Oh, hello there.
It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to write a blog post, as I’ve been busy working on a long-form story on lab-grown diamonds for our upcoming Market Issue, which is scheduled to come out in early May.
Last week (March, 2nd), I finally had the chance to take a breath and catch up with GemFind CEO and President Alex Fetanat, whose company just released its annual Jewelry Consumer Trends Report.
The report distills data collected from the more than 400 retail jewelry websites that use the JewelCloud platform, breaking down what consumers clicked on and searched for most on retailers’ websites in 2019.
Overall, Fetanat said the total number of clicks increased year-over-year, highlighting the need for jewelers today to not only have a website, but to have a modern-looking one that displays the products they want to sell in their stores.
“[Jewelers] who don’t have a good online presence, or aren’t showing products online, they need to rethink that,” he said. “The data speaks for itself. People are searching, people are clicking on product.”
Here are five points of interest from the report, which can be found in its entirety on the GemFind website.
- People click on diamonds all year long.
There are, however, a couple little peak periods in the clicks-by-month chart for 2019 GemFind produced.
We see a little spike in diamond clicks in early February (right before Valentine’s Day) and, interestingly, in early March.
A similar peak took place again in early July before searches spiked in mid-October (Fetanat said he does not have an explanation for this sharp increase, which happened around Oct. 17), and then remained elevated in November and December before falling off a bit later in the month.
These are, presumably, consumers searching for diamonds to pop the question over the holidays.
- Consumers look for bridal jewelry more than anything else.
This isn’t surprising to anyone who knows the fine jewelry industry. Even with marriage rates down from what they were a couple decades ago, bridal is still a big business.
Millions of couples (2.2 million last year, according to The Wedding Report) still tie the knot every year, and as The Knot noted in its 2019 Jewelry & Engagement Study, 97 percent exchange a ring of some sort when they do so.
GemFind data shows in 2019, more than half of online jewelry searches had to do with rings.
Searches for engagement ring semi-mounts predominated, accounting for nearly one-third (28 percent) of the total, while just “rings” accounted for 15 percent of searches and complete engagement rings, 13 percent.
Rounding out the list of most-searched-for jewelry items were necklaces (10 percent of searches), and earrings and watches (both 9 percent).
All told, 84 percent of jewelry searches were for one of the aforementioned items.
