Editor’s Note
After years of market turbulence, Italian high jewelry house Damiani is now charting an independent course in China, accelerating its physical retail expansion with recent store openings in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Nanjing.
After years of turbulence, the Italian high jewelry brand DAMIANI has finally decided to operate its business in the Chinese market independently and has begun to accelerate its offline market layout.
In February 2025, DAMIANI announced the opening of two new stores at once: one in Ningbo Hankyu and another in Nanjing IFC International Finance Center. At the end of December 2024, DAMIANI also opened a new store on the first floor of Shanghai Grand Gateway 66, a hub for luxury brands. All three new stores adopt DAMIANI’s latest global store concept.
2024 marked the 100th anniversary of the DAMIANI brand, which has since accelerated its offline retail expansion in Greater China.
At the beginning of 2024, DAMIANI opened brand boutiques in Shanghai’s Qiantan Taikoo Li and Sanya Haitang Bay Taikoo Li. By mid-year, DAMIANI added another boutique in the newly opened high-end luxury mall Wuhan SKP.
With the opening of the Shanghai Grand Gateway 66 store at the end of 2024, DAMIANI quietly withdrew from its location in Qiantan Taikoo Li. Regarding this, DAMIANI told Jiemian News,
Unlike some French and Italian high jewelry brands that have been deeply rooted in the Chinese market for many years, DAMIANI has not been in China for long. Most consumers have limited knowledge of it, so the brand’s current focus is on building brand awareness and capturing its core customer base. Naturally, store location selection serves this goal. For DAMIANI at this stage, a mall’s reputation in the high-luxury sector, its central urban location, and sufficient foot traffic are prerequisites for opening a store.
This aligns with DAMIANI’s current strategy of selective store openings in the Chinese market. According to DAMIANI’s statement to Jiemian News, its current strategy in the Greater China market is “selective” and “strategic.”
To date, DAMIANI has 17 sales points in Greater China, of which 7 are directly operated brand boutiques, all located in first-tier shopping malls.
The current domestic jewelry market is not in its “best times.” The mainland Chinese luxury market collectively cooled in 2024. According to Bain & Company’s “2024 China Luxury Market Report,” the overall mainland luxury market is estimated to have declined by 18% to 20% in 2024. Among categories, jewelry, which had previously shown resilience, is even estimated to have fallen by 25% to 30%.
Some leading jewelry brands even paused or delayed new store opening plans in 2024. Bain’s report points out that in the future Chinese mainland luxury market, brands should abandon the development mindset of “staking claims” through expansion in an incremental market and instead consider how to capture share in a saturated market.
At the report launch event, Weiwei Xing, Global Partner of Bain & Company’s Consumer Products and Retail practice, further explained to Jiemian News:
Bain & Company expects the performance of China’s mainland luxury market in 2025 to be flat compared to 2024. During this phase, some high jewelry brands that are already relatively mature in the domestic market will focus on optimizing their existing channel layouts.
Regarding the current domestic jewelry market environment, DAMIANI told Jiemian News:
DAMIANI does not carry the “historical baggage” borne by mature brands in the Chinese market. Due to issues with partners in the past, DAMIANI never truly succeeded in establishing a solid foundation in the domestic market—although this also means the brand did not reap the benefits during the peak of the jewelry market around 2022.
For over a decade, DAMIANI hoped to rely on local partners to operate in the Chinese market.
In 2012, DAMIANI Group entered into a five-year cooperation agreement with Hengdeli Group, with the latter helping the former open boutiques in China. The agent helped DAMIANI open up to 12 stores in mainland China, but only four remained by 2020.
While brands like Bulgari, Tiffany, and Cartier rose to the top tier, DAMIANI did not stand out during this period. In July 2020, DAMIANI Jewelry Group found a new partner, Shanghai Yuyuan Jewelry & Fashion Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Yuyuan Jewelry”). The two established a joint venture in the Chinese market to jointly develop the DAMIANI and SALVINI jewelry brands. Yuyuan Jewelry held a 55% stake and DAMIANI Jewelry Group held 45% in the joint venture.
In June 2021, Yuyuan Jewelry helped DAMIANI open a brand boutique in Shanghai IFC, which by 2024 had become one of Shanghai’s best-performing luxury malls. By the end of 2022, Yuyuan Jewelry had helped open two directly operated DAMIANI stores and four directly operated SALVINI stores in China.
However, this cooperation also did not last three years. In 2023, the joint venture between Yuyuan Jewelry and DAMIANI Jewelry Group quietly terminated.
At Yuyuan Jewelry’s year-end conference held in Sanya in November 2023, the company told media and distributors present, including Jiemian News, that due to strategic positioning and development considerations, it had ended its cooperation with DAMIANI within the year. The group’s investment in foreign brands would focus on the French accessible luxury jewelry brand Djula. After 2023, no information regarding the DAMIANI joint venture or its operations appeared in the financial reports of Yuyuan Jewelry’s parent company, the listed company Shanghai Yuyuan Tourist Mart (Group) Co., Ltd.
These two unsuccessful partnership experiences made DAMIANI realize the importance of direct brand operation. DAMIANI told Jiemian News:
The key to a luxury brand’s success lies in its unique brand story, iconic cultural IP, and classic products. Unlike fashion brands that must constantly generate creativity and set new trends, high jewelry brands emphasize unique history and enduring cultural IP. Brand jewelry designers reinterpret these classic works year after year around these core IPs. Cartier’s Panther series, Van Cleef & Arpels’ Alhambra and Pont des Amoureux pieces, and Tiffany’s “Bird on a Rock” series are all classic success stories.
In the European market, DAMIANI’s Margherita and Mimosa collections are quite representative product lines. However, effectively introducing these iconic series, along with the craftsmanship, design philosophy, and historical stories behind them, to Chinese consumers through marketing and communication strategies has been a challenge DAMIANI has been unable to fully overcome for years.
Direct operation means that regional marketing and communication strategies are synchronized with the global market, and the brand can also receive timely feedback from local consumers to adjust market strategies promptly. From the product communication materials and store visual imagery currently released by DAMIANI, the changes in DAMIANI’s image after taking direct control in China are already evident.
In addition to continuing to invest in opening boutiques, DAMIANI told Jiemian News:
The brand stated that its global jewelry projects held in 2025 will also be promoted in China.