The U.S. jewelry sector’s strong growth is poised to continue in the 2021 holiday season, according to a new release from Mastercard SpendingPulse.
The sales measurement service—which derives data from a variety of places, including credit card charges and other sources—predicted that jewelry sales will jump not only 59% from 2020’s holiday season, but also 52.9% from the pre-pandemic season of 2019.
“Jewelry sectors have been experiencing some of the strongest year-on-year and year-over-two-year growth [of all the measured categories],” SpendingPulse said in a statement. “That is anticipated to continue through the holiday.
The service noted that jewelry sales had an extremely strong August: They rose a whopping 73.9% over 2020 and 58.9% over 2019. That result strongly outpaced August retail sales as a whole, which rose an estimated 8.1% over the year before and 7.7% over two years ago.
Mastercard senior advisor Steve Sadove, the former chairman and CEO of Saks Fifth Avenue, told CNBC that the growing popularity of jewelry “is about self-expression, people getting out.
“What you’re seeing is the consumer wants newness,” he said. “And they’re tired of sitting at home in their yoga pants. And they want to have new jewelry. They want new apparel. And there’s a freshness in the season. And so this is really showing well for the jewelry, for the luxury sector.”
And even though the COVID-19 pandemic has, sadly, not gone away, SpendingPulse said that it expects to see a tempered “return to in-store browsing and shopping” this holiday season.
However, the service predicted that e-commerce retail sales will still continue to soar this holiday; they are expected to grow 7.5% over last year and 59.3% over 2019. That’s a record high for the channel, it said.
Overall, SpendingPulse predicted that retail sales will grow 7.4% in the 2021 holiday season. “Fueled in part by pent-up savings and government stimulus, consumers have the desire and the means to spend,” the service said.
(Photo: Getty Images)
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