Trend report 2021/22

The COVID-19 pandemic gave way to a whole new type of relationship. It’s a relationship born out of necessity, but it has roots in a centuries-long history of artisans working with clients to make meaningful and sentimental pieces of jewellery.

We’re talking about the online connection between a consultant and a customer.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we honed in on the only pillar of our business we were able to offer at the time: our online experience. It became clear that the sole way to stay relevant in an age of luxury e-commerce was to perfect the way we recreate the consultant-customer relationship within a digital environment.

Lauren Santer, a senior retail strategist, told Harper’s Bazaar that the luxury retailers with the most online longevity were those that have ‘essentially closed the gap between content and commerce while offering the kind of white-gloves service that one would expect in a luxury store, but replicated online’. But how do you convince a customer that your design service will offer them the most premium experience amongst an ‘over-saturated’ luxury e-commerce market?

People want an experience that matches the personal connection they receive in store and with so many options at your fingertips, consumer expectations are rapidly rising.

When customer experience metrics were measured across 90,000 companies, Zendesk found that the retailers with the best CX are 1.4 times more likely to be directly messaging their customers, leading 37% of retailers to open a social media channel for direct messaging during the pandemic.

We were one of those retailers. We greatly expanded our communication channels and invited customers to connect with us over WhatsApp. Having a live messaging environment that felt integrated into a customer’s daily means of communication meant we could give customers a more personal-feeling experience capitalising on our unique tone of voice to make us stand out in the industry.

A year after we introduced WhatsApp messaging, our weekly conversations with customers on the platform has increased 1600%.

As we re-opened our showrooms following lockdown this year, we optimised our CX journey to allow customers to complete portions of their shopping journey either online or in person. We can no longer see physical and digital shopping as two separate planes, but continually work to integrate both as one accessible experience.

As lockdown came to an end in many parts of the world this year, a feeling of hope found its way back into people’s lives for the first time in months. This surge of happiness crept into all aspects of our lives, even our wardrobes. 2021 saw the emergence of a vibrant new trend known as ‘dopamine dressing’. Based on the scientific theory that seeing bright colours releases pleasure-inducing chemicals in our brains, dopamine dressing is all about wearing bright neon colours to ‘inject joy’ into your day to day life.

We’re only seeing the first tremors of this trend in the jewellery industry. But with global interest for colourful engagement rings on the rise, we’ll be keeping an eye on this in the coming year.

Asymmetry in design is emerging as a true sign of our times, from asymmetrical diamond clusters to the engagement ring that’s gone viral these past 12 months: the ‘moi et toi’ ring. Meaning ‘me and you’ in French, romantic moi et toi designs feature two large gemstones set next to each other as twin centre gems. Emily Ratajkowski received a moi et toi for her engagement ring this year, and with the likes of Solange and Kylie Jenner now sporting this style, these high-impact rings are rising in popularity with our customers, too.