ModernJeweler.com |

Tiffany & Co. on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in New York, legendary independent Lee Michaels in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, J.C. Penney in the mall, and big box Wal-Mart floating in a huge parking lot near you.

What do these jewelry retailers have in common? They all sell jewelry manufactured in India. Odds are, you do, too. Large or small, high end or mass market, jewelers across America are turning to the world’s largest diamond supplier to supply finished jewelry, too.

“Since 1993, I have seen the tremendous growth and development of our Indian clients,” says Liz Chatelain, CEO, Indo Argyle Diamond Council. “In just 14 years, Indian manufactured jewelry has reached 99 percent of jewelry retail outlets in America.”

Indian manufacturers specialize in all types of diamond jewelry, both bridal and fashion. Coupled with its dominance in loose diamonds, the market share for India’s products in the U.S. market has reached historic levels.

According to a tracking study of the inventories of major retailers by IADC over the past decade, India’s market share is significant in many of the categories of your store. According to this research, the percentage of loose diamonds you carry that are cut in India is relatively small, just 7 percent, since cutting in India of the larger size diamonds that tend to be inventoried loose has begun to grow only recently. Similarly, the percentage of gold jewelry in your inventory made in India is also relatively small: just 7 percent. But the percentage goes up in the bridal jewelry category, where 12 percent of your inventory is likely to be made in India. And for fashion diamond jewelry, the market share for India is 38 percent.

This growth in market share has led to steady continuing growth in India’s gem and jewelry exports. In the past year, exports grew a relatively modest 2.7 percent to $17 billion after several years of double-digit growth. Exports to the U.S. were $5.3 billion, 31 percent of the total. In 2006, the U.S. imported $2.2 billion of finished jewelry from India, representing 33 percent of total U.S. gold jewelry imports.

This incredible success story means that the United States government has ruled that India’s jewelry industry no longer needs to be protected from tariffs by the “Generalized System of Preferences” (GSP), which exempts products from developing countries from duty. Starting on July 1, 2007, jewelry from India is now subject to an import duty of 5.5 percent.