Chennai, Oct 10: Chennai is witnessing wars in gold, and this could very well be beneficial to the customer. These come hard on the heels of a gold festival announced by the recently formed Chennai Gold Club and has been triggered off by non members who feel they have a lot more value to offer the customer. The gold wars have hotted up with the unexpected rising prices (from Rs 380 to Rs 480 per gram in the recent past) and customers proving reluctant to make a beeline to the gold shops, festival or otherwise.Even as customers are waiting for the prices to come down or stabilise, jewellers of the Gold Club are hoping that the existing retail schemes on offer during the festival would bail them out.
The Club has got 120 members in its fold. In a bid to increase gold jewellery purchases during the Navaraatri and Deepavali festivals as opposed to textiles and white goods, the club has announced prizes where 10 kgs of gold (1 kilo a week to the luckiest winner and some more of lesser value) will bedistributed true lottery style to jewelry purchasers.
However, jewellers did not do the one thing they should have done long ago. Despite the Tamil Nadu government announcement in its state budget last year of sales tax duty being reduced to a low 0.5 per cent, jewellers continued to charge rates based on the Mumbai market, where the sales tax and other allied charges is also much higher. The benefit of sales tax reduction was not passed on to customers here, at least to those customers who made `billed' purchases. Except by Saravana Stores in Chennai who started off as a vessel merchant and textile businesses before plunging into gold.
For the past months, Saravana has been giving the discount that was mandated to customers and has been steadily cornering the market at the expense of leading players. According to another leading jeweller S Akbar Shah of LKS Gold House (which is celebrating its platinum jubilee), the gold jewellery that Saravana offered was also unquestionable on grounds of purity, thelatter adopting cadmium technology. LKS who had been trying to persuade fellow jewellers to follow suit in reducing prices, finally took the plunge on October 7 in passing the benefits of the new ST to customers. LKS also did not join the Gold club membership.
Dismissing the idea of lucky dip wins during the gold festival as a big draw to gold purchases, he said ``I want all my customers to benefit, not just a select few,'' and he is offering a host of household articles to all who purchase gold jewellery in excess of 10 grams. His move to offer jewellery in keeping with the state ST benefits has sent new sparks flying.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.