The cultured pearl industry has experienced a dramatic transformation during the past 15 years, from a single commodity dominated by one country to a multi-colored array of goods and an ever-expanding group of producers.

Japanese Dealers Relinquish Control

For many decades after pioneering the cultured pearl in the early twentieth century, Japanese companies maintained tight control over its technology, production and distribution (figure 2). In the 1960s, however, large, white South Sea cultured pearls from Australia and black cultured pearls from French Polynesia began entering the market alongside the traditional white Japanese akoya.

The French Polynesians initially struggled to gain acceptance for their products, as many believed they were treated-color. A breakthrough came in the early 1970s when GIA researcher Robert Crowningshield determined their black color was indeed natural. Meanwhile, the South Sea cultured pearl was becoming a branded fashion item, though the Australians still marketed their output solely through Japanese wholesalers.

The real changes began in the 1990s, when the nearly century-long grip of the Japanese loosened due to a combination of factors: aggressive marketing efforts for South Sea and black French Polynesian pearls; the rise of lower-cost, fine-quality Chinese freshwater cultured pearls

The Australians and the French Polynesians (now selling under the “Tahitian” banner) began marketing their products as distinct from Japanese akoyas: the South Sea goods as luxury items that were not subjected to treatments, the Tahitians as exotic fashion pieces. Producers of both types of cultured pearls embarked on multi-million-dollar consumer campaigns to promote their goods and the images they wanted them to convey.

By the mid-1990s, Chinese farmers, who for years had produced small, irregularly shaped and very inexpensive goods (dubbed “rice krispie pearls”), were successfully growing round, akoya-like cultured pearls. The quantity of Chinese goods entering the market threatened to inundate Japanese distributors. The Japanese entered talks with the Chinese government in an effort to control production and exports of such goods, but they failed on both fronts.

Then, in 1996, reports began filtering in that Japanese pearl farms were suffering the massive mortality of their oyster crops. By year’s end, an estimated two-thirds of the akoya oysters under cultivation in Japanese waters had died from infectious disease—a blow from which that country’s cultured pearl industry has not yet fully recovered. As a result, Japanese producers no longer had the financial resources to control supplies and distribution, thus creating a true free market within the industry.