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Luxury jewellery hard to seek customers
Luxury jewellery items these days prove to find it hard to look for buyers as the items worth from several tens to several hundreds millions VND or over VND 1 billion have seen the purchasing power decrease sharply over the same period of the last year.
According to the Hanoi branch of the Phu Nhuan Jewellery Company, the sales of luxurious jewellery items with precious stones decreased by 1/3 in the year-end high shopping season.
The Director of the Hanoi branch said that in previous years, people always placed orders for valuable jewellery items in December and January so that they could get jewellery to wear on Tet days. However, the number of clients decreased dramatically this year.
Thuy Huong, Business Director of Doji whose 70% of sale items are imports from Italy, Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong, also admitted the slow sales in the last months of 2008.
“The sales in November and December 2008 did not increase despite it was the highest shopping season and the big promotion programs,” Huong said.
However, jewellery shop owners said that the items which have the sale prices of less than VND 10 million are still selling well. PNJ said that ruby, sapphire, topaz, citrine, which have the prices of VND 5 million to VND 6 million for each item, remain the four types of precious stones that office employees who have high income in society favour.
Jewellery companies have been trying to design the products that fit the pockets of consumers in the belt-tightening period. PNJ, for example, has decided to use a kind of industrial stone which has the lower production cost and the same while colour like a diamond, for jewellery items. This has the company lower the sale prices of products from between VND 8 million and VND 10 million to between VND 5 million VND 6 million.
Precious stones are not just jewellery items, but they can also show the styles, and even the class of people, according to Tran Ngoc Son, Business Manager of Thanh Dat Gold Shop, who tried to explain why people nowadays tend to wear jewellery items with precious stones.
“Topaz, citrine, garmet and amethyst stones have the sale prices of VND 2 million or VND 3 million for each item only, which are not too expensive like diamonds, rubies, and sapphires. Therefore, sales are still going well,” Son said.
Nguyen Le Thu, Business Manager of Bao Tin Minh Chau Company, also said that the company has launched the products with small-size stones which are priced at VND 3 million and VND 5 million per item. Thu said that the sales of the medium-class increased by 50% over the same period of the last year.
According to PNJ Hanoi, though the purchasing power of luxurious items decreased by 30%, the branch’s turnover in 2008 was still equal to that of the same period of the last year thanks to the sale of products with reasonable prices.
Nguyen Nga
vietnamnet
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