Gemstone jewelry industry hit by Covid-19

It is now middle of year 2020. due to wide spread of the virus, most countries of the world have lock down policy, and public gathering restrictions. Lots of industries and business suffered great loss. What happened to gemstone jewelry industry in China after hit by covid-19 ?

First, as the pandemic originated at the mid of Jan, when most of our factories were in Spring Festival holiday, factory closed, and workers got back to their hometown for family gathering. And most of the orders had been finished and shipped out before the holiday, workers and craftsmen got their salary paid clearly. Most of the factories and factory owners were in a long holiday, lockdown at home in from Jan to March. That was a history long holiday.

Second, at the beginning of March, travel restrictions lifted off in China for most provinces and cities, beside Hu bei province, and Wu Han city, so most of our workers can travel back to factories in Guang dong province, to prepare to work. But they had to be self quarantined 14 days before they got back to factory to start to work. Some factories had got orders from their regular customers overseas and domestic, their workers are required to come back to work. Some factories did not get enough orders to start the production, their workers were required to stay at home town, waiting for further notice. They can get basic life salary in this case.

As for SGJ GEMS, in Feb and March, during this time, the pandemic still not widely spread in foreign countries, most countries only detected small amount of confirmed cases, everything remains normal in most countries of the word, in this 2 months, we got many orders from our regular old customers, we required our workers come back to work, they were very happy and cooperative to obey self quarantine policy for 14 days after they came back. Other workers who lost their jobs, they came to us to check if we can offer their job opportunity, we selected several highly skilled craftsman who are very good at high end gemstones cutting, such as garnet, aquamarine, nephrite, charoite, malachite, lapis lazuli, these gemstone raw stone materials price are high, so we need highly skilled craftsman to cut them to get the highest yielding to avoid material waste. We gradually finished our orders confirmed in Jan, Feb, and March, which is very fast in the production time and lead time, our customers are astonished for the production speed and production quality.

Third, After April, covid-19 pandemic was successfully contained in China, shops opened, more factories opened, and markets opened too. People are allowed to travel freely, only required to wear a musk, so economic started to recover, domestic customers started to order and purchase in bulk quantity, get restock their shops. But at the other side, covid-19 started to spread in Europe and America, Arabia, fast spread to most countries in the world, and more and more countries join the group to lockdown the country, and apply travel restrictions. The shops closes, people are requested to stay at home, no gathering in public, so customers can not work as normal, they have to work at home, or only can work one day every week, regular orders are affected due to this reason, and some customers have to show in exhibition to sale their products, but due to covid-19 reason, most gemstone and jewelry shows are canceled in the future months, they don’t know when the exhibition and show will reopen, they have uncertainty, worry about for the business volume in the coming months, they start to order less. Which is bad news for us.

Another interesting thing, we have got many new customers during this month and last month, these customers they run small business, they have their own design, want us to cut the gemstones in their designed shape and size, as we have minimum order quantity required for bulk production, mostly they can not afford, but now they confirmed very fast, as they got some subsidies from the government. That’s good news.

A new emerging phenomenon, after the markets open in most cities in China, we got many orders from our domestic customers, and some new customers they are not regular businessman, they are not shop owners, or jewelry company, they are selling on live broadcast platform, like douyin, kuai shou, etc. They order ready to wear jewelry, they wear the jewelry in front of their mobile phone to show to their fans, the audience who watch they show the details, and tell them which to pick, and they order directly on the APP. Which is amazing.