Official attendance figures won’t be available from Informa Markets until next week, but noticeable traffic on the show floor confirmed what exhibitors were saying: Sales at the September Hong Kong fair were slow and attendance by Chinese buyers was light. Mainland Chinese merchants typically drive sales at the Jewellery & Gem World Hong Kong show — which took place at AsiaWorld-Expo (AWE) from September 16 to 20 and at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from September 18 to 22 — but a series of events prevented many from reaching the fair.
To blame? An ongoing real-estate crisis, a typhoon in Shanghai that delayed many flights, a national festival that overlapped with the first few days at AWE, and new customs regulations that deterred many from making any purchases at all.
“Chinese buyers were fearful of importing pearls into China — fearful that they might not get them — so they stopped buying,” said Loic Wiart, principal of Poe Black Pearl, a wholesaler of Tahitian pearls based in Tahiti. “Customs is exercising a lot more control over businesses.”
Light sales, high prices
Houston, Texas-based Sutra Jewels brought their bigger couture-level finished jewels to the show. “Asia is the place where finer gems and top qualities sell,” explained Divyanshu Navlakha, who owns the brand with his wife Arpita. While they had the same number of appointments set up as last year, they weren’t confident that clients would show. “It’s a challenging and much harder market to sell in,” added Navlakha.
In the fair’s Lab-Grown Diamond section, Smiling Rocks’ Kishwar Mehmood had a positive experience. Mehmood’s employer makes synthetic-diamond jewelry, and she saw brisk traffic and sales. Buyers, who visited from all over Asia, were open to larger sizes, colored synthetics, and an expanding selection of fashion-forward designs. As for shrinking values for these stones, that wasn’t a factor.
“Prices didn’t really matter; people were interested in our designs,” she said. “Branding was also important to shoppers.”
Colored-gemstone and cultured-pearl prices, meanwhile, remained high. Allen Kleiman of A. Kleiman and Company said that finding bigger top-quality rubies was challenging, and that prices for unheated rubies and sapphires were still shockingly high.
“The prices of unheated blues are already crazy; there’s just no more room for them to go up,” he said.
In cultured pearls, there was a slight drop in prices for white South Seas and Tahitians, but fine Japanese akoya prices aren’t budging. The last akoya pearl auctions in Japan took place from January to April 2024, and it’s those goods that were for sale at the AWE. Yuichi Nakamura, CEO of PJ Nakamura International in Japan, is in frequent contact with Japanese farmers and knows that their costs have increased.
“Prices of akoya pearls are up between 20% to 30%,” he explained at his booth. “Last year buyers were grabbing pearls at the show, but this year they’re more careful.”
De Beers’ execs talk
Like they did at JCK Las Vegas this year, De Beers executives held another “Spotlight on De Beers Breakfast.” It took place on September 19 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and speakers offered insights into the company’s strategies — though they didn’t reveal any information about its impending sale.
CEO Al Cook talked about declining synthetics values, stating that the market was collapsing and reinforcing its decision to use these diamonds only in technology.
“Making LGDs [lab-grown diamonds] in jewelry was losing us money,” said Cook. “Now we will make LGDs for technology, and I can’t see us making LGDs for jewelry again.”
That point elicited applause from the audience.
Other speakers reinforced Cook’s delivery, stating that De Beers was the only natural-diamond company to commit to every sector in the diamond industry, from exploration to retail stores, and that category marketing remained a priority.
“We are reinventing every part of De Beers to add value,” added Cook.
Image: Opening day at Asia World Expo. (Informa Markets Jewellery)
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