Blue Nile Shifts Away From Lab-Growns and Grids

By Rob Bates | March 23, 2026

Blue Nile, which pioneered the diamond-grid approach that’s now standard in jewelry e-tail, is moving toward an “elevated” positioning that will spotlight curated items, Signet Jewelers’ chief financial and operating officer Joan Hilson tells JCK.

The grids will still be on the site, she says, but they won’t be the basis of its business, like they were in the past.

“They are still part of our platform and our virtual diamond marketplace,” Hilson says. “We know that we [offer] a lot of choice [of diamonds], but we can help the customer curate, so they don’t have to look through all of those choices on their own. We can help them navigate based on some of the specifications that they give us.”

The new Blue Nile is also deprioritizing lab-grown diamonds, which the brand started selling in 2022 following its purchase by Signet. Hilson says consumers can still buy lab-grown items in the James Allen collection on the site, but says Blue Nile will be “primarily natural.” (Signet announced last week it was shutting the James Allen site, after owning it for less than nine years.)

Online buyers searching for lab-grown engagement rings also can purchase them from its store brands, Kay and Zales, Hilson says.

Signet is also adding point-of-sale capabilities to Blue Nile’s 23 showrooms, which will start to stock finished jewelry and engagement rings, Hilson says. Prior to this, Blue Nile’s showrooms were simply vehicles to get customers to purchase online.

The new iteration of Blue Nile will be positioned as more upscale than Jared, which is considered part of Signet’s “accessible luxury” tier, along with Diamonds Direct.

Signet didn’t talk much about Diamonds Direct on its recent conference call, but that division, which Signet purchased in 2021, also is going through changes.

Last year, Diamonds Direct chief operating officer Tom O’Rourke was promoted to division president, following the departure of longtime CEO Itay Berger. And while Diamonds Direct had been a standalone division, it now reports to Claudia Cividino, who’s been the president of Jared since 2023. Diamonds Direct’s back-end has been integrated into Jared’s, Hilson says.

Both Diamonds Direct and James Allen showed comp declines over the last fiscal year, according to Signet’s latest annual report—although Hilson says Diamonds Direct has been “doing nicely in the first quarter of the [new fiscal] year.”

This consolidation and reorganization shows a clear shift in strategy.

Gina Drosos’ tenure as Signet CEO was marked by a flurry of acquisitions. During her seven years on the job, the company purchased James Allen, Blue Nile, Diamonds Direct, and Rocksbox, which Signet also announced it was shutting down last week. (Rocksbox will be integrated into Kay.)

However, Drosos’ successor, J.K. Symancyk, has been taking the opposite approach, pruning and combining the sprawling list of eight brands he inherited. Hilson confirms that the company is pretty much out of the M&A game for the time being.

“We’re really not in acquisition mode,” she adds. “If we did an acquisition, it would be very small.”

Top: A Blue Nile showroom (photo courtesy of Signet Jewelers)