Sustainability has rightly become a hot topic in the jewelry industry. It has inspired sustainable jewelry and ethical jewelry brands to launch new initiatives, share more information with their customers, and set new targets to do better. This report is written by ExJewel, a start-up that has developed the industry’s first digital appraisal tool.
Over the last 6 months, Exjewel has gone through over 5.24 million jewelry, diamond, and gemstone data points online and 35,000 jewelry products uploaded onto its appraisal platform. To analyze how shifts in this industry are affecting customer behavior, we looked at the numbers. We looked at global ExJewel and Google search data, active browsing page views, and conversion rates, sales data, as well as global media coverage and social media mentions generated in 2020.
Our research shows that, for some customers, we are seeing a shift towards searching and shopping in a more conscious way. In this report, we focus on the jewelry brands and designers that advocate for responsible practices, breaking down the signals that we have seen by product category.
Sustainable jewelry is one that incorporates the future of our planet and its people during design, manufacturing, and use. This includes carefully managing resource use to reduce waste and impact on climate, protecting the welfare of wildlife, and ensuring the safety and fair treatment of workers all the way down the supply chain including.
Empowering shoppers to know the impact of brands will have a huge impact on the sustainability of jewelry, fashion, and luxury as a whole. Discover the Sustainable trend report.
Searches for “ethical jewelry” or “ethical diamond” have increased by 75% year-on-year, while those for “lab-grown diamond” have increased by 83%. Meanwhile, searches for “buy a diamond” (without qualifiers) remain constant, suggesting that customers increasingly pursue ethical purchasing behaviors.