Rajkot gold glitters all the way to Europe
Handmade gold jewellery from Rajkot has crafted its way into Europe. Its ornate, country designs has a huge demand in Spain, Germany and Portugal.
By Tapash Talukdar, TNN |
RAJKOT: Handmade gold jewellery from Rajkot has crafted its way into Europe. Its ornate, country designs has a huge demand in Spain, Germany and Portugal.
“People in Spain and Germany are enamoured by our traditional jewellery. More demand is pouring in,” said Rajesh Vagadia of Vagadia Jewellers.
Demand is coming in especially for lightweight jewellery items like chains, necklaces, bracelets, rings and pendants. Some of the exports are being branded and positioned against big retail brands, Mr Vagadia claims.
Rajkot’s jewellery industry enjoys a distinct cost advantage because of lower labour costs and the ability of the city’s bullion traders to make profitable gold investments.
Manubhai Shah, a local jeweller admits that the demand for heavy-weight jewellery is declining world over, and Rajkot’s businessmen are therefore forced to shift focus to produce light-weight designs.
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“We soon found that we are more price competitive than the Chinese and we could compete with them in the exports market,” he added. What came in as a big advantage to the industry is that there is a large diaspora of Gujaratis in the US and Europe. They quickly detect the trend, and made business out of it.
Jewellers here are confident that exports of lightweight jewellery will grow at about 15% over the next year. The design, a vital input in ornaments, incorporates a mixture of gold and precious stones.
“There people like delicate, soft and relatively low-priced products,” said Mr Shah. China has been exporting large variety of gold jewellery to these countries, but at relative higher price.
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Sensing a robust growth in demand for handmade gold jewellery in the coming years, jewellery makers have started upgrading software for jewellery designing and are expanding their capacity to explore these markets. The decade-old jewellery cluster of Rajkot traditionally had markets in the US, Canada, UAE and Australia, for its products.
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Kantibhai Ranpara, secretary, Rajkot Gold and Jewellery Association, said Rajkot’s gold market has earned a place in the global market, this would certainly boost the total exports volume and would relieve from the current situation. Too busy to trade in stocks? Invest in Mutual Funds with ET Money!
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