South African Group Annual Report: Sales Increased By 9% To 10 Billion 200 Million Euros.

P, the Swiss South African Group, announced its sales growth at the end of March, up 9%, to 10 billion 200 million euros.

The driving force for growth is not the clock business, but the "outstanding performance" of Cartire and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Sales of these two businesses increased by 13% due to the "strong demand" for jewelry.

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< p > China's actions to combat corruption and conspicuous consumption have affected the sales of watches. The increase in Asian women's consumption has increased the sales of jewellery, while the fragmented jewelry industry has been branding. This combination of factors has subverted the pattern of "hard extravagance".

Hard luxury is usually defined as clocks and jewellery.

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< p > although clocks and watches are the main driving force for hard luxury in the past more than 10 years, the fastest growing area is the jewelry industry.

This trend has led to the largest integration of luxury goods industry over the years.

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< p > Bain (Bain & Co) partner in Milan, Claudia DArpizio (Claudia D) Arpizio, said that the branding of jewelry industry is the general trend.

"The jewelry market has huge potential for creativity and brand development," she said.

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Less than two years ago, Luca Solca, chief analyst at Bernstein Research, Bernstein, two years ago, predicted that "a wave of strong demand" and a shift from non brand jewelry to brand jewelry will break the market in a far reaching industry report, P Bernstein.

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< p > the report estimates that the most extensive jewelry industry (including all prices) is worth 136 billion euros (184 billion US dollars).

Compared with other industries, the brand penetration of jewelry industry is relatively low. Brand jewelry occupies only 12% of the total market, far below the 50% of the clock market.

Moreover, Cartire, Bvlgari (Bulgari), Van Cleef & Arpels and Graff (Graff) and other major brands occupy only 5% (7 billion euros) market share.

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Erwan Rambourg, an analyst at P > HSBC, also said jewelry sales growth will be faster than clocks as Chinese women replace men as the main consumer groups.

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< p > facts show that their prediction is correct.

Italy luxury industry association Altagamma and Bain expect jewelry sales to grow faster than watches in the next 12 months.

The annual consensus of Altagamma is that annual sales growth of hard luxury goods will be reduced to 7%, mainly due to the "sharp slowdown" in the growth of watch industry.

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< p > DArpizio pointed out that the experience of the past two years shows that it is not easy for the jewelry industry, traditionally dominated by "spouses and shops", to grasp its fast growing opportunities.

If you want to manage a single brand successfully, you need to invest heavily in distribution channels and working capital.

Even with these conditions, there is little chance that the new brand will succeed.

"In this subdivision market, we can not see many large companies, because it is not easy to succeed.

Although there are many talents, such as a target= "_blank" href= "http://www.91se91.com/" and "designer /a", it is still not easy to create a new brand on a global scale, which is costly and difficult to make profits.

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"P >, therefore, the world's large luxury goods group is facing a problem: whether to buy jewelry business or to build jewelry business on the basis of existing brands?" Johann Rupert ", chairman of Johann, said that he was more inclined to organic growth and mining the brand strength of its mature high-end manufacturers.

Rupert recently said, "instead of buying another jewellery company, it is better to let the Piaget (jewellery brand) expand its jewelry business."

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< p > but for LVMH, Kering and PPR (Swatch) and other rival competitors who can not compete with the brand in hard luxury brands, the acquisition is the direction of development.

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In January 2011, Lu Wei Ming Xuan bought Bvlgari, a star based jewellery maker in Rome for 3 billion 700 million euros, opened the largest integration of luxury goods industry in 10 years in the past 10 years.

The move has made Hublot, Chaumet and TAG Heuer a smaller brand of Lu Wei Ming Xuan, which is even more dazzling.

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In January this year, in order to compete in the high-end jewelry and jewellery clock market, Swatch bought Swatch Winston (Harry Winston) for $1 billion.

Kai Yun spent about 350 million euros in May to acquire Milan fashion jeweler Malando (Pomellato), which also acquired the Qeelin of China's jewelry brand in 2012.

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At P, private equity groups are fighting for small brands.

In May, just a few days after the completion of the deal, Clessidra, a private equity group in Italy, bought another jewelry brand Buccellati in Milan.

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< p > Bowman rando produces "Nudo" and "M" AMA non m "AMA" fashion ring series endorsed by actress Tilda Tilda (Tilda Swinton).

In terms of the number of buyers trying to buy it, investors are very interested in the jewelry industry.

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< p > under the background of the acquisition boom, the industry executives expect that the remaining few independent and mature jewellery brands will also join the ranks of integration.

It is believed that if the price is right, David Yurman, Tiffany (Tiffany) and Chopin (Chopard) will be the targets of the acquisition of well-known multinational brands or wealthy investors in China and the Middle East.

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Compared with P, analysts believe that the business of clocks and watches will soon be cold.

The latest data released at the end of May showed that Swiss watch exports to China fell by 12% in April.

Globally, Swiss watch exports increased by only 6% over the past two years.

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Thomas Chauvet, an analyst at P Citi, believes that the tough attitude of Chinese President Xi Jinping to corruption and luxury consumption may hinder the recovery of the market this year, Toma Citi.

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< p > however, Betty Yap, partner of luxury goods expert and international law firm Linklaters, said that China is still an important target market for high-end manufactures, including watches and clocks.

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"P said," anecdotal remarks show that people are seeing signs of slowing down, but the fact remains that China is still the fastest growing luxury market.

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< p > Betty Yap believes that location selection will still be a big problem for luxury retailers in China.

"In order to find the ideal store location for the flagship store, we need to overcome many problems," she said.

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< p > besides, the prospect of Chinese watch sales may depend largely on female consumers, who are promoting the sales of jewelry in the Chinese market.

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< p > DArpizio believes that the "girl power" to promote the growth of brand jewellery will also promote the watch market.

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< p > "women buy watches not only care about aesthetic value, but more and more attention to the complexity and driving mode of function.

This is a new trend and will also be a driving force for the watch industry. "

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