Gold Call: Why Retailers (and Customers) Are Seeing Yellow

[PinkDiamond]

This article is pretty extensive and covers a lot of angles on selling gold. It appears buyers are turning to gold over silver since the prices have come down, and they're seeing a new trend in that they're going for yellow instead of white gold.

Gold Call: Why Retailers (and Customers) Are Seeing Yellow
Statistics on U.S. gold jewelry sales reinforce what high-end chain stores are saying: Demand for the yellow metal is on the rise.
Jennifer Heebner | January 4, 2016

When John Green, president and CEO of Boston-based Lux Bond & Green, visited Highland Park, Texas, a wealthy community north of Dallas, in June 2014, he was struck by the number of women he saw wearing gold jewelry.

“They were moving away from white gold to yellow gold,” Green says.

Fourteen months later, the World Gold Council published a report, Gold Demand Trends Q2 2015, with data reinforcing Green’s conclusion: Gold jewelry sales in the United States are on the rise.

According to the report, the American market is “a slow and steady engine for jewellery demand.” The WGC says that the second quarter of 2015 marked the “sixth consecutive quarter U.S. gold jewelry demand has risen,” and that gold jewelry sales were augmented by the metal’s lower price in recent years.

Alistair Hewitt, the council’s head of market intelligence, even told the media in a video that gold was “competing very well against non-precious metals but also against jewelry that is a mix of gold and silver.” But the most convincing sign of all that the yellow metal is trending? The heads of high-end chain stores are backing up the data with their own gold success stories.

Charlene Hudson, director of sales training for Fink’s Jewelers in Roanoke, Va., with 14 doors in Virginia and North Carolina, says yellow gold Italian lines like Marco Bicego and Roberto Coin are up 13 percent in 2015, while sales of other gold non-bridal lines increased about 9 percent in two years. She cites the rise of casual lifestyles and the decline of metal prices as factors in gold’s newfound popularity.

“The designs you can accomplish in gold don’t translate as well to silver, and designers are making more casual everyday-wear gold pieces that mix well with silver,” Hudson says. “Silver designers’ price points have increased, making them think, ‘Gosh, for this price maybe I should look at gold.’ ”
Enticing New Buyers

Laura Barringer, fashion buyer for Seattle’s Ben Bridge Jeweler, is seeing “double-digit increases in non-bridal gold jewelry, particularly yellow gold.” Both fun price-point styles and fine Italian branded selections are moving.

Barringer suspects the reason behind their success has a generational bent. “Yellow gold jewelry is having a comeback because it is new to a young purchasing public,” she says. “The millennials are not aware of the high gold pricing because they were not previously in the market.”

Green agrees that yellow gold jewelry is something of a novelty for many since the category largely disappeared when the recession struck in 2008–09. “We lost friends in Italy as some went out of business,” he says, adding that a robust in-store gold selection is essential to enticing emerging collectors. “The more variety they see, the more they will want to buy gold jewelry.” ..."

Other angles covered:
Styles That Sell
A Return to Yellow
Beyond Bridal
http://www.jckonline.com/2016/01/07/gol ... -306540353