Thursday, June 19th:  Introducing our Contemporary Channel-set Ring! We're pleased to finally begin showing some additional ring choices.  This particular ring is one with very striking, solid lines and features .40ctw VS/G channel set diamonds.  It is ideal for .75ct - 2.00ct rounds, though other cuts can also be used in the center.  More details and photos at our Contemporary Channel Ring page here! 

Our contemporary channel-set ring features a euro-shank, and
solid, 45 degree shoulders.

So, if you want to share your input on how to perfect this purse, feel free to post on the Vicci message boards. Of note, VicciLeather.com will shortly become its own legal entity (Vicci, LLC) and will no longer be a legal part of BTD after our lawyers finish their work this month.  The Vicci website is here:  http://www.VicciLeather.com

Monday, June 2nd:  Very low on Asha inventory due to problem in lab:  We had expected to have a large batch of new Asha's ready at the end of May...however, we had a problem with the diamond chamber that was discovered late last week after we had completed a large number of runs, and so we have a large batch of Asha's that was expected to be available for sale, but instead will have to be destroyed as they are unusable.  Hence, we will not have new inventory available for those stones that are out of stock until roughly the end of June.  We have to start all over with the production of those Asha's that are currently out of stock.  Sorry for the delay, we are currently working on getting the diamond chamber fixed this week, and will do some test runs early next week.

Friday, May 30th:  Congratulations to our Branson Ultrasonic Cleaner winner, IkariNoKawa!:  We did our random number generation today to pick the contest winner for our May giveaway to celebrate our 9 year company anniversary, and the winner was user 161, or IkariNoKawa.  Ironically, while they registered back in February, their first post was literally this morning, meaning they qualified within only a few hours of the drawing (since we required registered users to have at least one valid posting this month to win).  We've already emailed them to notify them of their being the winner, and will be shipping their new Branson Ultrasonic cleaner to them on Monday.  Congratulations!

Thursday, May 22nd:  Sold out of 1ct H color H&A round Asha's:  We've sold out of our 1ct H color H&A rounds.  More will be coming within the next month, however, they will no longer be intro priced.

*Closed on Memorial Day (Monday):  Please note that our offices will be closed this coming Monday for Memorial Day.  Thus, while Monday's are normally a big shipping day for us to ship out completed rings and other jewelry, that will happen on Tuesday instead.  

*Ultrasonic giveaway!  With all of the changes and happenings here, we didn't really have time to at least celebrate BTD's 9th year anniversary earlier this month....so, to correct that, we thought we'd do another Ultrasonic Cleaner giveaway, similar to the one we did earlier this year.  Same rules apply:  the drawing will be held on Friday, May 30th, with a random number generated via the website www.random.org with the constraints being the total number of registered message board users we have on May 30th.  The chosen participant via the random number must have at least one post on our message boards during this month (May) - if not, they will be skipped and another random number chosen until we get a registered user who has posted in May.  Results will be announced here on our latest news page - if the winner already has an Ultrasonic, we'll offer them a store credit of the equivalent amount ($112).  Our message boards are here!

*Additional B&M (Brick and Mortar jeweler) added for those Asha customers looking for custom jewelry designs:  We're pleased to announce that "None Other Too, Goldsmiths" of Columbus Ohio will be carrying the Asha line as well as doing custom work for those interested. Their contact info is as follows:

None Other Too, Goldsmiths
*Custom designs welcomed*
contact: Koy Sowards
email: [email protected]
Phone: 360-653-8200 
716 North High Street 
Columbus, OH 43215 
(614) 294-8811 

As noted earlier, with the possible upcoming business deal, we will be placing more focus on wholesaling to established brick and mortar jewelers over the next few months.  For a listing of other retail jewelers to view the Asha at or contact for custom work, please see our "Asha Jewelers" page here!

Wednesday, May 21st:  Our first men's wedding band - the Men's Illustrious:  We've consistently had requests to offer rings for men, and we're pleased to show our first wedding band for men.  The Illustrious men's band is a very substantial band, with nearly 15 grams of platinum and featuring 7 x 3mm, VS/F-G white round diamonds, tightly channel set.  Pictures don't do this band justice, its a very sophisticated band with a substantial look and feel.  More photos and details at our Men's Illustrious page here!

Tuesday, May 20th:  Back to work, announcing our Cartier styled Cathedral Solitaire:  With all of the new developments, it's nice to get back to presenting another new style ring.  The Cartier styled Cathedral ring was highly requested by some of our customers who are big Cartier fans - this ring emulates the Cartier MK Solitaire look in its styling.

*What's going on with the Takara synthetic diamonds?:  We're not
pleased to be the bearer of bad news, but the Takara synthetics are fa
 behind schedule. We had hoped at this point to have smaller blue
synthetic diamonds in production and available by now, but there have
been numerous problems getting them into production.  The business deal
regarding the Asha has no bearing on the Takara synthetics, and we still
intend to distribute Takara synthetics via our BTD website.  However, the
timing of it is the unknown aspect.  With blues being delayed,
correspondingly white Takara's are even further pushed back.  We don't
have a good estimate on when we can start selling the blue Takara's, as
some of the production problems are solved, we'll be happy to post more
accurate estimates for when they will be available.

Wednesday, May 14th:  Announcing our first BTD spin-off:  VicciLeather.com!  We are pleased to formally announce two significant developments for BTD.  We have been in negotiations for a large business deal for the past few months, whereby we would move to a role of manufacturing the Asha for a large American jewelry chain, and if that deal concludes, we would no longer sell direct to customers via our website as they would be purchasing all of our monthly production.

Thursday, May 8th:  Two new jewelry items!  We're adding some additional natural diamond jewelry pieces that we are very excited about.  We had hoped to have photos of these with a model, but the weather prevented that....so for now, just studio photos, but we'll add our characteristic model photos as soon as we can.

*Diamond Heart pendant:  The first items is a very affordable, .25ctw natural white diamond heart pendant.  It is a very nice size, but more importantly produces lots of sparkles from the diamonds that are pave set around the entire heart.  It ships with a dainty 14k white gold necklace included.  Additional info on our diamond heart pendant page here!

4 Our diamond heart pendant, $350. 

*Sold out of 1ct H&A E color Asha's:  On the not so good news, we've sold out of 1ct H&A, E color Ashas. We hope to have more completed within the next three weeks.

4 Our stunning, all-natural diamond tennis bracelet

*Hosted Chat this Friday, 2:00PM - 4:00PM EST:  Lisa, our customer service manager, will be having a hosted chat in our online chat room (viewable for registered members of our message boards), this coming Friday, May 9th.  There is no particular format for the chat, stop in to say hi or ask your questions about our jewelry or Asha.  We are going to try out the hosted chats to make use of our newly added chat room.

*Order backlog in good shape:  We shipped another large amount of orders out today, and are now generally caught up with most remaining orders shipping out tomorrow.  Thus, we expect to finally be able to complete some of our new model rings, and have those available on the site later this week.  

*New shipping software ordered:  In light of some of the problems we have had with FedEx's system for automatically notifying customers that we have shipped their order, we have ordered a very high-end shipping automation software to help reduce the amount of hours per day we spend on simply making FedEx labels, as well as sending out emails with the relevant tracking numbers, etc.  This software should be up and running in the next few weeks, and has been placed as a higher priority than our order status software that is still sitting in its box, waiting to be implemented.

Monday, April 27th:  Our first natural pink diamond added to our site!  We've had many requests as to whether we can produce our Takara synthetic diamonds in pink (we can't), but our natural diamond supplier shipped us a beautiful .37ct natural pink diamond last week with our latest white diamonds, so we're pleased to make it available for sale on our site.  Pink diamonds are among the rarest of natural colored diamonds, but have received a lot of attention with more Hollywood stars wearing them as their engagement rings.

3 .37ct natural fancy intense orangy pink diamond

Friday, April 25th:  Live Chat has been added to the website!  We have gotten requests for this, and are pleased to add it.  The chat has not been customized yet, but we are working on that.  For now, if you want to take a spin and talk to other jewelry lovers around the world live, you can simply log into our message boards, and you'll see a new menu item after logging above, "my Chat Room".  The chat feature is only available to registered users of our message boards! 

*Phone support temporarily removed:  Until we move to our new building and add another employee, we have temporarily suspended customer service via the telephone.  Thus, please use email and our message boards for the interim (or even chat :-) to communicate with us.  The reason for this is we have found that we end up spending too much time playing phone tag in terms of returning phone calls, the cost of the long distance, as well as the length of time spent on a typical phone call ends up consuming significant amounts of resources as compared to answering the same questions via email.  We've thus removed our phone number from the web pages.  We are moving to a larger office space in July, and we'll then look at adding phone support back then.

Monday, April 21st:  Phoenix, HPHT Enhanced natural diamonds program, has been terminated: We've terminated this program, which was where a very specific, ultra-pure type of natural diamond was "de-stressed" in a diamond growth chamber to allow them to revert to their natural D color, producing D/IF enhanced diamonds. The problem with this program turned out to be purchasing the raw materials, or type IIb natural diamond rough.  Availability of the proper type of rough has become too scarce to continue investing in this program.  We have removed the Phoenix HPHT diamonds from our natural diamond menu.

Friday, April 17th:  Wedding bands by Golden Sands Platinum now added!  The most requested item from our user poll regarding what new items to add to the site was more rings and bands, and so we are pleased to start answering that request with the addition of some extremely intricate, hand-engraved, natural diamond wedding bands by Golden Sands. We'll be adding their selection of engagement rings next week, for now, the index page for their wedding bands can be viewed here!

6 A sample of the amazingly
intricate Golden Sands
wedding bands.

Wednesday, April 16th:  Classic Tiffany Ring page revised!  The Classic Tiffany ring, one of our most consistent selling rings, has had its web page revised to let you simply purchase the ring mounting itself, and then add the appropriate center stone to your shopping cart to complete the ring. This will allow people to select the H color Asha or E color Asha, and also allow others who are mounting their own natural diamond, to be able to customize their purchase.  The Classic Tiffany Ring page is here!

*Flanders H color pricing/inventory corrected:  The Flanders H pricing and inventory was posted incorrectly earlier (yes, we do have 1.5ct Flanders in H now :-).  The page has been changed to reflect it having intro pricing and the correct inventory.  Sorry for any confusion.  The Flanders Asha page is here!

Tuesday, April 15th:  More H color Asha added!  We've revised the Asha Flanders page to allow for the ordering of the H color.  Additionally, we've revised the Asha Princess Earrings page to allow for the ordering of these earrings with H color princess Asha.

Monday, April 14th:  H color Asha now in stock, pre-orders shipping today and tomorrow!  We completed nearly 500 H color Asha's last week, and these are now in stock and we are currently filling pre-orders.  We'll also have more website updates shortly to make H color princess earrings, H color Flanders, etc. available.

*Ultrasonics (US model) now back in stock!  We received another shipment of 30 Branson Ultrasonics.  5 of these were on back-order, and shipped out today, but we now have 25 in stock for immediate delivery.

 Thursday, April 10th:  Lots of new updates to the website!  We've completed a number of various updates to the website, listed below:

*Sunshine Polishing Cloth now available for direct purchase:  We have received a lot of requests from customers to be able to buy the Sunshine cloth that we ship with purchases.  The Sunshine cloth will continue to clean your jewelry until it is completely black (from the metal oxides), at which point you need to replace it.  We are offering these for $5.00, which includes USPS shipping, and they are available on our new Sunshine Polishing Cloth page here, or under our Misc. Products menu.  This polishing cloth is best used for precious metals, it does not do that well for cleaning Asha's.  Thus, going forward, we will only be including it with jewelry purchases, and not loose Asha purchases.  The best cleaner for the Asha, or diamonds as well, is still our Branson Ultrasonic jewelry cleaner.

*AA round pink sapphires (cut to diamond standards) have been added to our pink sapphire inventory.  The current addition is for .46ct rounds for a specific customer, we'll be adding more shortly, but wanted to point out that we do have these available!

*H color round stud earrings added to our Asha round earrings page!  We've revised our earrings page to offer your choice of either E color or H color Asha H&A rounds for your earrings.  The intro discount on the H's is applied for the stud earrings - our revised Asha round stud earrings page is here!

*We will be moving to a larger office space in late June!  Just a heads-up, but the lease on our current office space will expire in July, and we will be moving to a larger office building with plans to double our office space to handle our growth.  We will be hiring another employee shortly as well, but need to move before we can do that.  We'll update this as we have our new office space finalized.

Wednesday, April 9th, PM update:  H Color Princess Asha now available for pre-order!  We've revised our Princess Asha page to add online shopping for our upcoming H color Asha princess.  Our Asha princess page is here!

Wednesday, April 9th:  H Color Asscher available for pre-order!  We've added the option to pre-order H color Asscher cuts to our Asha Asscher page.  We'll shortly be adding pre-orders for our other cuts, as well as revising our jewelry pages to allow you to order H color earrings, classic tiffany rings etc.  Please give us a few days to complete these updates!  Our Asha Asscher page is here!

*E color Asha sold out for 2ct rounds, and 1.50ct rounds:  While much of the current focus is on the H color Asha's, the E colors continue to sell well and we are sold out for both 2ct H&A rounds, and 1.50ct H&A rounds. We hope to have more completed by early May.

*New photo from our previously mentioned Singapore jeweler!  Along with the earlier testimonial, this jeweler was also kind enough to email us several photos they took of the 1.00ct H/I rounds next to a 1.03ct H&A D color, IF natural diamond.  We are very pleased to share one of these photos with you below.  Thanks again to this jeweler for their photos!

Tuesday, April 8th:  H Color Rounds available for pre-order!  We've revised our loose Asha rounds page to offer the option for those who wish to pre-order H Color rounds available.  We are offering introductory pricing on these, approximately $75 cheaper than our current E offerings.  We expect to have all our H color rounds completed by this Friday, and will thus ship out pre-orders taken this week, early next week.  You can see our Asha H&A rounds page here!

*Extremely nice testimonial from Singapore jeweler regarding our first set of H/I colored Asha rounds:  We were very thrilled to get a nice email from this morning from a well-regarded jeweler in Singapore, who wrote us upon receiving their shipment of our H/I colored rounds that we sold last week.  We greatly appreciate their taking the time to write such an extensive review and allowing us to reprint!

"When I heard about BetterthanDiamond producing new, H colored Ashas, I knew I had to be first in the line. I own almost every cut that BTD has ever produced, and have been enthusiastically recommending them to anyone who is looking for a reasonably priced, irrationally beautiful diamond replacement!

I work in the jewelry industry, and have many large spenders at my shop. They have been equally taken with the Asha from the first 2.75 carat Round Brilliant I ordered back when Asha was a "Version 3" and needless to say, with the addition of their ADT (Amorphous Diamond Treatment), the Asha fan base here in Singapore has grown exponentially larger.

The new H colored Asha was made in a test run of 10 pieces of 1 carat Round Brilliants. I immediately emailed BTD and reserved 5 of these for myself SIGHT UNSEEN as I implicitly trust the standards and business ethics of this company.

The H colored Asha arrived in Singapore barely three days after my order was shipped (thanks to BTD free shipping policy) and when I opened the envelope, there was shocked silence in the shop, before someone uttered... "Are those really not...you know, real?"

The H colored Asha is an incredible stone, simply put. It is in no way obviously yellow (I would in fact grade it as a G color, as have the 3 separate GIA gemologists whom I have shown it to) yet I *personally* feel it is a further improvement over the currently available range of E colored Asha, as this H color further increases the realism of the Asha to the point that it is virtually indistinguishable from a real diamond.

The H color is achieved by a double run of the ADT process- thereby making the ADT treatment twice as thick on the H Asha as the normal E Asha and I can visibly see that this has the added benefit of increasing the brilliance and diamond like luster of the gem. The Ashas are practically impossible to photograph clearly as the camera flash from ANY angle causes them to light up so much that the end result is photographs that look "over-exposed" (as one other jeweller has commented to me)

I definitely support this new product by BTD, and will certainly be ordering all my favorite Asha cuts in the H color. 

I have displayed the Ashas in the store window for several days now, and I notice that the pedestrian traffic outside that *particular* window has slowed considerably. Another amazing achievement, and my sincere congratulations to Less and all at BetterThanDiamond!"

Monday, April 7th:  Top questions about our upcoming H colored Asha answered!  We've received a lot of emails with the same questions regarding our upcoming H color Asha, and so we've tried to answer them in our new "Asha H color FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions)" page.  We hope this will help provide more information on our H color Asha!  The H color Asha FAQ page is here!

Friday, April 4th:  Our Asha Emerald 3-stone ring is now available!: We had to make three molds before getting this ring just the way we wanted, but we're pleased to announce the availability of our much-requested Asha 3 stone emerald ring. This ring uses 2 x .55ct side Asha Emeralds, and features a center 1.25ct Asha.