Yesterday evening, I visited the Hiranandani Galleria - Powai. The market has quite a few jewellery shops, one of them being en exclusive Orra outlet. As you can see in the picture, Orra says it is THE DIAMOND DESTINATION.Firstly, it 's a rather weak differentiator (in fact, it is no differentiator at all). Aren't there plenty of shops around dedicated to making and selling diamonds and diamond jewellery? If they are satisfying the consumers well, who needs an Orra? At best, Orra will do only as well as other diamond stores are doing or perhaps a tad better since it spends a hell lot of money into mass-marketing (though I have my doubts how effective mass marketing turns out to be in jewellery).
Now specific to my visit yesterday, I noticed that the Orra outlet was running a 25% discount on all the products! 25%! Imagine. Where buyers in India are so accustomed to calculating the worth of their jewellery by calculating the weight of the metal and precious stones used (because they are actually precious!), here there's a brand which offers 25% discount on nothing less than pure diamonds. In which case, what is the consumer likely to think? That Orra was charging unreasonably high to begin with? Or, that the quality of metal and diamonds is rather dubious?
If these are thoughts that arise in mind, a jewellery brand is doomed. A local jewellery shop runs on a lot of trust. How many times have you seen your local jewellery shop run a discount scheme? Not very often. If it starts running discounts to the tune of 25%, will you trust it in the same manner as you earlier did? Perhaps not.
Orra's aura doesn't seem so blemishless.
2 comments:
dear siddarth, no hard feelings. i have bought some stuff at orra. if you have carefully studied the company profile, their parent company is the largest manufacturer of polished diamonds in the world. they are the largest exporter of diamonds from india. they have their head quarters in antwerp. with all these qualities do you think they are cheating you. some of the largest independent and chain jewellers in india buy diamonds from its parent company. the diamonds that diamond jewellers are selling in all the stores in india are mostly a fraud as the prices of diamonds are exhorbitantly high and they give IGI certificate for everything just by copying certificates.
Hi!
Thanks for the comment. I understand what you are saying. Perhaps I would agree with you on the facts. However, the intention in the post was to analyze the situation from the point of view of a common consumer and the possible perceptions he/she could build based on what he/she sees.
Indians haven't yet become a diamond crazy nation though they buy tonnes of jewellery every year. In such a scenario, I think brands like Orra can do far better (at least in communicating, if not other things) than what they are currently doing.
Thanks for your response. Hope you do come back to check my response. :)
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