The jewelry industry, although prestigious and honorable, is not without its own set of problems. Although we don’t claim to have all the answers by any means, discussing them serves a great purpose – bringing us closer to finding them. So with that in mind, what are the top 3 toughest challenges faced by the jewelry industry today?
- Competitors who misrepresent man-made diamonds as natural mined diamonds
Some diamonds, despite being produced by the industry’ top jewelry making tools and manufacturers, are not natural mined diamonds. Instead, they’re produced in a lab, but since some manufacturers want to make more money with them, they intentionally misrepresent them to unknowing customers. Essentially, this is an important ethical dilemma.
While the problem seems simple on the surface, sometimes, the perpetrators of such schemes go to great lengths to conceal their ways. For example, they may ship a parcel containing legitimate natural mined diamonds and throw a couple of man-made ones in between. Sometimes, it truly takes some industry-grade appraisal skills to tell them apart, but that’s the reality of the situation.
If this continues to go unresolved, everyone is being cheated; the retailers and the consumers alike. Although the solution is not clear, a possible way to deal with it might be to help make some market space for the man-made diamonds and not hide their nature. After all, they’re beautiful products made with top-notch jewelry making tools. There’s no need to conceal their origin.
- Financial transparency
In some instances, banks are not quite ready to trust the jewelry industry. Therefore, getting funded might pose quite a challenge to some business owners operating in this vertical. This could potentially be resolved by making the client list a bit more transparent, which would regain at least some of their trust.
From the perspective of a lender, such measures make much sense. After all, they are dealing with an important challenge of balancing risk versus reward, and a single bad decision or an instance of misplaced trust could lead them to taking quite a financial hit.
All in all, the money flow in this industry should be much clearer than the current state of affairs seem to be. This will also attract the attention of other investors willing to jump on the bandwagon.
- The jewelry industry is losing market share to other luxury products
Handbags, mobile phones, clothing, and other similar products are winning the market leadership race against the jewelry industry. Diamonds and gems are not being as actively promoted as they used to be, which has contributed to a somewhat lesser interest among the consumers.
There should be an industry association bombarding the people with how great these products are. Besides, they make for an excellent gift. The previous generations very much realized this, so buying jewelry was in full swing (at least among the higher social circles). In contrast, the younger generation seems to prefer spending the money on other products.
Can these problems be resolved as we progress to a new decade? Only time will tell…
It’s really informative article for jewelry business. Thank you so much for sharing this. Keep sharing