Forever plans retail spread

Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds, the Rs 250-crore B2B diamond jewellery manufacturer, is planning to open 25 retail stores this year with an investment of approximately 100 crore.

The company currently has 12 stores in various parts of the country, and is planning to have 40 stores in all by next year.

The retail stores would be opened in association with multiple
department stores in order to avoid competition between Forever and its
customers.

Su-raj Diamonds and Forever negotiated an equity partnership with Forever selling 49% stake to Su-raj Diamonds last year in order to exploit the latter's oversease distribution network. Su-raj Diamonds, in turn, has agreed to use Forever's domestic distribution network.

With continuous innovations, Forever owns about 20,000 diamond and gold designs including the recently launched 300 colour gemstones design. The company has also added about 300 designs to its plain diamond category.

With around 30 designers, the company has expertise in colour
gemstones as all varieties, including precious, semi-precious and enabling, are catching up with customers.

"With thousands of varieties and colours of stones, we are the largest
supplier of colour gemstones to Tanishq. The biggest advantage for us is colour gemstones at an affordable price," Jai Begani, managing director of Forever Precious Jewellery & Diamonds, said.

A number of organised players are entering the colour gemstones sector
thereby making the competition stiff but an uninterrupted innovator would win the race, Jai added.

Colour gemstones were earlier used only by upper class while cheaper alternatives have added middle class consumers into its fold.

Forever offers jewellery including nosepins, errings, pendents, rings, bangles, necklaces and bracelets ranging betwen Rs 1,000-
30,000.The company uses 14, 10, 9 carat gold for exports to the US and 18-22 carat gold for the domestic market, especially for the South.

Each jewellery is accompanied with the required certificate for diamonds, and guarantees refund at the current price of gold and only 10%
deduction for diamond any time in life, Jai said.

"Hallmarking is urgently required to retain consumers' faith for these capital intensive products and improve transparency. This would ease our problems," Jai said.