Estate jewelry is experiencing a significant surge in sales thanks to a constant increase in demand from East markets, especially China and India, which are also dictating jewelry worldwide sales. This according to a new survey from Digital Luxury Group, which specializes in jewelry trends from around the world, including estate, antique and vintage jewelry sales.
With world economic power shifting hands, more and more millionaires are coming from these two economic Asian tigers. In fact, as the United States and Europe plunged into financial crisis, China and India provided 175,000 new millionaires to the world’s millionaires club. Of course, demand for luxury goods such as sports cars, luxury homes and high-quality estate and antique jewelry also increased.
In fact, China has just topped India as the world’s largest gold consumer for the first time, as investments in coins and bars increased and jewelry sales was the best performing retail segment. The interesting fact is that Chinese households see estate jewelry as more of an investment than consumption. Chinese households’ purchase of jewelry surged 72% in March, substantially faster than the 17.7% in the third quarter of 2013. This gold rush contributed nearly 2ppt to the headline in April, up from about 1ppt in March.
The survey from Digital Luxury Group was based on data shared for the first time by Baidu, China’s leading search engine.
The report also stated that China’s most popular watch brands are all European. Omega, Cartier and Rolex came top in the survey of the watch market in the Asian powerhouse, which boasted 59 percent market growth in the luxury watch category.
The top three models are Omega’s Constellation and De Ville models, and Cartier’s Ballon Bleu, which prices range from $3,000 up to $50,000. According to Baidu Vice President, “watches are part of the fastest growing luxury segments in China right now”.
Moreover, the watch and estate jewelry segments are getting the most attention, with prestige category brands leading with 23% of global interest, as well as accounting for 41.5% of total demand in China. This amid the frugality campaign led by the government to lessen the extravagant expenditures of the Chinese government staff. In China, the huge scandals about the luxurious lifestyle of some authority figures really shocked the public opinion. Traditionally, jewelry is a gift very usual in Chinese business environment.
But China can’t control what the hundreds of existing millionaires and the new ones are making with their money, and despite the increased confidence in the country’s economy, 64 percent of them are fleeing the countries rigid economic restrictions, with the United States as the preferred destination.