IIJS 2006 3rd Day

-WD Team

India International Jewellery Show 2006 saw a normal third day. The first two seminars were interesting. The first being a talk on USA retail trend, where the two speakers gave an insight regarding the trends in the jewellery market. It seems that the mid-sector market in USA has slowed down considerably, while the high end growth is spiralling upwards. The USA market is now a highly competative market, where a manufacturer or a seller has to study, understand the individual customer and design jewellery accordingly. More like what India has been doing that is, customization. It seems India prefers to follow an age old trend that USA, experienced and now seeks other means of marketing jewellery. Branding is catching on in India, specially in urban areas, but this is indeed an old business trend that may ease out in western countries.

The second seminar was indeed well sought after. It was a talk by Mr. Ambreesh Murti of ebay India. The subject is the latest happening- online selling. Mr. Murti conviced all present to think online and to try ebay as a primary source of expanding business and contacts. Their infrastructure is ready, which helps a great deal to cut the time and cost to built an
e-commerce site for small products online. A thought well recieved and Mr. Murty also put all the fears aside about bad buyers and sellers.

Do look out for this space as whitedrums.com is planning on a retail online shoppe in near future.

The non-Indian buyers who have been visiting IIJS 2006 are mighty happy with the products and India definately needs more and more such buyers. This is one of the primarily reason why the government is now very serious on setting up of a trade hub and for this reason is sending various government agencies to check out the gem and jewellery industry throughly. Today Mr. S. Rao of the excise department visited the show, along with the editor of Times of India. Each day, at least a couple of representatives of ministers do come and gauge the industry.

Although WD team missed the spectacular fashion show this evening, yet we did get the feedback of it being simply fun. Tomorrow being Sunday, the halls are expected to be really packed. Watch this space.