JCK Reports On Why QVC, HSN Jewelry Revenue Is Down

A key trade magazine for the jewelry industry, JCK, did a story last week about the declining sales of jewelry on home shopping channels.

The article, with the headline “Home Shopping Networks No Longer That Interested in Jewelry,” talks about how baubles and gems — which once made up a huge portion of HSN and QVC sales — are not just a small fraction of revenue.

http://www.jckonline.com/blogs/cutting-remarks/2015/08/07/home-shopping-networks-no-longer-that-interested-in-jewelry?utm_source=JCK+eNewsletters&utm_campaign=2da3b386af-2015_08_07_Fashion_Friday&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_56301e74d4-2da3b386af-334047749

The story points out that when the two home shopping networks debuted, jewelry made up about 50 percent of their sales. Now, jewelry accounts for only 9.5 percent of HSN sales and 12 percent of QVC sales, according to JCK.

Why the decline? Well, we know jewelry sales were hit hard overall during the Great Recession. Next, when jewelry revenue started to decline home shopping nets gave the category lousy time slots, JCK claims, which also hurt sales and continued the downward spiral.

We don’t know if we agree with the “bad-time-slots” argument, by the way.

JCK also notes that there was new competition from all-jewelry-all-the-time networks such as Jewelry Television and Rocks TV (which we have never heard of).

The trade magazine also claims that more of QVC and HSN sales are being generated online, not a very good forum to promote jewelry.

JCK says that millennials are more interested in buying tech items, like smartphones and Apple watches, than jewelry, which is hurting sales.

And finally, the magazine claims that home shopping networks have been hard-pressed to replace jewelry lines that were once very lucrative, such as QVC’s Diamonique collection.

Someone posted a comment on the JCK story that we also thought made sense: That the once-skyrocketing price of precious metals such as gold really socked jewelry sales.

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