I Do was China's wedding-ring champion — lab diamonds and fewer marriages broke it

In 1999 Li Houlin — the 'diamond tycoon' — founded Hengxin Diamond in Beijing. In 2006 he launched I Do, a brand built on one idea: the wedding ring. The marketing was relentless and effective: a couple endorsement from actors Jordan Chan and Cherie Ying, product placement in more than 70 films and TV dramas. At its peak the brand ran 715 stores across China and booked more than ¥2.2B in annual revenue — I Do had turned the diamond wedding ring into a Chinese luxury good.

The slide began in 2017. Net profit fell from ¥300M that year to ¥113M in 2021, while a decade of attempts to reach the public capital markets failed: two IPO applications from 2011, a 2015 backdoor listing that fell through, then the New Third Board, then more applications in 2017, 2018 and 2019 — all unsuccessful. When COVID lockdowns hit, the cost structure broke: in the first half of 2022 revenue fell 42% year on year to ¥628M, net profit dropped 89%, 85 stores closed, and headcount fell from 1,684 to 1,104.

The deeper problem was the product itself. I Do sold natural-diamond wedding rings into a market that was shrinking — China's marriage rate kept falling — while lab-grown diamonds crashed the price of the stone the whole business stood on. On 27 December 2022 a creditor applied for pre-restructuring; on 5 January 2023 the Qushui County court in Tibet issued the pre-restructuring order. By then the company's market value had fallen about 97% from its 2018 high.