Client Situation
Our client is an Italian government agency. In an effort to help Italian jewellery manufacturers and marketers strengthen their U.S. positions, the government agency was looking to analyse the market for Italian jewellery in the U.S. and find opportunities for Italian jewellers to increase their sales volumes and market shares within the overall U.S. market.
Cedar’s Approach
The client mandated Cedar to assess the U.S. gold jewellery market and present the findings and recommendations to facilitate the stabilisation and growth of Italian jewellery imports in the country. Cedar’s approach was as follows:
- Review of all relevant internal documents sent over by the client
- External assessment using Cedar database and secondary research
- A total of 71 primary interviews with 43 jewellery retail stores, 4 jewellery store chain buyers, 10 wholesalers and importers, 6 Italian manufacturers and 8 jewellery associations were conducted
- Integration and analysis of the internal assessment, external assessment and primary interview inputs
Outcome
The key outcomes of this program were as follows:
- Some of Cedar’s critical conclusions from this market assessment were:
- Imports of Italian jewellery into the U.S. had declined fairly dramatically over five years. They represented 9% of the imports compared to 24% from five years prior. However, the key segments of Italian imports, the high fashion products, had maintained their sales levels
- There was a need for the styling of jewellery for the U.S. market to be in line with consumer tastes
- Many parts of the country had conservative preferences in dressing and jewellery. Product lines needed to be broad enough to account for the various design needs
- Cedar provided the client with several key recommendations, some of which were:
- To capture the Middle America market by creating product lines of 10k and 14k gold jewellery based on variations of 18k high-end designs, with appropriate price points and margins
- Italian jewellery manufacturers should consider a government-supported trademark country-of-origin stamp to capitalise on the intrinsic value of the Italian brand strength
- There was a consensus that the Italian factories were not as up-to-date on the American markets. Cedar recommended that the client put together an annual program in Italy to bring interested parties together for this purpose & thereby enhance market exposure for Italian jewellery