Blue Nile (NILE) on the online jewelry market (quotes from the conf call)

Here's what Blue Nile (ticker: NILE) CEO Mark Vadon had to say on his Q4 earnings conference call about marketing, diamond prices and Blue Nile's market share:

On competition:

...from what we're hearing out there, Wal-Mart.com is doing fantastic on-line for jewelry. You see QVC doing a great business on-line in jewelry. And I think new entrants to the market, the ones you're talking about [Amazon.com and Overstock.com] will more compete with those products as opposed to ours. I think what we don't want to do as a business is take the Blue Nile brand and go chasing down market with it.

On marketing:

Our marketing efforts during the fourth quarter continue to be focused on on-line advertising, specifically search engines, web portals, affiliates, and our e-mail program.

On the recent rise in diamond prices

...we have experienced and will continue to experience increases and decreases in diamond prices month to month and quarter to quarter. We believe that over the long-term, our model will continue to provide the most compelling value proposition to the consumer, with prices that are generally 20 to 40 percent below traditional retail jewelers.

On market share:

In 2004, Blue Nile reached 2.7 percent market share of the estimated $4.7 billion U.S. engagement ring market.

...the engagement market in the U.K. alone is a little over $900 million in U.S. dollars. So it's about a fifth a size of the U.S. market.

(Quotes from the CCBN StreetEvents transcript.)