Organized by Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), the 2026 MarketingPulse and eTailingPulse concluded successfully at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center. The event brought together over 1,700 industry professionals from 22 countries and regions. With the theme “Generate New Growth”, the event aimed to help brand leaders seize e-commerce opportunities by exploring fresh ideas, new technologies, and bold strategies.
Pauline Brown, former Chairman of LVMH North America, opened the session by noting that as AI continues to drive efficiency, consumers are placing greater value on multi-sensory experiences. She emphasized that aesthetics is a critical capability that AI cannot easily replace. Wang Haijun, the founder of Atour Hotel Group, proposed that services and spaces should trigger emotional resonance to win customer loyalty. Krzysztof Andrzej Kowal, Global Retail Design Director at YSL Beauty, argued that physical stores should become experiential hubs powered by “Design Story Emotion,” building deep bonds through multi-sensory interactions. These examples show that, beyond technology, a brand’s true moat lies in its unique experiential design and emotional value, turning products into a lifestyle.
Leon Guo, founder of CARAXY, was invited to attend the forum and delivered a speech about how to avoid price wars and build brand competitiveness in a market dominated by dupe culture, offering new strategic insights for the lab-grown diamond industry. Leon made it clear that CARAXY is not a “fast brand.” He believes that strategies focused on chasing short-term trends and seeking explosive traffic growth are unsustainable. A brand’s competitive advantage should be built through systematic brand assets. He emphasized that a successful brand cannot depend on a single “world-changing innovation,” but on the continuous accumulation of micro-innovations and small improvements, which can eventually lead to a qualitative transformation over time. It is precisely this spirit of long-termism that has enabled CARAXY to maintain its competitiveness in the fast-changing lab-grown diamond market over the past 11 years.
In his speech, Leon shared his perspective about diamonds: The value of natural diamonds is often attributed to the accidents of geological evolution, whereas lab-grown diamonds offer a brand-new attitude, one where scarcity no longer depends on nature, but is defined by human wisdom and creativity. This is exactly what CARAXY has been doing: infusing value into jewelry through technology and humanity. The brand infuses every gem with creativity and emotion, returning “luxury” to its essence of thought and expression, rather than the possession of natural resources.
CARAXY’s commitment to long-termism is not just a slogan, but a survival principle embedded in the fundamentals of the brand. As Leon frankly shared at the forum, the brand survived twice from bankruptcy crises since it was founded in 2015. Yet it was the brand’s adherence to its original aspiration that allowed it to navigate the turbulent cycles of diamond market. He explained that CARAXY never focuses on price wars; instead, it dedicates on building differentiation and creating distinctive, high-quality jewelry. From developing the unique “Vine, Leaf, Flower & Spirit” design language, to raise out the diamond four-leaf clover mark that delivers strong brand recognition on small jewelry; from proposing the concept of “Grow Your Love,” to launching the CARAXY Love Forest ESG program, every seemingly small persistence has finally converged into an inimitable core competitiveness for the brand.
Leon noted that selling products follows an “easy first, hard later” path, while brand building is “hard first, easy later”. After several years of rapid growth, the lab-grown diamond sector has entered a phase of saturated market competition. However CARAXY has still maintained high-speed growth over the past two years, ranking top on online sales for three consecutive years, and opening new boutiques in multiple Asian cities. This validates the “hard first, easy later” development path once a brand has built its own moat.
Leon also expressed that his ultimate vision is to drive a new cultural movement in the jewelry industry. He pointed out that as human thought progresses over time, people once took pride in eating shark fin or wearing fur, yet such behaviors are now regarded as outdated luxury. For centuries, people mined gems from the earth, using natural scarcity to showcase beauty and social status. But in a future of continuous technological advancement and explosive intellectual and cultural growth, this too will become a form of outdated luxury. This is not only about lab-grown diamonds, but the evolution of the entire jewelry industry. In the future, jewelry will no longer build its core value on natural scarcity, but on value injected through technology and humanistic creation. Jewelry is an expression of beauty, and even more an expression of spirit and culture, a resonance of emotions and values between people and the brand.
About CARAXY:
Founded in Hong Kong in 2015, CARAXY is a pioneer of the lab-grown diamond sector. The brand’s founding couple infused their understanding of love and happiness into jewelry and promote the spirit of long-termism by advocating the philosophy of “Grow Your Love”. Using high quality lab-grown diamonds, the brand designed a series of diamond jewelry with natural elements such as vines, leaves, flowers, and small animals. They have also created a CARAXY Love Forest at the border between the Tengger Desert and the Badain Jaran Desert, helping the local community to battle against land desertification and hoping more people view love and themselves with a mindset of growth and achieve lifelong happiness.