I am catching up on last week’s Economist and came across a small article on Blue Nile, an online middle-man for jewelry sales (mostly engagement rings). I remember when Blue Nile launched in the late 1990s for a couple reasons, including the fact that it was crazy you could buy high-end jewelry online. Yes, I will be sure to point my grandchildren to this blog post.

Anyway, here was an interesting and amusing snippet from the article:

Some 85% of purchases from Blue Nile are made by men. On average they pay $6,200 per engagement ring and take three weeks to make up their minds. Yet the majority of visitors to the Blue Nile site are women, who browse and e-mail pictures of the stone and ring they want to friends for comment, and ultimately to the target fiance-to-be.