Retail News Update » Wedding Market

LEADING jewellers are discovering the fact that it pays to play the regional card for sales to shine brighter. Players like Tanishq, Orra and Adora are all reaping dividends by tweaking their assortment and designs to suit regional tastes. Through this, they hope to grab a bigger share of the consumer’ wallets by offering a broader product range and more depth in various categories.

Tanishq, for instance, has identified top 20 communities and started stocking merchandise in each store geared at them. This initiative is aimed at helping the brand to become a bigger player in the roughly Rs 45,000-50,000 crore Indian wedding market.

“We will now be stocking wedding collections targeted at specific communities,” said Tanishq vicepresident (retail and marketing) Sandeep Kulhalli. “After starting in the South, we are now looking at north India. After building enough merchandise, we will start marketing efforts geared around that,” he said.

Ajay Mitra, MD, India sub-continent, World Gold Council said: “The impulse buy category is usually dominated by career-oriented women who have a commonality in likes and dislikes, which cuts across regional nuances. But, from 35-45 onwards, there is a strong orientation towards regional tastes, most of which are hand-crafted intricate designs.”

According to Mr Mitra, national chains have studied the business models of large successfully-run regional players which are doing very well. “From our interaction with some of the big jewellers, I think they have clearly identified large buyers — communities which have allocated a large chunk of their marriage spends to gold jewellery.” It’s not just at the design level that regionalisation is happening either. According to Orra CEO Vijay Jain, “It’s happening even at a diamond level, where customisation is in fact higher.”

Jewellers ET spoke to claimed that while people in the South prefer a higher quality of diamonds, those in the north go more for flash, at cheaper prices. So, IF (internally flawless)/ VVS (very very small inclusions) clarity diamonds sell better in the South while VS (very small inclusions)/SI (small inclusions) clarity diamonds are more popular in the North.

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