Last year, German jewelers made more sales with fewer pieces of jewellery. The customers have increasingly resorted to more expensive pieces with gold and diamonds, said association president Stephan Lindner at the beginning of the jewelry and watch fair Inhorgenta on Friday in Munich. By contrast, demand for silver and costume jewelery fell. The watch business also shrank, with a lack of wealthy tourists from China, the Arab world and the USA as customers.
“We are on the way to recovery,” said Lindner. Overall, industry sales rose by 3 percent to 4.4 billion euros. However, this is still around 400 million euros below the value before Corona.
What is currently missing is the number of customers in the shops, explained the association president. “Luxury wants to be experienced.” And the spark jumps over live much better than on the screen.
The number of farms also continues to fall. More precise data is only available for 2020 – at that time there was a drop of a good 300 to 5529 companies with at least 50,000 euros in annual sales. But Lindner assumes that the decline has continued, albeit at a slower pace. These were often small businesses. However, the trend towards declining numbers has been around for some time. In 2011 there were 6834 companies in the industry.
The war in Ukraine is also affecting the industry. The trade fair has unloaded the only registered exhibitor from Russia and has refrained from advertising in Russia and Belarus, as trade fair director Klaus Dittrich said. In addition, the industry deals with the handling of diamonds from Russia. A simple waiver does not work in fact, said Lindner. The traceability of stones from Russia will be an issue for the future. (dpa)