Adgully Exclusive | All that glitters is not gold; It could be Diamonds as well!

Today with increasing purchasing power capacity, more and more people are looking at investing on jewellery. Today with special design schools, there are more options than ever. According to reports, In India, organised retailers account for a mere 4% of the total jewellery retail market. This is because of the buyers' preference and trust in their neighborhood jewellers. Branded jewellery has been a recent phenomenon with most jewellery retailed in the unorganized sector. The jewellery market is undergoing a gradual transformation. From a 'storehouse of value', the jewellery segment is also becoming a fashion accessory bazaar. Plain gold is passé and now its diamonds, platinum and coloured gemstones. Talking exclusively to Adgully, Vikram Raizada, Director, Tara Jewels discusses this space elaborately and said, "We are seeing a shift in consumer preferences from gold jewellery to diamond jewellery."

Having worked in industries ranging from fashion and lifestyle to media and advertising, with brand heavy-weights like Lakme Fashion Week, MTV, Vh1, Calvin Klein,French Connection, Inter Gold, Cadbury, Baygon, Parle Soft Drinks and Gucci, to name a few, Raizada joined Tara Jewels as the Executive Director Marketing, Retail and Business Development in January 2010 to create brands in the American and European markets and to drive the India retail plans and business.

Tara Jewellers is the retail arm of Tara Jewels Group, an integrated player from jewellery manufacturing to jewellery retailing and one of the largest exporters of studded jewellery. Their sourcing capabilities are combined with state-of-the art technology enables Tara Jewellers is known for offering affordable pricing to its customers.

"To build customer confidence we have introduced, for the first time in India, 100% buy back policy on all our diamond jewellery. Further all Tara jewellery is hallmarked and certified adding to the consumer confidence. Our objective was to create a buying environment that focuses on transparency, education and convenience. To ensure that the desired customer enjoy the Tara experience, all our current

31 stores across North, West and Central India are company owned and company managed as against franchisee-run," said Raizada exclusively to Adgully.

Fitch, international brand and design consultancy has designed the stores to make shopping at Tara Jewellers a unique experience. For example, the stores feature a "browse wall' which allows customers to get up close and personal with the collections. The in-store graphical elements are designed to be informative and provide customers with educative insights on diamonds. Further an "open' workshop enables clients to see the "behind the scenes' in utmost transparency.

"Not only are our stores distributed across North, West and Central India but we are well penetrated across metros, mini-metro and class I , II and III towns that includes Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Ahmednagar, Aurangabad, Baroda, Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur, Jalgaon, Kolhapur, Madgaon,Nagpur, Nashik, Panjim, Pune, Rajkot, Solapur and Surat," Raizada stated. To add to the experience the staff uniforms are designed by celebrated designer Rajesh Pratap Singh.

According to research, it is indicated that Indian consumers are yet not so confident about buying diamond jewellery. Raizada explained, "Given the potential in the diamond jewellery market, we set for ourselves the task of expanding and growing the diamond jewellery market. To do so we believe we need to impart diamond jewellery education and to initiate confidence building measures such as our 100% buy back policy to encourage consumers to upgrade from gold jewellery to diamond jewellery."

"Given the market expansion task we have set for ourselves, our brand is positioned on the affordable luxury platform and given the local nature of retail all our advertising, communication and promotions are catchment focused," said Raizada.

Targeting at two key audiences i.e. the affluent 35 -55 year old woman and the younger 20-30 year old younger woman, Tara Jewels also use social media which includes a dedicated Facebook page that provides regular updates, contests and open interactions, apart from our retail and corporate websites in the marketing strategies. "We are also associating with various fashion and lifestyle websites and bloggers that the new-age Indian audience connects with daily. Further we have started a fashion blog called chic-conffesions.com where a girl named Tara talks about her daily life and her obsessions which includes shopping, clothes, shoes etc and also diamond jewellery," Raizada said explaining about their strategies to connect with their consumers.

Raizada further admits to being the new player in the local market and that they have a long way to go. "We are currently working on our next season's advertising campaign and also developing our 360 degree marketing initiatives and we are focused on further expanding our retail footprint in North and West India by adding another 20 stores in 2011," said Raizada.

The young people today prefer diamonds and silver to gold. A mother lovingly saving up gold for her daughter or daughter in law would be a thing of the past. The trend says, Diamonds are forever. | By Janees Antoo [janees(at)adgully.com]