The third edition of the Jewellery Show (September 1-2, 2024) saw strong footfall, signalling buoyant orders, and featured an India Pavilion for the first time.
Now firmly established as the UK’s leading jewellery trade fair, staged once a year, organisers spoke privately of plans to extend the show to a three-day event, possibly from 2026.
To all intents and purposes, the show is already substituting for the former IJL (International Jewellery London), and has the potential to exceed the scope of that show in a few years’ time.
The Jewellery Show featured an India Pavilion, organised by the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), for the first time: exhibitors talked of strong enquiries from retailers for gem-set jewellery and laboratory-grown collections.
Several Indian exhibitors said they would like to return to the Jewellery Show next year.
“We came here to see new people – retailers and wholesalers. We have had a lot of enquiries,” said Sumit Jain, owner of Jaipur-based Sumit Jewels, which showcased handcrafted reproduction Victorian pieces set with gemstones.
Parth Zaveri, a sales representative with Asian Star, which offered natural diamond jewellery, said enquiries had come primarily from smaller independent retailers, rather than from the larger-sized “multiple” retailers that they had hoped to meet.
“We had more enquiries than we had been expecting, from the smaller retailers,” said Annie Westerby of Renaissance Global, part of the India Pavilion.
Hiral Parikh, managing director of Minal Infojewels Ltd., spoke of brisk enquiries for laboratory-grown diamond jewellery, and said that her booth was the only one at the show offering laboratory-grown coloured gemstones. Other exhibitors also talked of vibrant interest in ordering laboratory-grown diamond jewellery, as UK retailers were making strong margins.
The Indian contingent featured nine exhibitors displaying a range of products including gold studded jewellery, silver jewellery, loose diamonds and gemstones.
The following is the list of Indian exhibitors who joined the Indian Pavilion at the Jewellery Show: Asian Star Co. Ltd.,
Minal Infojewels Limited, Renaissance Global Limited, Bright Jewellery Arcade, Arina Jewellery LLP, Sumit Jewels, Finestar, Minimal And Co, and Udharsh Exports.
The presence of the Indian Pavilion, the only foreign pavilion at the event, underlined the Jewellery Show’s potential to exhibit jewellery suppliers from other countries, such as China, Thailand, Italy and Turkey.
Seminars
The Jewellery Show presented a strong mix of panel discussions.
Its focus on insightful topical issues and education is clearly one of its key strengths compared with some other trade fairs on the international calendar. Themes included opportunities and challenges in natural diamond jewellery marketing; the future of sustainability in jewellery; the future of social media marketing of jewellery; and the outlook for precious metals, diamonds and gemstone markets.
One panel, looking at opportunities and challenges for British South Asian jewellers in the UK market, discussed plans to develop a new British Asian Jewellers’ Alliance (BAJA), to protect the interests of the British Asian jewellery community.
Several British Asian jewellers were hit in recent months by a spate of violent robberies in the UK, possibly influenced by a growing public awareness of the high price of gold.
BAJA plan to lobby groups such as the National Association of Jewellers (NAJ) to defend their interests.
At the panel the British Asian jewellers discussed opportunities, such as how to tap into the growing Indian luxury tourist market in the UK.