In a year when life has been topsy-turvy, the myriad measures of its impact are gradually emerging. Understanding 2020 and how it changed human lives is now key and multiple sectors are trying to plot the best path forward – by trying to understand where future hopes and fears lie. Among the studies in the luxury space was one by the Platinum Guild International (PGI), which conducted a quantitative research across its key markets to study the impact of the pandemic on the attitudes, behaviour and expectations of precious jewellery buyers. “We did an extensive survey across all our key markets to understand where our consumers stand,” says Vaishali Banerjee, MD, Platinum Guild International (PGI) India, a marketing organisation with the vision to develop the global platinum jewellery market and the largest such organisation in India for platinum. One trend during the pandemic was that people went back to examine what mattered most in their lives, says Banerjee. “Relationships and love soared, with 80 per cent of the people saying they would go back to buying jewellery. Customers are looking at meaning, authenticity and transparency, which has to be delivered.” After getting hammered during the lockdown, the market is recovering, informs Banerjee. “If I look at platinum recovery, it started in August as the markets started reopening. Overall recovery is about 60 per cent, for our key partners it is about 80-85 per cent. We are now looking at how to bring it to 100 per cent recovery and then growth. Year 2020 was a difficult year. Our strategies are looking at bringing back growth in 2021. However, we expect full recovery from 2021-22 onwards – back to double-digit growth. The opportunity is immense. The task for us as an industry body as well as our industry partners is to bring it back to its high growth level and also look at new opportunities.” “We invest a lot in consumer understanding,” points out Banerjee. A major consumer segment for this precious metal is younger Indians (aged 20-40, both men and women in almost equal numbers, unlike gold). “We positioned platinum in a branded form, rather than the more commoditised gold, which stands for safety, security, investment while, with our young audience in mind, we had brands, which stand for quality, emotion, a sense of self. The affinity towards brands was very high within this audience.”
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Platinum jewellery is quite popular with men, and the Men of Platinum range has quite a following