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One of the most famous jewelry brands in the world, Ritani is lauded for several reasons. Does this fame mean that Ritani is really a good brand that offers quality jewelry for good prices, however, or is it all just down to branding and marketing? Let’s find out below.
Shopping at Ritani – The Basics
Ritani is one of the top retailers when it comes to diamonds and diamond jewelry. Their designer jewelry, especially engagement rings, is sold on their own site and stores, but also offered through their partner stores.
Ritani has several benefits, which we’ll go into detail below, and their jewelry and service are of excellent quality. When we did a brief comparison between a James Allen and a Ritani diamond, we found the Ritani diamond to be more affordable:
- E Color Internally Flawless Very Good Cut Diamond from James Allen
While James Allen’s display technology trumps RItani’s, there is still sufficient information and high-quality visuals of the diamond offered by Ritani. We also like that Ritani offers a diamond cost breakdown, which highlights the diamond’s original cost and the company’s markup. The transparency is refreshing to see.
In addition to this, the company also offers lots of information about the stone, presented in an easy-to-understand format for the average customer. This includes non-technical information, such as what the diamond looks like in actuality.
If all this information appears confusing, they also have Diamond Concierges for a free Expert Analysis. When taking all this into consideration, Ritani is a good store from which to purchase your diamond.
What is Ritani?
Given that its name is synonymous with jewelry in many people’s minds, you’d be forgiven to think that Ritani is one of the old guards in the jewelry industry. That’s not true, however, at least not entirely.
The company was actually established as recently as 1999, which makes it a relatively recent creation by the industry’s standards. However, Ritani was the brainchild of Julius Klein Group, a major DeBeers shareholder. After a few years, Ritani was bought by Cantor Fitzgerald, so, despite being relatively new, it was established and managed by experienced and long-standing figures in the jewelry industry.
What does all this mean for the brand today?
Many would say that Ritani is a near-perfect marriage of the old and the new faces of the jewelry industry. The brand has all the experience and know-how of the past but has also managed to incorporate many 21st-century innovations that modern jewelry shoppers are looking for. To fully explore those, let’s break down the pros and cons of Ritani in a simpler format.
Benefits of Shopping At Ritani Jewelry
1. Excellent E-Commerce Site
Ritani has fully embraced the online side of the jewelry industry with a customer-friendly website and catalog.
2. Large Inventory
Ritani has a huge selection of diamonds that can rival the best in the business and gives its customers many options. At the time of writing, they had over 120,000 loose diamonds to choose from. Compared to James Allen, which has over 530,000, and Blue Nile, which has over 368,000, it might not seem like much. But note that most retailers only offer around 10,000 to 20,000 in their inventories, and then suddenly it doesn’t seem all that small.
3. Lab-Grown Diamonds
If you want a lab-grown diamond for either monetary or environmental reasons, you’d be happy to know that Ritani also offers excellent lab-grown diamonds in addition to their natural stones.
4. Reasonable Pricing
As a company with a lot of connections and insight into the jewelry world, Ritani maintains a direct relationship with its suppliers. This guarantees two things – 1) everything listed on Ritani’s website is always in stock, and 2) Ritani can offer more competitive prices as it cuts out the middle man.
5. Ring Recommender
The Ring Recommender feature is a good example of Ritani’s online innovation and attempts to make jewelry shopping as easy on the customer as possible.
6. Click and Brick
The Click and Brick model of Ritani allows online customers to select jewelry pieces from Ritani’s website and have them shipped to a local retailer for an in-person review. With this feature, Ritani is able to bypass a lot of the hesitation a lot of potential customers still have about online shopping. This also allows the potential customer to get a consultation with the professionals in the store if they want.
7. Certification
All diamonds on Ritani’s website are certified by either GIA or AGS, the two most prominent and trustworthy diamond certificates out there. This information is easily accessible and is included in the description of the diamond.
8. Independent Gemologist Inspections
Ritani also offers independent gemologist inspections for those customers who want a second professional opinion before finalizing their purchase.
9. Transparent Diamond Pricing
The Transparent Diamond Pricing policy Ritani employs guarantees not only that their diamonds are worth it but that the user knows exactly why they cost as much as they do, down to Ritani’s initial purchase cost of the diamond.
10. After-Sales Policies
Ritani has a whole cost of excellent customer services such as free shipping and insurance, 30-day free returns, free ring sizing, resizing, and engraving, free appraisals, a diamond price match guarantee, multiple flexible payment options, custom engagement rings, military discounts, and more.
Downsides of Shopping At Ritani Jewelry
For all the benefits listed above, there are a couple of cons to note as well. These include the following:
- While Ritani does offer competitive prices thanks to its direct supplier connections and Price Matching policy, its prices don’t seem to be quite as on the level of James Allen or Blue Nile, Ritani’s two biggest competitors and the two powerhouses of the online jewelry world.
- The images for some of the products can be lacking, and compared to some of the competition, isn’t as impressive. Many products are simply presented with stock images, which can make it difficult to know what you’re buying.
- Ritani does have an impressively large diamond collection that dwarfs a lot of other vendors. There are larger collections out there, however, especially online. This seems even more true when it comes to Ritani’s engagement rings section, although there is the option of custom-made rings.
What Are Customers Saying?
As with any store online, there are both positive and negative comments made about the company.
Some of the recurring complaints were that Ritani didn’t offer enough information about the shipping of the product after purchase, which caused many customers to worry about the status of their order.
Another issue often mentioned is the integrity of the pieces, such as diamond melees falling off or the band appearing scratched, with some customers feeling dissatisfied over the service offered by Ritani in these situations.
However, regardless, Ritani has a general rating of 4.5 stars on various independent review sites.
Here are some customer experiences:
“I have a ring that with an estimated delivery date of 2/24, which is Wednesday. They (Ritani) haven’t even taken my money yet! I was just curious if anyone had experience with their timeline…. When I ordered through James Allen in the past you could see where the item was in production. Ritani seems like it goes from Order Received to Shipped with no detail in between.”
Dracarys
“I got my engagement ring and wedding bands through Ritani. Within 14 months I have had to send my ring back for chipped diamonds. The first time they actually charged me to have my diamond repaired. This time I am refusing to pay.”
Kristen
“Ritani has been great. Not only do I LOVE my ring it also comes with lifetime warranty and rodium plating as needed. You can also save a lot of money by ordering the diamond online. Very helpful and they resized my ring without questions (they paid for the shipping too).”
Anonymous
Ritani Jewelry FAQ
1. How long does it take to receive your order from Ritani?
The whole order-manufacturing shipping process can take anywhere between 3 days to 2-3 weeks, depending on what you’re ordering, whether it needs to be custom-made, where you live, and what shipping option you choose. For example, Ritani has an overnight shipping option within the US but international shipping can take a few business days.
2. Are Ritani’s financing options worthwhile?
Depending on what you’re looking for, different financing options will be better or worse for you. We’d usually recommend Ritani’s zero financing option, however, whereas their 9.99% longer-term financing option is more situational.
3. Does Ritani offer a manufacturing warranty?
Ritani does have a manufacturing warranty but only for engagement rings and wedding rings – other types of jewelry are not covered by it.
4. Is Ritani’s packaging classy?
A high-quality ring needs classy packaging. Ritani offers excellent packaging, in leather boxes with gray satin.
Wrapping Up – Is Ritani The Right Jeweler For You?
Ritani is definitely an excellent jeweler to shop from for any type of jewelry or loose diamonds. There are a couple of areas where they seem to still be outshone by some other major players in the jewelry industry, but if we were to hold that against every jewelry vendor we discuss, we’d only ever be recommending two names and no one else.
In short, giving Ritani’s online catalog is certainly both a great idea and a pleasure as it’s very well-made, stocked, and customer-friendly. If you find the things you were looking for there, then they are also more than worth considering. We’d only recommend that you also look for comparable alternatives before you make your final purchase but we’d always recommend that anyway.
Looking for information on more jewelry brands? Check out our in-depth reviews on Swarovski, Pandora, Gorjana, Kendra, Missoma, and Mejuri. For information on vintage brands, check out our guides on Coro and Trifari. To check out our top retailers to buy diamonds and engagement rings online, read our comparison here.
