Chinese Jewelry Market Recovers—But Millennials Don’t Want the Same Old Bling

Last week saw the release of both the Platinum Jewellery Business Review by Platinum Guild International (PGI), Pandora Bracelet UK and Gold 2048: The Next 30 Years in Gold by the World Gold Council. Both reports addressed current sales figures of the respective precious metals, and predictions for the year ahead. Whilst 2017 saw gold consumption in China climb 9.4 percent, platinum dropped 2.8 percent, with another year of significant loss forecast for 2018. Elsewhere, India saw a 21 percent rise in sales of platinum jewelry, the USA 11 percent, and Japan 2.1 percent – all owing their success to the rise of the millennial luxury consumer.

Pandora Bracelet Sale Demand for jewelry overall in China rose 10.4 percent in the last year, a dramatic recovery from the 19 percent drop seen in 2016. This original drop came following the Chinese government’s crackdown on corruption hitting the market hard. President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, which banned officials receiving gifts, led Chinese consumers to buy far fewer jewelry products. Now demand for gold is recovering, with millennials emerging as the biggest audience. In the last 12 months, buyers between 18-30 years old made up 39 percent of purchases of 18 karat gold in China.

Pandora Bracelets Charm Sale So, platinum’s decline is not due to tech-centric millennials turning away from precious jewels, but rather that platinum jewelers are struggling to reach them. And they’re not alone- last week, a report by Bloomberg showed Danish jeweler Pandora’s China sales growth slowed unexpectedly to 16 percent in the first quarter of 2018, down from 62 percent in the final three months of last year. Pandora, who specialize in precious charms, acknowledged this loss is due to evolving Chinese tastes, and an inability to keep up with them – its “styles have become stale.”

pandora disney 2018 But what exactly is it that the Chinese millennial is looking for? According to Huw Daniel, CEO at the Platinum Guild International, the answer is clear-cut.“We don’t believe at all in this narrative that millennial consumers are somehow less likely to buy jewelry than their predecessors. There’s been a new generation of consumers coming into the market who are, basically, a lot more design-savvy. I think that actually caught the jewelry industry on the back foot, and we weren’t really ready and didn’t anticipate the needs of this new generation of consumer. They put design very much ahead of a lot of other factors, and the platinum designs just weren’t up to snuff.”