Experts predict that jewelry sales in 2008 will go up despite the slowdown in the U.S. economy, and this will largely happen due to bridal jewelry. The International Diamond Exchange predicts a 3 percent increase in the U.S. jewelry sales - from $ 64.0 billion in 2007 to $65.9 billion.
Last year, analysts laid their hopes on Baby Boomers, who could give a new impetus to the jewelry industry growth. However, exactly these generations of Americans turned out to be worst hit by recession.
According to Ken Gassman, an IDEXOnline analyst, the children of Baby Boomers or Millennials (“children of two millennia”) are first of all ready to spend more on engagement and wedding jewelry because they have more wealth then their predecessors.
Gassman also predicts a 30 percent rise in the number of weddings in the U.S.A. in the nearest ten years.
Besides, the analyst notes that jewelers should rather pay more attention to wedding anniversaries, since this event in a person’s private life is not always efficiently employed by jewelry sellers. Only one fifth of diamond jewelry sold in the U.S.A (21%) is bought as gifts for wedding anniversaries. However, the number of weddings in America is going up, while that of divorces is going down. Besides, according to Diamond Promotion Services (DPS), the anniversary of the most important event in a person’s family life is one of the three main reasons to give diamond gifts. Ken Grassman suggests that jewelers maintain customer databases to make special offers for wedding anniversaries. According to the above DPS survey, 25% of married American women would like to get “some diamond thing” from their husbands, while only 15% really get it.
Only one of five Americans, says DPS, is offered by the jewelry store, where he recently bought wedding bands, to purchase some gift to his wife for their wedding anniversary. There is a clear disregard of opportunities granted by modern retail software, which in most cases preserves both the dates of bridal purchases and personal data of customers.
The greater part – in terms of value – of bridal and anniversary gifts is sold by independent stores and small sales networks, Ken Gassman says. It is evident that large-scale jewelry networks having broad possibilities to attract clientele and shape up special offers are just obliged to employ the market segment under consideration on a much greater scale.
Another thing, which could be useful for jewelers, is that anniversary gifts do not belong to season goods, since wedding anniversaries (and weddings proper) are distributed quite evenly across the year.
