MID BLOG

The coronoavirus, which has dominated the world’s attention in the little more than three weeks since news about it first broke, is becoming as much an economic story as it is a health crisis. Indeed, while scientists are still unsure about whether it will eventually be qualified as a pandemic, it is already apparent that it is impacting on markets and economies on a global scale.

Coming off a strong holiday season, Americans are expected to set another record for Valentine’s Day spending this year, according to an annual survey released by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics.

Some three years ago, in its 2017 Insight Report, De Beers identified self-empowered, self-purchasing women as among the diamond industry’s most promising sources of future growth.

On February 3, 2020, the shareholders of Tiffany & Co. made official what had already been announced on November 24 last year, as they voted in favor of a takeover by the luxury giant LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton for $16.2 billion, or $135 per share in cash. And so, America’s most iconic diamond jewelry brand came under the umbrella of a group that already owns names like Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Celine and Bulgari.

The coranavirus, the epidemic which at time of writing is largely contained to China but has already traveled to a number countries on all five continents, is rattling the luxury product markets. Comparable to the SARS epidemic that first struck in the same part of the world in 2003 and 2004, its global economic effects are likely to be larger because China’s share of the global economy is considerably bigger today, and also because economies are much more interlinked than they were 17 years ago.

Within the most exclusive echelons of diamond jewelry collectors the name De Grisogono was something of an enigma. A Geneva-based jewelry house, it had been founded in 1993 by former Bulgari executive, Fawaz Gruosi, an Italian of Lebanese origin. At the time he promised customers an offering of exclusive works of art and black-diamond jewelry. The company’s name, which is rooted in both the Latin word “Chrysogonus” and the and Greek word “Chrysogonos,” means “begotten of gold”.

Christmas 2019 has come and gone and New Year Eve is soon upon us. Gifts have been given, unwrapped and even returned. Official data will be not be out until mid-January, but in the United States jewelry retailers have already begun summing up the holiday season that has just past, and initial reports seem pretty positive.

The 2019 end-of-the-year shopping season began powerfully in the United States, the world’s largest market, with a record 189.6 million U.S. shopped from Thanksgiving Day, November 28, through Cyber Monday, five days later, an increase of 14 percent over last year’s 165.8 million, reported the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics.

In early December, the Pantone Color Institute named “Classic Blue” as its color of the year for 2020. It was the second time that a bluish hue had been chosen, following the selection of Cerulean in 2000.