RJIF 2021: Millennial Gold: The New Opportunity

Emerald Jewel Industry walked the audience through the futuristic efforts in gold jewellery manufacturing for a trend-savvy generation seeking uniqueness in every design.

Discussing how the industry united to tide over Covid crises, Dhiaan Shakthi, Directors, Emerald Jewel Industry India Ltd urged stakeholders to build an intuitive platform that enables retailers to invest in right business models and thus cater to evolving customer needs and behavior. “Millennials and Gen Z differ a lot in purchase decisions. Thus, its best to create an intuitive platform to suit changing needs of clients 5-10 years down the line and enjoy sustainable advantage,” said Dhiaan.

Customer service and convenience are the two most important factors for brands to work on moving forward, as Forbes data suggests that brands with heightened customer experience earn revenue 5-7 times more than those who don’t offer the same. With omnichannel becoming normal for youth, consumer behaviour understood through e-commerce purchase of jewellery will help modify retail strategies in terms of accessibility of jewellery across price points. Sharing data from a World Gold Council survey in 2020, Dhiaan stated that 37%, a bit more than 1/3rd of Indian women, have not bought gold jewellery. This vast, untapped market, suggested Dhiaan, should be approached by all gold jewellery retail brands in India, as that would give better scope for growth to each contender than competing in existing markets.

Continuing with data, Dhiaan claimed that 32% of Indian millennial and Gen Z women feel that gold jewellery doesn’t cater to their needs of self-expression and prestige. Thus, it’s time for gold jewellery promotions to focus more on its beauty and aesthetic value than investment benefits. By doing that, the industry can appeal to the design language and style of millennials and the Gen Z, who have been picking other high-value accessories in technology to suit themselves.

To achieve attention of youth today, EJI, said Dhiaan, has focused on long-term solutions and collaborated with like-minded partners for the Stay Ahead campaign, which promises a new era of trendy gold jewellery consumption for the upcoming generations. The teaser video for Stay Head campaign was played thereafter, informing the audience of an unprecedented collaboration of technology, infrastructure and networking to bring about design and usability disruptions in gold jewellery.

Talking about the campaign, Nishtashri Srinivasan, Director, Emerald Jewel Industry India Ltd, shared how 20-plus state-of-the-art technologies arm EJI to give full guarantee of design customization as requested in a 6 lakh square feet wide manufacturing facility. She also discussed opportunities of EJI co-creating with retail partners to better suite customer needs. “We create jewellery, but you as retailers understand the pulse of the consumers. We create about 36,000 designs a year to suit the needs of innovation in the market. So, when we co-create with you, we deliver exactly what the customer wants,” said Nishtashri.

“EJI has declared 2021 as the year of innovation and the dedicated innovation cell of this enterprise produced hundreds of innovative designs monthly,” she added. Taking the audience across the glimpses of EJI’s innovation cell, Nishtashri claimed that EJI has a team bringing out 25 new themes and tales after analyzing current jewellery market trends. When retailers keep designs attuned to such trends, the impact on a millennial consumer strengthens and conversion rates increase.

“Millennial Gold is designed with advanced technologies and pays tribute to the individualism of millennial women, who make for 70% of jewellery clientele today,” said Nishtashri. This breaks the myth of gold being traditional, as AI and robotics work in tandem with EJI by applying patented manufacturing mechanisms to give a fluid, kinetic and comfortable experience for EJI’s gold jewellery pieces when adorned. Such experiences coupled with design precision will influence millennials and Gen Z, two generations always looking for something unique.

Talking about the seamless experience for partners, Nishtashri guided the audience along the 25 different collection verticals comprising thousands of designs in gold jewellery that EJI’s partners can access under one roof. EJI is also offering an AI-enabled B2B interface that partners can use to source jewellery. On sustainable manufacturing, she talked about the state-of-the-art setups and ISO certifications every EJI jewellery comes with.

Uniting strengths of retail and manufacture, EJI, said Nishtashri, has created two shop-in-shop (SIS) business models to solve as many operational bottlenecks with partners as possible. Zilara is the silver SIS model with Indian retailers partnering, while Jewel One Select is a gold SIS model for gold jewellery retail partners respectively.

Next, the EJI director unveiled the Millennial Gold campaign focused on the inner voice of the Indian millennial gold-loving woman. “Millennials want their jewellery to flow with them. They love lightweight, minimalistic jewellery. They don multiple roles and we at EJI have embedded movements in the jewellery to resonate with the user,” said Nishtastri as she showed a pair of earrings designed with provision of movement, fitting into the youthful imagination. Sharing examples of such innovation, Nishtashri urged the stakeholders to tap into such creativity and impress the dynamic and demanding young clientele for years to come.

Courtesy: Retail Jeweller India News