2014 Japanese Jewelry Market Trend

According to Japan Jewelry assosiation, Japanese jewelry retail market in 2014 enjoyed a substantial growth in size of 972.6 billion yen, an increase of 1.1% over the previous year. One factor behind this is that, along with the domestic economic recovery trend, sales of foreign-brand products and large diamond products were strong; in particular, expensive products boosted consumption, mainly among the wealthy.

Recently, prices of large diamonds, diamonds with hard-to-find colors, and high-quality colored stones are escalating due to a shortage of supply in the market, and they are sold at high prices at auctions. There is demand for such expensive jewelry mainly among the wealthy and sometimes jewelry items priced in the tens of millions of yen or even hundreds of millions of yen are sold. They have also been selling well at department stores’ out-of-store sales or jewelry wholesalers’ special-event spaces.

In the latter half of 2013, the favorable impact of the economic recovery trend spread not only among the wealthy but also among a part of the general population, and during the Christmas selling season, which is the period of peak demand for jewelry goods, sales were favorable overall.

On the other hand, competition in the jewelry market is continuing to intensify.

Among the markets, the most competitive one is the bridal jewelry market, in which demand can definitely be expected. There are several hundred bridal jewelry brands in the domestic market, but according to data from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the number of weddings is decreasing year after year. Under these circumstances, the brand companies are in fierce rivalry with each other for customers from whom they can expect bridal demand.