New York – Sustained sales growth in the final quarter of 2021 led to a record year for platinum, according to the Platinum Guild International.
According to PGI’s Platinum Jewellery Business Review Q4 2021, its partners in the US reported their best performance yet last year, with an average of 30 per cent year-on-year growth in the fourth quarter.
Almost all platinum product categories posted double-digit growth in Q4, PGI added.PGI said year-end sales in 2021 were up 15 per cent on 2020, which was already up 3 per cent on 2019.
In fact, sales growth has been steadily increasing since 2014, according to the PGI USA Retail Barometer.PGI said the results demonstrate the success of its Business Grant Program, which is designed to stimulate growth in the U.S. platinum jewellery market by inspiring manufacturers and retailers to make the metal a focus of their business.
Grant recipients Helzberg, Memoire and Kwiat, for example, grew their businesses at rates ranging from 40 percent to triple-digit growth in the fourth quarter, PGI said, as the companies focused their merchandising, marketing, education and customer experience on the platinum category.
Several grant recipients also introduced new exclusive Platinum designs in time for holiday shoppers.
The organisation will open its grant programme for another round of applications in 2023.”The PGI grant was a catalyst for our company to focus our distribution on platinum sales. We now stock and ship overnight our best-selling platinum diamond bands in a range of ring sizes,” said Jacqueline Grande Raffi, Senior Director of Memoire.
“In addition, at a time when our retailers were struggling with staff shortages, we made it easier and faster for their teams to access information and order through our B2B website… Our platinum sales growth was over 146 per cent, far outstripping gold sales… and more importantly, far outstripping industry growth in a record-breaking year.”
The strength of platinum sales last year mirrored the performance of the overall jewellery category in the US.
According to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which measures in-store and online retail sales across all forms of payment, the jewellery sector in the U.S. grew 60 percent year-over-year in 2021.
So far for 2022, it said US jewellery retail sales were up nearly 20 per cent year-on-year in January, followed by a 22 per cent increase in February and a 106 per cent increase in March compared to the same period last year.
