Carat29% said diamond, 57% said fashion jewellery: Hong Kong's two answers
HKTDC surveyed 1,507 buyers and exhibitors at its twin Hong Kong shows, 29 July to 2 August. Diamond led demand at 29%, ruby 25%, pearl 20%. Trendy fashion jewellery led growth potential at 57%, precious jewellery 35%.
§1The demand question.
The Hong Kong Trade Development Council closed its twin jewellery fairs on 2 August and published what the floor told it. The Hong Kong International Jewellery Show and the Hong Kong International Diamond, Gem and Pearl Show ran together from 29 July at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, and the council surveyed 1,507 buyers and exhibitors across both. Asked which stone was most in demand, 29% said diamond, ahead of ruby at 25% and pearl at 20%. On a floor that has spent two years being told colour is taking the counter, the diamond still leads the demand question.
Asked a different question, the same floor gave a different answer. On growth potential, 57% named trendy fashion jewellery, 35% precious jewellery and 21% designer jewellery. The stone they are asked about and the product they expect to sell are not the same thing, and the twenty-eight point gap between fashion jewellery and precious is the widest signal in the survey. A diamond leads the demand question because buyers are asked about stones. Fashion jewellery leads the growth question because buyers are asked about volume, and volume is where the margin is being defended.
§2The growth question.
The metal answer sharpens it. Yellow gold was named the most popular precious metal by 40% of respondents, in a week that ended with gold closing at $4,341.30 an ounce, $139.58 a gram. The metal the trade says it wants is the one that has repriced hardest against it. This paper filed China Gold Association half-year figures on Friday showing Chinese gold jewellery consumption down 33.88% by weight while bar and coin demand rose 28.42%, and the Hong Kong answer sits on the same fault line: the appetite for yellow gold is intact, the ability to sell it by weight is not.
The stone they are asked about and the product they expect to sell are not the same thing
§3The metal, and the horizon.
On timing, respondents were cautious rather than pessimistic, telling the council they expect one to two years before confidence is fully restored. Hong Kong's own trade data gives that estimate a base to work from. In 2025 the territory's exports of fine jewellery rose 5%, carried by precious metal prices rather than by units; exports of pearls, gemstones and rough diamonds fell 8%; and exports of imitation jewellery fell 26%. A market whose fine jewellery line is rising on metal value while its stone line falls is not recovering yet, it is revaluing.
Demand surveys measure what a buyer admires; order books measure what a buyer risks, and the two answers in this survey are the gap between them. A retailer reading only the 29% diamond figure will over-buy stones for a floor whose growth respondents put in fashion jewellery at 57%, and will discover the mismatch at the November reorder. The useful reading is the pairing rather than either number alone: buy the diamond for the window and the fashion piece for the till, because that is precisely what 1,507 people in Wan Chai just described themselves doing. The one to two year confidence horizon is the honest part of this survey, and it should be planned for rather than argued with.
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