Financial thoughts

Export-focused Italian jewelers are looking at emerging markets to help lift sales hammered by the global economic crisis.

Italy, the world’s leading jewelry exporter, is expected to see jewelry sales at home and abroad fall 20-30 percent lower this year but they may bottom out in 2010.

“We need to go where consumers are: Brazil, Russia, India, China, Mexico, Middle East where economies will recover quicker than in Europe and the United States,” said Massimo Carraro, chief executive of jeweler and watch maker Morellato & Sector.

Morellato & Sector, which makes about 50 percent of sales abroad, already sells “accessible luxury” items in China and India and plans to expand in Brazil, the Middle East and Russia, Carraro said at a trade fair.

Limited exposure to the U.S. market has helped his group to outperform peers this year when Morellato & Sector expects its sales to fall 5 percent or even be stable on 2008, he said.

Exports of Italian jewelry to the key U.S. market plunged nearly 40 percent in the first four months of this year, while exports to the United Arab Emirates — which in 2008 replaced the United States as the biggest by-value market for Italian jewelry — fell 12 percent, according to industry data.

Italy used to sell about a quarter of its output in the United States. But its share of the world’s biggest jewelry market has shrunk in the past few years due to competition from China, India and Turkey.

Some Italian jewelers have decided to focus elsewhere free online credit report.

Consumers have warmed to Italian jewelry in Latin America, a potentially big market previously overlooked by the sector, said Domenico Girardi, general manager of the Vicenza fair, organizers of the international jewelry fair.

Upmarket jeweler Picchiotti’s deputy chairman Filippo Picchiotti said Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan have replaced the United States as its main export market.

But the U.S. market would retain its key role for the Italian jewelry sector and it was hoped to stage a recovery next year, Girardi told reporters at the fair.

There has been a “muted and fragile” pick up in demand from U.S. jewelry consumers, especially for Italian pieces, Maurice Golderberg, a wholesale buyer, told Reuters.

“MORE ACCESSIBLE” SILVER

Roberto Coin, designer of bespoke diamond and gold jewelry with a lion’s share of sales coming from the United States, said he was prepared to see an about a 20 percent fall in U.S. revenue this year but sales volumes should remain stable.

“We have made more accessible products … and we have kept our clientele in these difficult times,” said Coin who this year launched an “anti-crisis” Capri Plus collection which offers pieces of identical design made with materials ranging from gold to silver to ebony and from diamonds to semi-precious stones. 

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