For a few thousand years, there wasn’t any need
to do anything at all. The Indian jewellery market was
a safe haven of tradition and design that never changed.
Economic liberalization, the deep impact of satellite
television and an effective De Beers consumer campaign
quite suddenly changed all that. The Indian mass-market
consumer began buying diamond jewellery, was made aware
of brands and began buying jewellery for emotional reasons
in addition to the traditional, religious and social ones.
The
safe, unchanging Indian jewellery market had changed with
breathtaking speed and retailers and manufacturers scrambled
to cater to it. But the big question that faced
them was – what should they do? What kinds of jewellery
should they make? How should they sell it? What price
points should they slot the new offering at? Brand new
questions for what was literally a brand new market that
all boiled down to one overriding one – how does
one go about designing jewellery for the Indian consumer?
The initial scramble and groping for the right thing to
do is over and the Indian jewellery production industry
has to understand the new Indian consumer and his or her
tastes. It has found some marketing buttons to push and
new occasions to sell jewellery. Lifestyle too has become
a major factor in analyzing the Indian jewellery consumer.
This year, Valentine’s Day, hitherto an entirely
western concept with next to no impact in India, suddenly
became a big gift-giving occasion in India. Surprisingly,
jewellery featured prominently among the gifts Indians
gave their romantic partners and spouses.
One distinct trait seems to mark the Indian consumer –
a rapid adaptation to a more global lifestyle while simultaneously
being anchored to culture and tradition. Indian jewellery
designers have found that for much of their product categories,
the traditional jewellery that hadn’t changed for
millennia is a great place to start. This has resulted
in traditional jewellery that is usually heavy and usually
only worn on specific religious or cultural occasions,
morphing into lighter, more contemporary forms that are
wearable on a more casual basis.
Fusion of the old and new is the great thrust in Indian
jewellery design today and the manufacturing and retailing
industry has begun to pay close attention to it, factoring
in the regional and ethnic differences and learning to
produce designs that are more readily adaptable to these
differing tastes.
In the Indian market, the trick is to stick to tradition
but offer avant garde change.
