U.S. Oct. Jewelry & Watch Sales +2% to $5.3B

Nov 29, 2015 10:15 AM By Rapaport News

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RAPAPORT... U.S. jewelry and watch sales from all retail outlets increased 2 percent year on year to an estimated $5.29 billion in October, according to provisional government figures.

The sector’s total for previous months was revised, as is often the case, resulting in the rate of growth for September being lower than previously reported. Jewelry and watch sales improved by 2 percent to $5.26 billion in September, down from an earlier estimated increase of 4.8 percent. August sales were also restated at $5.35 million, compared with an earlier estimate of $5.38 billion.

Jewelry sales in October increased 2 percent year on year to $4.67 billion, according to Rapaport News estimates, the same growth rate as September. This comes against a 1.1 percent decline in the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) for jewelry in October compared with the previous month and a 2.2 percent drop compared with October last year. Watch sales rose 1.6 percent to $615 million year on year. Both categories have now enjoyed six successive months of growth after four months of decline between January and April.

Jewelry and watch sales for the first nine months of the year advanced 0.8 percent to $53.55 billion, according to preliminary figures. Jewelry sales were up 0.8 percent to $47.28 billion, while watch sales increased 1 percent to $6.26 billion, as calculated by Rapaport News.

Specialty jewelry store sales, which are tracked separately, declined 0.5 percent to $2.5 billion during September, according to the most recent government data. Specialty-store sales growth for the first nine months to September 2015 fell 1.6 percent to $22.77 billion.

Overall U.S. retail sales rose by 0.1 percent in October as consumers spent less on gasoline, Bloomberg reported November 13.

“I wish I could say tourists are going to begin to show up and start spending,” The Wall Street Journal cited Macy’s chief executive officer Terry Lundgren as saying on a conference call earlier this month. “But you can see in our forecast for fourth quarter we are not expecting that.”

Tags: cpi, data, Rapaport News, U.S. retail