Jewellery in India

...

Within the Jewellery industry itself, India has seen some wheels moving towards digitalisation. Harshil Jewellers, an establishment as old as the 1980s is one of the leading precious and semi-precious gemstone manufacturer and trader. The family owned business moved towards digitalisation in 2007 to unlock a wider market. With access to a larger market and via digital marketing tools, the business has been able to access over 40 countries establish a profitable export business across the major developed countries in the world.

Rise of online Channels

From the early 2008, e-commerce websites selling low cost jewelry started pouring in the market. Caratlane started with the option of providing wide range of jewelry design to urban women who were familiar with Internet. Similarly many more companies gave various differentiated services along with vast designs to get a foothold in a market growing at 40% on an average between 2000-2008. For example, AuGrav, founded in 2014 came up with making personalized designs with 3D printers

Another player, Velvetcase, founded in 2012 is giving access to 60,000 designs from 150 global designers with additional features like as Augmented Reality (to reduce touch and feel), 3D printing feature (to remove need for inventory) and scalable mass customization features to upgrade last mile sale in a category which is yet to move ahead of the traditional store retail. Currently with a 35 member team, they are aiming to touch $100 million in a span of 3 years and to become the Amazon.com equivalent for luxury products. Velvetcase has more than 200 designers, retailers and manufacturer on board and sells certified jewellery from across the world. At present, Velvetcase.com hosts more than 200 brands. The site processes up to 1200 orders per month and ships to 15 countries outside India.

Bluestone Bluestone has built a large family of loyal consumers in India and abroad. They consist of more than 4000 unique designers. It offers policy of 30 day money back, certified jewellery and even home try-on service. Bluestone has sales at the tune of 50-60 crore annually. Founder hopes to target 20-25 crore worth sales for upcoming festive season. The revenue of the company keeps on increasing year by year, that too with the very high speed. They got funding of $5 million from Palo Alto, California based Accel partners and Bangalore based Samaa capital. Their main aim is to put up a product display that consumers would fall in love with.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Role of bigger brands

In the fear of this upcoming disruption between small and medium retailers, there were big brands who were still insulated by the rise of e-retailers in the industry. This however didn’t stop them to hedge against a possible disruption in future. Many of these retailers have opened an online platform to counter the reach of many e-commerce platforms.

Jewelart in 2010-2017

Jewelart was amongst the early movers who sensed the impending shift of buying behaviour and started pondering upon a suitable response. The management sat together for couple of months discussing upon the changes that can be brought to attract not just the traditional customers whose buying frequency was more towards the start of festival season or functions but those who buy jewellery as an accessory. After long deliberations they finalized upon some changes that they would like to do in this regard.

Firstly, the product mix have heavily been towards the traditional heavy jewellery which caters to its current consumer base. Jewelart tried designing a few designs in the lightweight jewellery but it didn’t seem to bring in the revenues thus it was discontinued. The company thus chose to stick to its current mix of heavy necklaces, Kundan jewellery & bangles. There is a narrow variety kept on display for earrings and rings which are brought from the warehouse if the customer demands.

Secondly, Jewelart have set up 4 stores across Jaipur which is famous for its fine jewellery, People from across India come to these markets in search for Kundan meena and diamond necklaces. In order to capture this demand, jewelart is planning to open 3 more stores outside jaipur and move into the metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata.

The jewellery industry is one place where price hegemony is easily visible. Bigger brands have been able to charge heavy profits from the customer by banking upon trust and retail experience that they offer. Jewelart has been able differentiate in this regard and offer its product at a cheaper rate, mainly because of its ability to manufacture its own designs but they were still selling the products looking at cost determined by the market leader or their competitors. They have now decided to move on from this practice and pass on a chunk of their profits to the consumers in form of promotion or loyalty points.

Finally, the promotion strategy has never been a focus point as the company relied more on word of mouth rather than pushing the brand to new customer who are anyway reluctant on buying from a new shop. Basically as Dinesh agarwal says, “ Every customer that bought something from our retail store has referred us to their relatives and friends which then becomes a chain and that’s how we acquire new customers”. The management is now thinking of putting advertisements on hoardings and actively pursue customers through its social media page. They are also planning to take out some promotional campaigns offering deep discounts on the new designs which would be inspired from the work of well known foreign designers.

Future of Industry

Although, there are still a lot of skepticism whether buying jewelry online will be viable in India considering there are major trust issues among the consumers, India still remains the country where the consumers would like to go to the local retailers rather than buying from an alternate channel. The customer loyalty in this segment is pretty high and the industry analysts are betting on the fence sitters who would take the leap as the online medium brings in the transparency and wide range of designs which is not available in traditional brick and mortar stores. Nonetheless, even a minor swing in the customer base might hit the small and mid size retailers who do not have the expertise to adapt to this change and they are in dilemma whether to invest more in the current set up or move along with becoming a part of supplier network of these e-commerce platform. In a recent article when asked to express his