Agra shows its sterling loyalty

Agra has for long been seen as a developing town with growing business potential for "vanity vendors", and to cash in on this increasing demand for luxury consumer accessories among the "neo-rich" segment of the town, diamond merchants are converging in this city of the Taj, hosting jewellery exhibitions, fashion shows, and sales.

Coming to Agra for the first time, Delhi-based OTM Jewellery held a four-day exhibition-cum-sale at the Hotel Holiday Inn, beginning last weekend.

The exhibition topped the charts in guest presence but could not garner enough sales to answer for the four-day extravaganza that included jewellery fashion shows by top models like Indrani Das Gupta with the jewellery priced between Rs 3,500 and Rs 1 lakh.

Taking a cue from this exhibition by OTM Jewellery that ended on Tuesday, another jewellery house, OP Jewellers, marketing the Eros brand of diamond jewellery, has begun its two-day exhibition-cum-sale at the hotel Taj View today while other jewellery houses are also planning to hold similar events in the town, keeping in view the upcoming wedding season.

Sources at OP Jewellers said the exhibition would have women's jewellery, ranging from simple nose-pins costing merely Rs 2,500, to expensive designed necklaces.

According to sources, though the market for diamond jewellery in Agra is not very strong, the presence of new vendors in this field had broadened the prospects for diamond jewellery sales.

Attributing the low turnout of buyers in similar events held recently by diamond vendors based outside Agra to the lack of trust in new brands among the people of this town, Pankaj Jain, the owner of a jewellery house at Zohari Bazaar in Agra, said the town's economy was still in developing stage, and here, diamonds were considered as lifetime investment because the flow of disposable income was not so fast that the people could dispense with their usual reservations on the trustworthiness of the brand and the cost-factor involved.

He said in Agra, people still relied on the same jeweller over generations.

In this scenario, he said such exhibitions could for once promote diamond jewellery among the locals but it could not boost the sales figures of such recent entrants in this market.