U.S. specialty jewelry store sales fell 7.1 percent on the year in November to $2.73 billion.
The sales figures from November – the start of the critical Christmas-sales season – were also the sharpest drop in monthly sales since April 2012 when they fell 10.3 percent year on year to $2 billion, Diamonds.net reported. The November results followed a 3.9 percent decline in October.
Nonetheless, specialty jewelry store sales increased by 2.2 percent on the year to $27.47 billion for the first 11 months of last year.
U.S. jewelry and watch sales across all channels rose by a preliminary 1.4 percent year on year to $7.13 billion in November, but that figure is subject to several revisions. Rapaport News estimates that sales across the entire U.S. jewelry and watch sector rose 2.1 percent to almost $63.6 billion for the first 11 months of 2014.
Buying trends across the U.S. consumer marketplace continue to shift as the jewelry industry's share of advertising is declining, Philippe Mellier, the CEO of De Beers, told Forevermark partners in Manhattan on January 7. Mellier stated that U.S. Christmas retail sales for the jewelry sector rose by low-single-digit percentages, with 74 percent of Forevermark shops either flat or slightly up from 2013.
Mellier also noted that millennials, "the oxygen of future U.S." diamond sales, seek uniqueness and ethical reassurance from products they buy. "It is vital that we develop programs that both excite and build trust in diamonds if we are to engage the consumers of the future."
The National Retail Federation (NRF) said that overall retail sales rose 4 percent year on year to $616.1 billion in the Christmas season retail sales.
