Seven years is not a very long time for people of Kakinada and surrounding places to change their destination from Rajaji Street to Temple Street in the city to buy gold jewellery and silver ornaments.
Before the entry of corporate jewellery bigwigs, the street that is parallel to the Main Road used to be called as ‘Devalayam Veedhi.’ It is not just the name of the street, but its culture too is changing steadily. Notwithstanding the season of festivals and weddings, jewellers from the city are selling a minimum of 12 kg gold a day. The quantum goes up to 18 kg during the peak seasons like the auspicious ‘Sravana Masam’ and the seasons of wedding ‘Muhoortams.’
At present, there are 10 major jewellery stores in the city including six outlets of the chain stores, along with 135 jewellery shops set up by the predecessors of the present generation goldsmiths. Still, the market surveys indicate that there is a scope for three to four major outlets here and two jewellers – one each from Tamil Nadu and Kerala – have already started the groundwork for opening their stores.
Nevertheless to say that it is the chain stores of the corporate jewellery companies that brought it sea change in the gold purchase scenario. Till seven years ago, loyalty played a major role in the jewellery transactions, when people used to stick to a particular jeweller – preferably a hereditary artisan – place their order and pay advance to get the ornament of their choice. They used to visit again the shop within a week to three weeks – basing on the design of their order – to pay the balance amount and collect their ornaments.
The year 2008 has introduced a new kind of gold shopping experience to the people here with the entry of one of jewellery majors into the city market. The response from the public was so encouraging that all the jewellery majors made a beeline to the city and opened their outlets on the Temple Street. A couple of stores, however, have chosen the Main Road as their destination. Now, the Temple Street is being guarded by the security personnel engaged by the gold and diamond showrooms round-the-clock and traffic snarls became the order of the day in the evenings with a good number of cars and motorcycles being parked on the roadside. The picture is quite contrary on the Rajaji Street, where the jewellers are literally waiting for customers to enter their shop.
“We have found that we are getting more and more customers from the middleclass. On an average, each middleclass family is purchasing at lest 60 grams of jewellery every year,” observes S. Rajagopal, assistant general manager of Malabar Gold and Diamonds. Probably, this could be the reason why the stores are giving utmost priority to develop a long-term relationship with their customers. Customer Relations Managers are being engaged to undertake the ‘follow-up’ that includes collecting feedback over telephone and informing about the new schemes to the customers time to time. Though the youngsters are not wearing jewellery, they formed major chunk of the customer-base. Their purchases are credit card based and the ornaments are being used to present as gifts to the senior members of the family.
“Customers are keen on design on the jewellery. They are not compromising on the design front. Of course, there is no need to compromise,” says Raghunath Jonnavittula, deputy general manager (marketing) of Vaibhav Empire Private Limited, the firm that opened its chain store here some 18 months ago.
Where the money is coming from? This is not a difficult question to be answered.
The real estate boom has increased the financial transactions in the market of late. With the oil and natural gas companies shifting their base to this region, a new ‘high salaried’ class has emerged. There is a steep increase in the NRI section with more and more youngsters going abroad from this region to join the software jobs with fat pay packets.
Jewellery is being purchased on a large scale, but not being worn regularly. Then, where it is going? Waitlist at the banks for lockers can provide an instant answer. The demand for lockers is overwhelming in almost all the banks and over 80 per cent of the lockers are stored with jewellery.
“Of late, we are fining it difficult to provide lockers to all the customers. This problem is high in the branches opened at residential colonies, where customers are keen on opening a locker account. Though all the banks are expanding their networks with lockers and ATMs, still there is a waitlist for lockers in many banks,” observes S. Jagannadha Raju, district manager of the lead bank.
People shift from Rajaji Street to Temple Street to buy gold and silver ornaments
