CaratTwenty percent in June: Hong Kong's fourteenth month up
Jewellery, watches and clocks took HK$5.49 billion in June, up 20% year on year, inside overall retail of HK$31.49 billion, up 5%. First-half hard luxury rose 25% to HK$31.07 billion.
§1Four times the pace of the shops around it.
Hong Kong's hard-luxury counter grew four times faster than the shops around it in June. Sales of jewellery, watches, clocks and valuable gifts reached HK$5.49 billion, about $699.9 million, a 20% increase on June 2025, on Census and Statistics Department figures published Tuesday. Total retail sales across every category were HK$31.49 billion, about $4.02 billion, up 5%. That makes hard luxury 17.4% of everything the city sold at retail last month, and the fourteenth consecutive month of overall retail growth.
The half-year figures are the stronger evidence. Jewellery, watches and clocks took HK$31.07 billion, about $3.96 billion, in the first six months, up 25%, while all retail categories together took HK$203 billion, about $25.88 billion, up 10%. A category growing at two and a half times the pace of the whole market for six months is not a seasonal effect. The government attributed the run to continued economic expansion, rising local incomes and a steady increase in inbound visitors.
§2The gold price does part of the arithmetic.
One qualification belongs on every reading of these numbers, and it is the gold price. Hong Kong's counters sell a great deal of gold by weight, and gold spent the half at or near record levels, so a shop selling the same grams to the same number of customers prints a larger number. This desk reported Luk Fook's June quarter on 21 July with retail value up 32% and gold same-store sales up 50%, while diamond same-store sales fell 17% and 58% on the mainland. Value is up. Volume is a separate question, and the Census figures do not answer it.
A category growing at two and a half times the pace of the whole market for six months is not a seasonal effect.
§3A Hong Kong number, not a China number.
The read-through for the trade is about location rather than sentiment. Hong Kong has been the weak point in Greater China luxury for three years, and it is now the strong one while mainland demand falls: Chinese gold jewellery demand hit its lowest second quarter since 2004 in the same period. Any brand deciding where to place Asian inventory for the autumn is looking at a city where hard luxury has outgrown general retail every month since the spring of 2025, and a mainland where the tonnage keeps falling.
Hong Kong's recovery is real and it is narrow. Twenty percent growth in a category that is 17.4% of the city's retail spend, in a market where the gold price is doing part of the arithmetic, is a strong signal about the tourist and the local buyer in that one city. It is not a signal about China. Read it as a Hong Kong number, plan inventory for a Hong Kong customer, and wait for the September quarter before extending the line across the border.
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The mix, not the metal, made Luk Fook's record year.