-purchase services
- Summary of Ritani Review and Ritani Lab-Grown Diamonds
- Don't just take our word for it
Ritani Company history (the whole story)
We start our review of Ritani with the history of Ritani. Ritani was founded in 1996 by Harout Aghjayan. Some years later, Ritani partnered with the jewelry magnates of the Julius Klein family, taking investments to develop the company further. The Julius Klein Group is a massive player in wholesale diamonds and jewelry.
Harout stayed as CEO until 2008/9, when he was ousted, and the Klein family fully took over the Ritani company. From 2009 to this day, the CEO has been Joel Klein.
Oddly, this history seems to have been buried, and most accounts of the Ritani story omit either the first or the second half of the story. Nevertheless, it did require a bit of investigation to get to the bottom of it, including reading through legal files of a case between Harout and the Klein family (it was not a pretty breakup).
In 2012, Ritani entered the e-commerce market with a fresh capital injection. In 2014, the Julius Klein Group sold its remaining stake to Cantor Ventures ($15M) to further develop the online and offline business. Brian Watkins was brought in as CEO (coming from BlueNile) and led the move to partner with jewelry stores (more on that). He left the company in 2016, and from what we can gather, Joel Klein came back (or took over).
However, all this does not matter. In the past little over a decade, Brian Watkins and Joel Klein have turned Ritani into the company it is today, with excellent customer service, diamond selection, a transparent buying approach, and great prices. As a result, Ritani has become one of the leading online diamond and jewelry sellers, even bridging the gap to the brick-and-mortar world of jewelry stores (more on that below).
Ritani bridges online and offline shopping
Its innovative approach to partnering with offline jewelers has set Ritani apart from most other online jewelers. Ritani offers you to pick up, view, and inspect your ring at a local jewelry store with which they have a partnership (or several participating WeWork offices, which we don’t quite get).
Disregarding the option of picking up some free-flowing kombucha at your local WeWork and your diamonds, it makes sense to partner with jewelry stores. That allows you, as a consumer, to inspect the diamonds and your purchase while being able to ask questions (and, perhaps, borrow a loupe).
You can then decide there and then if you want to keep it or return it. Of course, it does remove some of the convenience of not leaving your couch, but it’s a good compromise.
That said, we would prefer the 100-day free return policy of Clean Origin (more on that later).
Ritani’s factory and leaner supply chains
Ritani is headquartered in White Plains, NY, close enough to the diamond district of NYC but with space to build its own factory. Through well-established (family) connections in the diamond world, Ritani can lower its supply chain costs and keep most of its jewelry production in-house (diamond cutting is usually handled overseas). All to the benefit of the customer through competitive pricing as we’ll learn later in this Ritani review.
This also means that Ritani has better control of its products’ production process and quality. And the quality of their products, such as settings and craftsmanship, is indeed superior to most competitors.
The Ritani lab-grown diamond buying experience
In this section of our Ritani review, we’ll go through the diamond buying process. And we find that Ritani makes the buying process very easy. They go to great lengths to make the process less daunting and scary and make information easily accessible and digestible.
As a result, the buying experience is especially well-suited for a first-time buyer or someone who is unable (or willing) to invest too much time in the purchase (you should).
As seen above, the lab-grown diamond characteristics (the famous diamond 4Cs) are explained in a very approachable manner, which other diamond sellers could learn a lot from. Therefore, everyone should be able to make a relatively informed decision based on the above.
However, the ease of the buying process is somewhat deceiving. Because as you will have learned from our lab-grown diamond educational articles, buying the perfect diamond requires a bit more. And it is a bit daunting but buying a diamond, even if lab-grown, is a significant investment. So don’t despair; we walk you through the process and make it easy in our lab-grown diamond buying guide.
Transparent buying and price comparison
Ritani offers a transparent diamond pricing tool showing you the wholesale diamond price, their operational costs (shipping, packaging, and processing), and even the profit made by Ritani. That’s price transparency on a whole other level!
And it doesn’t stop there. Ritani also compares the diamond you are browsing with a vast database of other diamonds to find you better alternatives. We found that their suggestions were pretty good almost every time, and their recommendations will undoubtedly be very valuable to any first-time diamond buyers (and even pros).
We’re pretty excited about these features, which make buying easier, safer, and more enjoyable. And faster too. Generally speaking, you would want to invest enough time in the purchase process to educate yourself and ensure you end up with just the right diamond.
The process at Ritani is almost deceivingly easy, and you must dedicate enough time to critically assess any diamond purchase (it’s a significant investment, after all, even with lab-grown diamonds).
Live-chatting with trained gemologists
Though far from as advanced a feature as what we found in our James Allen review offers, the live chat option (together with excellent phone and email support) works really well. You can chat with trained gemologists who are (supposedly) impartial. In our experience, that holds true – the experience is as good as what we saw in our Clean Origin review and the aforementioned James Allen. And miles and miles ahead of the lackluster support that LightBox Jewelry offers through Facebook messenger.
Of course, this is in addition to seeing the diamonds in person at any of the participating jewelers. However, you would want to ensure that the diamonds you will see in person are the best possible pick.
Ritani lab-grown diamond inspection
The research and inspection features of Ritani are the only areas where we find them a bit lacking, behind James Allen (compare James Allen vs. Ritani), but on par with With Clarity, Clean Origin, and Brilliant Earth.
Ritani only offers HD video for a limited number of their lab-grown diamonds. So for a large part of their selection, especially smaller diamonds, you must contend with low-resolution images like the example below.
Ritani can do better here and should take inspiration from some of the leading lab-grown diamond sellers. HD video and images should be standard for all diamonds so you can perform your own inspection, not just for some.
Ritani does offer to create HD images for your inspection as part of the gemologist support. Still, there is an up to 48-hour turnaround time, and they will only be made for the specific diamonds you’re interested in (they should be readily available for the entire catalog).
Ritani provides the grading report, which is readily available for download on their website (good). This is more than other lab-grown sellers offer. Their diamonds are graded by reputable grading institutes such as IGI, the leading lab-grown diamond grader.
Ritani lab-grown diamond selection
Ritani sells both mined and lab-grown diamonds but features lab-created diamonds almost as prominently as their mined inventory. They also feature a learning section on lab-grown diamonds, which is informative and, unlike other places, very honest.
We would have liked Ritani to offer sustainably rated diamonds, as we saw in our Brilliant Earth review. However, lab-grown diamonds in themselves are already the much more environmentally friendly diamond choice compared to mined diamonds.
Some of their offerings, such as their trade-in program, do not extend to lab-grown diamonds. Unfortunately, this is pretty common in the diamond industry since the price of lab-created diamonds is not as well-understood as for mined (which actually fluctuate a lot). It’s s shame, but it does not set Ritani apart from its competitors.
Ritani currently has over 113,000 mined diamonds and over 82,000 lab-grown available. Compared to most other mixed-diamond sellers, that’s a pretty good ratio (42% of their available inventory is lab-grown). Prices for lab-grown diamonds start as low as $75, but you would want to go higher than that to ensure you get a sparkling and clear diamond (more on that in the following section).
In all our reviews, only GemsNY gets close to boasting such an extensive inventory of lab-grown diamonds. And with more than 82,000 lab-grown diamonds to choose from, you can be sure to find a diamond that fits your needs.
We looked up our reference diamond (0.93-1.07ct, I-J color, VS1-VS2 clarity, and ideal cut) and got 472 matches. Not all of these live up to our standards, but we were impressed with their high-quality inventory (read more on how to evaluate and find the perfect lab-grown diamond in our buying guide).
Ritani lab-grown diamond prices
Lab-grown diamond prices are typically 30-40% lower than mined diamonds (of the same quality and size). So expect to save money or be able to go up in size and quality when you shop lab-grown diamonds at Ritani.
Comparing diamond prices across jewelers is inherently difficult owing to the fact that all diamonds are unique. However, we aim to be as objective as possible, and, among other things, we use a reference diamond that we use for our price search, including for this Ritani review.
Our reference diamond is a round brilliant-cut stone weighing 0.93-1.07 carats. The reference clarity is VS1-2 with a color grade between I and J. The diamond cut, of course, is always the best. With lab-grown diamonds, which are most often certified by IGI, that is ideal. That is also the case at Ritani.
Our reference diamond costs between $519 to $1251 at Ritani. That is among the absolutely lowest we have found anywhere across all our diamond reviews.
Ritani’s prices are comparable to the most competitive online sellers such as Clean Origin, which offers the best prices on the market (along with Ritani). We’re very impressed with their price levels, considering they also have a semi-offline setup through the jeweler partnerships.
Given that you can preview the diamonds in person and their excellent post-purchase services, it’s very impressive that Ritani can offer such competitive prices. In addition, they are incredibly transparent with their pricing, so you can even see their margins on each lab-grown diamond!
And even more importantly, Ritani’s prices are far better than any you can find at a traditional jeweler and the lowest you’ll find online (even with the ability to see your diamond in a physical store).
Ritani diamond shipping
Ritani offers free overnight shipping with FedEx on every order and free return shipping (currently US only). Orders are shipped securely after a 3-14 day production time, and they offer both discreet and flexible delivery to avoid making anyone suspicious (of an impending proposal, for example).
Shipping is fully insured, and upon delivery, a signature is required (so if delivered somewhere else, make sure it can be signed off). So you do not have to worry about shipping or your expensive order getting lost.
Ritani return policy
Ritani offers risk-free 30 days returns and free exchanges. The process is straightforward, and they’ll guide you through the process, send you a return label and even arrange a pickup if you can’t be bothered to go to the local FedEx office. Returns are also overnighted and fully insured.
Ritani post-purchase services
In concluding our Ritani review, we’ll take a look at what happens after you bought your diamond. In this case, Ritani excels in its post-purchase experience – which is fairly important in the eternal lifespan of a diamond.
They even offer the following services free of charge to any diamond customer:
- Free center or side stone tightening
- One free ring resizing within the first year of purchase (the US only)
- Annual complimentary ring cleanings for life
- Complimentary rhodium plating once a year
You only have to pay for shipping! That’s a pretty good deal and will extend the life and quality of your diamond purchase. This level of service puts them at the top of the current diamond seller offerings, and we’re very impressed. In full transparency, we have not availed of the services yet but look forward to our annual rhodium (re)plating.
Summary of Ritani Review and Ritani Lab-Grown Diamonds
Throughout our Ritani review, we’ve been very impressed. We fully recommend Ritani based on their excellent customer service, radical and unparalleled pricing transparency, (almost too) easy buying experience, and recommendations. Lastly, they get plusses for the option to preview your chosen diamonds at a local jeweler (just make sure you’ve done your homework).
Ritani’s prices are very competitive, and we’re surprised as low as the market-leading low prices of Clean Origin, considering that they offer store pickup and post-purchase services.
In our Ritani review, we give Ritani 5 perfect shining stars out of 5. Their unbeatable low prices, coupled with the ability to create your own diamond jewelry with even small diamonds, and their fantastic customer services make Ritani reach out top spot in 2022.
Don’t just take our word for it
Ritani’s customers are overwhelmingly positive, and while their consumer review scores don’t quite match Clean Origin, James Allen, or Brilliant Earth, they’re pretty impressive and well-aligned with our Ritani review score. Most negative reviews are about the return period we have also mentioned (be sure to return within 30 days!)
