Tanishq sets its focus on light-weight gold jewellery

CHENNAI: With an eye on

rising gold prices

, jewellery brand

Tanishq

is betting big on

light-weight gold jewellery

. It aims to move more than 50% of its gold jewellery range to its recently introduced 'Hi-Lites' segment in 12 months.

Titan CEO (jewellery division)

Ajoy Chawla

said, "The Hi-Lites range offers among the lightest weight products in the market and, after our soft launch before Diwali, it has already seen a sharp growth in new customers in Q3." Tanishq's overall customer growth is up 32%, but the brand saw a 39% growth in new customers. "New customers typically buy gold and day-to-day wear and the Hi-Lites products have contributed 40% of the gold jewellery sales," he added.

In the second phase, the company will add more products to the light-weight category. "We are already looking at all our bestsellers and, in future, all new products will go through the process of light-weighting," he added. "We are institutionalising it." Tanishq expects to sell Hi-Lites products to "more than a million buyers in 12 months", said Chawla.

Gold prices have gone up by more than 20% in the last 12 months, prompting the brand to look for ways to light-weight some of its best-selling designs. "We have reimagined the product piece on 3,500 SKUs (stock-keeping units), which are among our bestsellers, and launched them in October," said Chawla.

The Hi-Lites range was 30% of the gold jewellery in stock, but contributed 40% of sales in Q3. The range of reduction is 15-25% with the company using a combination of "design reconstruction to remove excess gold", changing the manufacturing process to make the piece lighter and changing the material to hard alloy

22-carat gold

to provide lighter weight pieces in the same design.

"We have reduced the weight of gold in those products without compromising on quality, look, functioning stability," said Chawla.