金饰重回克重时代Falling Gold Prices Push Jewelry Back to Grams

A year ago the hardest sell in a Chinese gold shop was a plain chain priced by the gram. Today it is the easiest. Gold peaked near US$5,598 an ounce in early 2026, fell 12% in one January session — the worst day in forty years — and broke below US$4,000 by late June.

Chow Tai Fook's fiscal 2027 first quarter quantifies the flip. Group retail value rose 15.1%, the mainland 10.7%, Hong Kong, Macao and overseas 44.8%. Mainland same-store sales of gram-priced gold jumped 38% while fixed-price pieces slipped 1%. Gram-priced products now make up 67.2% of mainland retail value, against 61.5% a year earlier.

Calling this the death of the premium narrative would be lazy. Laopu Gold guided first-half revenue up 60–66% and adjusted profit up 83–85%. Yet the tempo changed: a year earlier revenue grew 251%. Second-quarter sales ran near RMB 3.5 billion, about 40% of March's pace, and the shares have halved.

The profit map has been splitting for years. Yaok Institute's 2026 index sizes China's jewellery market at RMB 750 billion, with fifteen luxury brands taking 60% of industry profit at almost 30% net margin, while twenty-nine mass brands share 1% on a 1.2% margin. Gram-priced gold defends revenue, not margin.

When identical chains carry identical prices across a mall corridor, the contest moves to what shoppers can see. Retailers are lifting gold out of long glass counters onto single-piece display stands under directed light. Laopu Gold moved stores to ground-floor luxury positions and added tea rooms; even volume counters are retiring plastic trays.

Purchasing follows. Fixed-price pieces need ceremony and a story worth unboxing; volume lines need presentation that stays affordable without looking it. The correction did not defeat gold — it redistributed pricing power, to the gram at one end and to craft and culture at the other, squeezing the murky middle.

This is original content. Copyright belongs to Junyimei.
Junyimei — present every jewel and timepiece at its best.