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Friday, 13th January 2006 (5621 views)

Gold jewellery suffered something of a slump in UK sales over the Christmas period, two high street retailers have found.

Signet Group, which owns the chains Ernest Jones and H Samuel, reported that year-on-year sales fell by around 9.3 per cent in the run up to the big day.

Instead of the traditional gold and diamonds, consumers were buying cutting edge electronic goods such as iPods as a token of their affection.

GUS-owned Argos echoed this finding, saying that jewellery was the sector where it had experienced the most difficulty over the Christmas trading period.

Signet Group had more luck on the other side of the Atlantic, however, where sales rose by 5.5 per cent over the same nine weeks to the end of the year.

The US makes up the largest proportion of the jeweller's business, where it has 1,219 outlets, compared with 601 in the UK.

 

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