A Second Year of Canceled Trade Shows
January 28, 21
Remember trade shows? In decades gone by, they were very popular. They were still pulling in the crowds in January and February last year, when diamantaires would routinely fly across the world to do business face-to-face. Then the pandemic came along and wiped out virtually a whole calendar of 2020 events. And now the same thing's happening for 2021, as we hear of a second set of postponements and cancelations. Last year organizers canceled the June 2020 edition of JCK Las Vegas, the biggest jewelry show in North America. This week they announced that they couldn't go ahead with the June 2021 show either. They're now pinning their hopes on enough of a Covid recovery to allow them to reschedule for late August. HourUniverse, successor to Baselworld, was supposed to take place in Switzerland in April, but has now been put back, provisionally, to late June, though it may well be subject to a further postponement. When we see annual events canceled not just once, but twice, it hits home just how much coronavirus has become an (unwelcome) part of everyday life. To lose one trade show may be regarded as a misfortune (to butcher an Oscar Wilde quote), to lose a second is nothing short of depressing.
Watches & Wonders has canceled its April show in Geneva and Inhorgenta Munich has been postponed from March to April. The HKTDC Hong Kong International Diamond, Gem & Pearl Show, and the Jewellery Show, have both been postponed from March to July. More shows will undoubtedly be canceled. And those that have postponed already may well need to postpone again. The longer the pandemic goes on, the harder it is to say when it will finally end. The vaccine will doubtless have an impact but even the experts can't make any accurate predictions.
Against this background of ongoing certainty, it's all the more remarkable that the diamond industry is not only surviving. In many ways it's positively thriving. De Beers and Alrosa, accounting for half of the world's diamond production, both report brisk sales. De Beers has put up prices by up to five per cent and is reportedly expecting sales of up to $600m from its January Sight - a three-year high. Alrosa's sales for the last three months of 2020 were up a third (quarter-on-quarter) to $1.22bn. There's still plenty of pent-up demand from the depths of Covid despair, when the industry ground to a virtual halt. Signet, the world's biggest diamond retailer, reported a healthy holiday season. Revenue of $1.8bn over the nine-week period in 2020 was on a par with 2019, with e-commerce making up some of the shortfall in store sales. Tiffany said its own sales for the period were a record high. Sales of watches and jewelry in the US are doing remarkably well after a dramatic crash last April. The latest Department of Commerce figures show monthly sales for September, October and November 2020 were all at least 15 per cent up on the same month in 2019. And our own IDEX Polished Diamond Price Index is back at pre-Covid levels.
How is the industry in such good shape? It was rocked when the pandemic hit last March. In many parts of the world (with the notable exceptions of China and India) things are actually much worse than they were then. Daily deaths in the US hit a peak of 2,700 in that first wave. This week they were around the 4,200 mark. Russia, which has reported far fewer deaths per capita throughout the pandemic, is suffering a second wave with 600 fatalities a day, compared with a peak of 200 in the first wave. Vaccines are now available, at least in the world's wealthier countries, but the new fear is that they may not work against a raft of new mutations. They are not a panacea. The diamond industry is doing well on paper despite lockdowns and travel restrictions. But with the near-absence of trade shows it's missing out on the events that oil its wheels, cement virtual relationships and add color to an otherwise monochrome world.
Have a fabulous weekend.