China's gold consumer market is gradually warming Up "Ancient Gold" jewelry is favored by young consumers

The picture shows the public shopping for ancient gold jewelry at the Caibai booth of the 2022 World Jewelry Development Congress.　Luo Yunfei photo

Haikou, January 8 (Fu Yuqun) The 2022 World Jewelry Development Conference is being held in Haikou. At the "Gold Sub-Forum" held at the conference on the 8th, many participants believed that China's gold consumer market is picking up, with the consumption upgrade of the domestic jewelry market and the rise of cultural confidence, young consumers pay more attention to product innovation and the story behind the product. The "ancient gold", which is closely integrated with design, craftsmanship and traditional cultural elements, has gradually become popular in the domestic gold jewelry consumer market.

Gold's consumer demand in the Chinese market has been strong, making China a major driver of global gold consumption growth. According to the World Gold Council's Global Gold Demand Trend Report for the third quarter of last year, jewellery demand in the Chinese market reached 157t in Q3 last year, up 32% year-on-year and 7% quarter-on-quarter, basically returning to pre-pandemic levels.

In recent years, the culture and innovation of the gold jewelry market is becoming the main driving force driving the gold jewelry market into a new track.

Li Xuesong, deputy general manager of the precious metals business department of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, introduced that at present, the gold industry also has the rise of the national tide, mainly showing three characteristics, the appearance value is justice, unique and firm personalized expression, the expression of ideas, the post-90s and Z generation are more affectionate with these characteristics.

Inheriting the ancient court gold and silver making technology in China, combined with modern design concepts and the use of modern precision processing technology, ancient fa jin has brought a refreshing product experience to consumers, and has also been favored by the younger generation of consumers because of its rich traditional Chinese culture and intangible cultural heritage "memory".

Li Gen, chief designer of Caibai Co., Ltd., introduced that since the outbreak of the epidemic, consumers' demand for jewelry and gold jewelry has quietly changed, and young consumers have paid more attention to cultural and creative products and ancient gold products, and paid more attention to the story behind the products. In recent years, "Caibai" has formed an "innovation matrix" in many aspects such as marketing channels, product design, and production technology, and the current cultural and creative products and ancient Fajin products have performed well.

Jia Shuchang, senior analyst of the World Gold Council in China, noted that the current domestic gold market is in the limelight of ancient gold products, and the inventory of ancient gold in the national jewelry retail stores accounts for the third place. In view of the current expected market for gold market consumption, which is mainly concentrated in the under-40 group, he believes that in the future, retail stores will focus more on the younger generation of consumers, mainly in private domain traffic and social media, in a young way, to attract young groups, activate existing customers, and achieve secondary sales.

Taking Chow Tai Fook, the head brand of the gold and jewelry industry, as an example, in 2021, it launched the "Inheritance" series of ancient gold categories, with a total of 1.85 million pieces sold. Chen Shichang, managing director of Chow Tai Fook Jewelry Group Co., Ltd., introduced that in order to better interconnect with consumers, the group has achieved intelligent retail through services such as cloud counters and digital customization platforms, and will also innovate a series of products to meet the diversified needs of consumers.

The emergence of "ancient gold" jewelry has made more people pay attention to the beauty of ancient french craftsmanship, so how can ancient gold achieve internationalization? Wu Fenghua, founder of TTF fine jewelry brand, believes that the internationalization of ancient french gold is the internationalization of Traditional Chinese culture and the internationalization of Chinese brands. Specifically, the design inspiration and craftsmanship with Chinese characteristics can be combined with Western jewelry culture, and jewelry products that integrate east and west can be developed to convey the unique characteristics and craft value of China's jewelry culture to the international market.

"Consumers feel that gold jewellery is not fashionable enough and has a weak emotional connection to their circle of life." Zhang Qi, Industry Development and Marketing Manager of the World Gold Council, said that in response to these challenges, retailers need to re-establish the emotional connection between young consumers and gold jewelry, improve the image of gold jewelry and dig deep into the young consumer market, so that brands are younger, products are innovative, and promotion is social. (End)