Mejuri swaps lab-grown diamonds for sapphires in four styles
The Toronto brand put Montana stones into its Salmon Gold line, pricing two rings, a charm and earrings from $498 to $896. It invested $1.5 million in the Regeneration project in 2023.
By The Gemstones Desk
What changed
A lab-grown stone came out. Mejuri replaced lab-grown diamonds with Montana sapphires in four new Salmon Gold styles. The pieces are priced from $498 to $896.
What it means
- If you sell coloured stones: A direct-to-consumer brand taking lab-grown diamonds out and a domestic sapphire in is a substitution running the unfamiliar direction.
- If you buy Montana rough: The demand here is small calibrated goods set in tension and partial tension, not single large stones.
- If you price origin: The range tops at $896 on a traceability story rather than a carat story. Origin is doing the pricing work.
- What this is not: A volume figure. Mejuri published no unit numbers and no contracted tonnage, and four styles is a test rather than a line.
Key figures
| New styles with Montana sapphiretwo rings, a charm, earrings | 4 |
|---|---|
| Lowest published priceto $896 at the top | $498 |
| Invested in Regeneration2023, founding partner | $1.5m |
| Salmon Gold introducedlab-grown used last year | 2024 |
Source: Mejuri's September 2026 announcement and interview, as reported by JCK on 7 October 2026
Sapphires replace lab-grown
Four new styles. Two rings, a charm and a pair of earrings carry Montana sapphires in the latest Salmon Gold pieces. Last year's collection used lab-grown diamonds in the same place.
A North American stone. The brand's product-design director said the search was for a stone from North America, and that Montana came up quickly given where the business sells.
| Piece | Price | Note |
|---|---|---|
| River Ring | $498 | Named in the article's text |
| Open Dome River charm | $498 | Named in the article's caption |
| River Drop earrings | $648 | Montana sapphires, 14k Salmon Gold |
| Open Dome Twin River ring | $698 | Caption price |
| River pendant necklace | $896 | Top of the published range |
Notes on this table
The source attaches $498 to the River Ring in its body text and to the Open Dome River charm in its photo caption, and both lines are reproduced here rather than reconciled, because the document carries the figure twice against two different names. The published range is $498 to $896 and the article says four new styles, which is one fewer than the five names the page gives prices for.
Salmon Gold is a programme
Not a colour. The name refers to Regeneration's work returning salmon and other migratory fish to streams damaged by gold mining across North America. Mejuri introduced the line in 2024.
One point five million. Mejuri invested $1.5 million in Regeneration in 2023 as a founding partner and strategic adviser, and holds rights to buy its gold and silver.
Metal pressure sits behind it
Four to five thousand. The brand has told media including The Wall Street Journal that it is examining its supply chain with gold in a $4,000 to $5,000 range.
Steel came too. It has introduced new metals including stainless steel into its collections. The stone swap and the metal swap answer the same cost pressure.
What to watch
- Through Q4 2026Whether the four styles become a standing line or stay a capsule. Four styles is the smallest commitment a brand can make.
- Through 2027Montana sapphire supply into calibrated commercial sizes, which is the constraint on anyone copying this.
- Early 2027Whether other direct-to-consumer brands substitute a domestic coloured stone for lab-grown diamond at these price points.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
Mejuri reinstating lab-grown diamonds in the next Salmon Gold drop, or the four styles disappearing without replacement, either of which would make this a marketing capsule rather than a sourcing decision.
Why a domestic coloured stone is hard
Montana sapphire comes mostly from alluvial deposits worked at small scale, and the material is typically small, pale and heat-treated to reach commercial blues. That makes it well suited to calibrated goods used several at a time and poorly suited to a single large centre stone, which is the shape of the pieces here. A fully traceable North American chain is therefore available to a brand buying small sizes in modest quantities and effectively unavailable to one needing matched parcels at volume. Substituting it for lab-grown diamond changes the story a piece tells about origin without changing the price band it sells in.
Method
JCK's article was fetched to raw bytes, HTTP 200, 112,854 bytes, saved to newsroom/sources/2026-10-08/mejuri.html, and read out of the article's own body and its own photo captions rather than from a whole-page sweep, because the page carries a popular-stories rail whose figures belong to other stories. The price discrepancy between the body's River Ring and the caption's River charm at $498 is reported rather than resolved, because the document genuinely says both. No quote is carried in this article: the product-design director's account of the search for a North American stone is paraphrased with attribution, so the quote count for this page is zero. Archive check, searched in website/content/articles.json: 'Mejuri' returns zero hits, 'Montana sapphire' zero, 'Salmon Gold' zero and 'Regeneration' zero. The search file is the archive of record and the hit count on all four terms is nil, so this is new to this paper and to its gemstones desk.