Titan Coy on Lab-Grown, Plays Waiting Game with Tariffs

Indian jeweler Titan Company said it would stand back for a month or so and see what happens with tariffs before deciding how to restructure its business to offset the impact. 

The retailer’s Tanishq brand launched its first US store in 2023 and has since opened an additional seven. The 50% tariff US President Donald Trump imposed on Indian products entering America last week is likely to impact these shops. However, the taxes did not affect the company in the first fiscal quarter that ended June 30, and Titan CEO C.K Venkataraman believes the jeweler has time to wait and see if things change, given that the American business is such a small part of overall revenue. 

“We were aware of the buildup towards the tariffs and we had prepared everything on the ground to deal with it,” he said in an analyst call Monday. “We have done very well in the first quarter…but the current signals are quite volatile, and we don’t want to take any knee-jerk reaction with respect to pricing because the claims are at a bloated level. We’ll wait out August…and see what finally develops…to finally administer the price we think we should go with. Because the US share of company sales is just about 2%…it’s not a deal-breaker for us. We can just wait it out calmly.” 

The company, which has previously been adamant it would not offer lab-grown, revealed it might show flexibility should synthetics’ margins and values rise. 

“We are not being dismissive of [lab-grown],” said Ajoy Chawla, managing director of the jewelry division. “We are constantly watching, studying, analyzing and really reading what is going on at the customer and industry level. And therefore, we will see what to do. We will reserve the right to play the way we want to play, when we want to play.” 

Titan also reported that sales of diamond-studded jewelry were picking up, to the point where buyer growth in studded had overtaken that of gold jewelry. Revenue from diamond solitaires has also improved. 

“We saw the correction happen in solitaires, particularly in the higher [carat levels], because of price uncertainties,” Chawla added. “That has now stabilized…. And studded jewelry grew better than solitaires…. That indicates that there are many more customers, new customers, and new buyers in the market for studded…. That’s a positive sign.”

Image: A Tanishq store in Santa Clara, California. (Titan Company)