Finding the perfect diamond is not always an easy task, especially if you are not looking to overpay for a stone available at a better price. StoneAlgo is a research tool that will determine a fair price for any diamond you are looking for and help you narrow down your choices based on professional price and quality comparison reports. We interviewed the co-founder of StoneAlgo, Devin Jones, to find out how the platform works and why to choose them when buying diamonds online.
What Is StoneAlgo?
Lily Nadtochi: Devin, what inspired you to create StoneAlgo and what is your mission?
Devin Jones: The journey of finding my wife’s engagement ring is what inspired StoneAlgo in the first place. At the time, I was a 28-year-old entrepreneur hustling to build my first company, so money was always top of mind. With my diamond engagement ring, the price tag was so large I really wanted to make sure I didn’t overpay. My co-founder and I started building pricing models in Microsoft Excel for my own purchase and later built StoneAlgo and our diamond price calculator so shoppers could better understand diamond prices. Whether you want to search for something simple like 1-carat diamond prices or something niche like 1.32 carat round cut G VS2 clarity diamonds with faint fluorescence, our diamond calculator has you covered.
How Does StoneAlgo Work?
LN: Could you please tell us more about how the platform works and if there are other features than the diamond price check?
DJ: Sure thing. StoneAlgo is like Zillow for diamonds, a single website where you can search all of the inventory across many top online jewellers while using tools like our price calculator that help you make a more informed purchase. Top online jewellers send us their inventory with pricing daily, and we use this data to update our pricing models. With daily price updates, we always show accurate diamond price estimates to our users. We track this diamond pricing data over time so users can see historical diamond price charts as well. All of this is totally free for diamond shoppers while we earn revenue by sending leads to online jewellers like Zillow does for real estate.
LN: What would you recommend paying attention to when shopping for diamonds? Do you have a personal tip?
DJ: First, pay special attention to the tradeoffs between quality and price. For example, while shopping for my wife’s diamond, I noticed a huge price decrease from I colour to J colour at the carat weight I was shopping for. By buying a J colour diamond with faint fluorescence, I was able to get a larger diamond for my budget, and it looked totally white in my wife’s platinum setting.
Second, carat weight is not how big your diamond looks, it’s how much your diamond weighs. This is confusing for most beginners, so we created our “visual carat weight” score to help people understand how big their diamond will look in person. If you have a 1-carat diamond with a 1.1-carat visual carat, it will look like a 1.1-carat diamond when viewed from above based on its length and width.
Finally, if you’re buying a round diamond, just know that all excellent cut diamonds are not the same. Some are nearly perfect, and others are on the verge of being “Very Good” cut grade. We created our proprietary Cut Score to measure just how perfect each diamond is.
How to Become a StoneAlgo Partner
LN: What are your criteria when choosing a StoneAlgo partner? Are you open to any vendor?
DJ: StoneAlgo receives inbound requests from brands who want to join our site at least once a week. We’re highly selective with who we let in. First, we look at the brand’s reviews and BBB score, as well as other measures of reputation. Second, we only work with brands that offer 30-day returns, free shipping, and other features that our users expect. Finally, we try to curate a diverse but narrow group of brands that give all of our users a great jeweller to purchase from and a huge inventory to search. We currently have over 2 million diamonds listed on StoneAlgo, making us the world’s largest diamond search engine.
LN: How can an online seller become your partner?
DJ: The best way to become a partner is to reach directly to StoneAlgo and understand that we are very selective and take our time evaluating cold leads.
Featured image © StoneAlgo
