The Recent Success of Rose Gold Jewelry in China

the success of rose gold jewelry

In recent years, rose gold is becoming the most popular material. Above yellow gold and white gold, rose gold raised a revolution in the color choice of jewelry. Rose gold jewelry is currently taking a huge market share in the Chinese jewelry market.

The Historical Success of Pure Gold in China

The reason behind this new trend needs to be traced back to the history of China. As the color represents the royal family and the emperor, the pure gold material always showed a noble attribute. In the history of China, each dynasty was wearing gold to symbolize their power: the emperor’s robe, the ancient crown, the chair, and even the decoration on the door of the Forbidden City. The official uniform of the ancient government officers will also have more golden patterns when they are at a higher level.

All these traditions made the gold material stand out in the use of jewelry in China. As part of the Chinese culture, by the end of the 20th century, they are still taking over the majority of the Chinese jewelry market.

Losing Face with Yellow Gold, Keeping Face with Rose Gold

Since its entrance in the 21st century, things are changing in recent years when the younger generation of Chinese customers are no longer fans of the yellow gold color. Today, yellow gold is considered as out fashioned and not modern for Gen Z. However, because of their cultural background, Chinese customers still need jewelry material with a warm and joyful color to replace the yellow gold color. In a word, they want a material that is fashionable, modern, and can keep its value over time.

Under this demand, rose gold jumped out into the sight of Chinese customers, which perfectly meets their needs and appetite. Rose gold is 18k gold with Copper+Silver/Zinc. It actually has the same value as yellow gold, but the rose gold color added a romantic and fashionable feeling to it.

Zoom In: Cartier Highlights Rose Gold Collections on their Tmall Store

As a result, rose gold became one of the most popular materials in the Chinese jewelry market and is the best-sold jewelry material on Tmall in 2022, one of the biggest Chinese e-commerce platform. The nature of the success of rose gold is not an opening up of a new market, but taking over part of the market share of yellow gold jewelry.

Even the luxury jewelry best-selling brand Cartier noticed the consumers’ preference evolution. When you log on to Tmall and search for Cartier’s official flagship store, you can discover different content from the west. On Tmall, Cartier is highlighting the rose gold reference of each of its collections instead of the yellow gold or white gold ones.

Gen Z and Millennials are the Key Target Audience for Rose Gold

The audience of rose gold jewelry is mainly younger, composed of Millennials and Gen Z. While elder Chinese customers still favor yellow gold, the rose gold collections are mainly targeting the new luxury consumers of younger Chinese generations. Hence, the need to use the right social media to target this key consumer group.

Little Red Book – The Increase of Rose Gold Jewelry Publications

Little Red Book (or Xiaohongshu) is often compared to Instagram and Pinterest. This is the main social media used by fashion consumers to discover new brands and share their own outfits and purchased items. On Little Red Book, the hashtag #玫瑰金#, which means Rose Gold reached 3.9 million views in October 2022. Several users are sharing their favorite rose gold items among different brands’ assortment. More than being known by more potential customers, jewelry brands use this social media to leverage the creation of a community and increase customer loyalty.

This is the main challenge for luxury and premium jewelry brands: build consumers’ loyalty. In mainland China, consumers are tempted to try different brands with low attachment to a single brand. The main secret lies in the knowledge of the consumers’ journey including O2O strategy. For this, we always follow the evolution of e-commerce platform consumption for luxury and fashion shoppers. While they were purchasing on different platforms in the past, jewelry brands focus more on Tmall and Tmall Luxury Pavilion today. For this, you can easily manage your online boutique by cooperating with a Tmall partner (TP) who will be in charge of your e-shop daily operations.

With more than 10 years of experience in the Chinese market, GMA is among the leading fashion agencies in China. Trusted by hundreds of brands, we launched the Luxury Division to enable fashion and luxury brands to benefit from premium marketing and co-branding campaigns.

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