Snapshot: July 2019

A look at the latest industry statistics

By Harold Dupuy, FGA

Retail Sales

Although the first 10 months of 2018 saw an exceedingly strong performance for jewelry stores, the holiday performance disappointed with only a 1.9 percent increase. The first quarter of 2019 seems to be continuing this disappointing trend, with jewelry store sales results coming in at 5.2 percent below the first quarter of 2018. On a broader view, the jewelry industry, which includes all retail channels selling fine jewelry, had a better Q1 than jewelers, but still saw negative sales results of 1.9 percent below Q1 2018. This means the “other sellers” (big box, online, etc.) took a share from the jewelry store sector during the first quarter of 2019. Of the 60 various product sectors reported by the Census Bureau, ranked by the largest growth first, jewelry stores ranked #53 out of 60.

Despite 2019’s challenging first quarter, I don’t expect this trend to continue. The growth of the jewelr...