In the Loupe
In the Loupe
2025 Jewelry E‑Commerce Performance Explained
We chart the rebound of jewelry e‑commerce in 2025, why average order value climbed, and how Cyber Monday pulled ahead of Black Friday online. We share two winning models, volume vs high ticket, and a practical plan to hit $50k–$100k next year.
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Welcome to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop. This week it is my final episode of season six, uh, other than the wrap-up episode, which will be next week. Uh, this episode I wanted to talk about how e-commerce is doing in the jewelry industry as like a little update, and also to talk about Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It's something that we paid a lot of attention to, and the results were really interesting this year. In case you didn't know, there's a huge boom in e-commerce for the jewelry industry and pretty much all industries in 2021 and 2020 as a result of the pandemic. And then things continued being really high in 20, you know, 21, 22, and then had a big cool-off in 23. And I didn't know if it was gonna come back or not, but 24 it grew compared to 23. And now 25, it seems like is kind of back to on par with what we are seeing during the pandemic. I think that's a really encouraging sign, but I wanted to dive into the analytics a little bit because Punchmark, we only do websites for the jewelry industry, and it allows me to have a very hyper-focused data set that I can share with you all. So if you want to learn a little bit about how e-commerce is doing in the jewelry industry for 2025, listen on. Thanks.
SPEAKER_00:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, Punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth, or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, PunchMark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmark.com slash go. And now back to the show.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so I wanted to start this off and talk a little bit about how e-commerce is doing as a whole, and I think that the best way to do that is comparing 2025 to 24 and 23. Uh, 25 is having a very strong performance. It's just about every single month is performing year over year stronger uh than 24. Uh, what I do when I have this little kind of chart to kind of give you an insight on how I get my data, uh, I get this report sent to me from our platform, and I get it every month, like three days after the month ends, and it shows the entire month's performance. And I have a whole bunch of spreadsheets in this um one kind of system where I import it and I can compare it to historical data. And since I've been doing this for about four and a half years now, I have a pretty decent uh kind of standardized, normalized data set that I can start to draw some inferences from. I'll share some kind of extrapolations uh at the end, but for the long the short of it is that I'm using data that is pulled from the e-commerce performance in uh for all Punchmark clients. This can be skewed a little bit because sometimes if we have a client that we sign up and they are just really heavy e-commerce, well, that client is going to obviously pull the e-commerce performance up sometimes. But sometimes we have a client that is doing really well and they retire or they move on to a different platform, and that could pull the performance down. But since we have so many come in and we have some go, we kind of consider it normalized. Sometimes Brian says, Oh, we should uh normalize it for only clients that consistently are in each data set, you know, like the consistent 400 clients that we've had over the course of the last four years. Um, it's just it's not something I have access to. So I'm just giving you the data that I have. Okay, so one thing that's of note is like I said, I compare month to month, year over year. So for example, I compare May 2025 to May 2024 sometimes. And what I am seeing is that each month individually has overperformed 2024 uh by about, man, looks like 25 to 50 in certain uh circumstances. This is the only example that is not true is March 2025, which was off almost 50% compared to 2024. In looking at that, I can't really see why that is. Fewer clients made sales that month, uh, there were fewer number of sales, and the average order value was low. Um, I sometimes wonder why it is um, you know, why these kind of things happen. I can guess, you know, sometimes it has to do with larger um circumstances. So, like, you know, maybe there was something weird with the you know economy, or they lowered rates, or they increased mortgage rates, or something like that. So sometimes that spooks people and they don't buy jewelry um or they buy it in-store, you know, maybe people were having more in-store moments. But with that being said, uh other months that really stood out to me is that our um May 2025 overperformed May 2024 by about 50. So that's really impressive, but it continued um June overperformed 20, and then July 32% up, August 11% up, September 24% up, and October 39% up, and just recently, November 25% up. So this is compared to last month, and like I had been saying, 23 was a very poor year for e-commerce, 24 improved, and 25 is improving on top of that. But if we were to even compare it uh to those strong years 2021 and 22, you can actually see it's tracking more along those lines, and you're seeing it more in those middle months. Um, I think that May, June, July really um exceeded our expectations. What we're seeing, the reason for this being is there is a lower or average monthly number of sales, and we're seeing a much higher average order value. So for example, we call that AOV. The AOV uh for this entire year has been five hundred and forty dollars and ninety cents. But if we look at just since uh June, so we're looking at the second half of the year, the AOV is uh six hundred and ten dollars. So we'll just say for the second half of the you know, half two of 2025, we're seeing that the AOV is six hundred and ten dollars. Stay with me, I know that this gets a little bit difficult. For half two of 2024, it was$445. So we're seeing a, what is that, like a 30% jump or so? And right there is kind of that's the whole story. I think that the reason for this being why do we see AOV jumping up but uh sales kind of staying the same, is I think that it has to do with the cost of of you know precious metals, especially gold. Um, if you know you want a pair of earrings and you know you like this certain pair of earrings, instead of it being$500, this year they're$700. And that is just that's just the price. And as a result, it's really pulling up the average order value. So what am I kind of inferring from that is that I think it's actually better increasingly to just sell um quantity. And what uh you know, that's easy for me to say, hey, just sell a lot of stuff. Um, I'm seeing that it well, we used to have a lot of clients, they would sell fewer items, but when they would sell an item, it would be like a watch or it'd be a you know, a diamond ring or diamond earrings, and that was really kind of ballooning, so they'd have like 10 sales on the year, but the average order value for them was like into two or three thousand dollars. So like they do pretty decent when it came to like e-commerce, but it was there's only so many um sales. And for that, I find that to be a little bit inconsistent because the difference between making nine sales and making 10 sales is so you know drastically different when it comes to like your bottom line. But when you start comparing uh some of our clients, I'm just gonna look at this one in particular. Uh, we have this one client who is on track to sell, yes. Um, you know, they're already over 500 sales in just 2025. Um, is 500 sales like impressive if it's just your your entire business? I don't know. I I I guess I don't know enough about in-store sales to really kind of know. And I and I imagine that a lot of stores, you know, maybe do that in in one month. But when it comes to your online presence, it's very, I find it very impressive that they were able to convert nearly 500 times and it's only November. So if this client continues the way that they are at the pace that they're going, they're going to be at close to 600 sales for the year. But what's really interesting is that their average order value is like very low. I think I think right around 200. And remember, I said that the average order value for the second half of this year was$610. So they're nearly, you know, at only 25 or 30% of the average order value. But for them, it seems to work. And when I dive into their sales a little bit more, I'm seeing a lot of Pandora Charms, a lot of Rembrandt Charms, a lot of um just kind of lower price point items. So that is one strategy, but right next to them, I'm also seeing a uh a client that is uh they do really well, also. For example, this one client has 86 sales for uh just about 200,000. And what's fascinating is that means that that client is making fewer sales, but is uh selling you know really expensive items. So two different strategies. If you're gonna do those more expensive ones, I highly recommend that you have some type of financing. And I highly recommend that you uh have some type of fraud protection. Again, the impact of one sale going awry is much more impactful than the client that is on track for 600 being able to, you know, if they lose out on a$200 uh charm, it's less impactful than a$3,000 ring, for example. But the other thing that we're seeing is more clients are making just some sales. So one of the data points I track is clients with at least one sale. And every year it goes up. Again, I don't want to kind of misinterpret this and sell you something that's not true or tell you something that's not true. Uh, we are adding more clients. So theoretically, the clients with at least one sale number should be increasing, but it is increasing at a rate that is far exceeding our adding new clients. So, what I'm seeing is that more clients are making some sales in those middle months. And I think that the story here is less about November and December. And I this is mean of me to say, but I always joke that you could just close your eyes as a jewelry store and like sell, you know, some jewelry uh during November and December because people will need to buy Christmas presents um or holiday presents. And for us, I'm looking more at like when can people sell? Like, what do sales in May look like? Our May this year was very impressive, and I think it's just because more clients uh were just getting out there, and maybe they're buying into SEO and their websites are uh tracking better or their products are looking better, or things are more curated. Um, we're seeing that just more people are being uh consistent in those off months. Of course, I mean we're about to see um the two biggest months coming up. I mean, November. We just had a a pretty good November. It was very strong compared to the last two years, uh, but average when you compare it to those, you know, those big three years. So it came in right around the middle, and that's really impressive. But the important part was September and October were just absolutely ridiculously good. Um, October in particular, it on some instances um outperformed previous years by almost double. Uh, December, I'm a little bit hesitant. Uh, the reason why I'm a little bit hesitant is because I think more and more sales are shifting when it comes to you know the holiday season are shifting to in-store. So I do think that you're going to see more people coming into your store to buy maybe their shopping online and then going in. Uh, a big reason for that I think is the cost of shipping. I think if I was to um be trying to kill it at e-commerce, something I might consider is doing more free shipping options because then it gets people not in your store. Um, which I don't know, is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? There's less opportunities for upsells, but if you have a really efficient um like processing system for sales, I uh for online sales, I do think that kind of going into the free shipping kind of field might actually be, you know, a benefit to you because maybe you're getting people from out of town. Or if you know, on uh the Saturday before the holidays or you know, right now I'm recording this on December 10th. Um, right now it's dumping snow in upstate New York. And I'm not driving to the next town over to shop. But if there's free shipping, you know, maybe I would just buy it online, just have them ship it to me. It'll get here next week, anyways. And like, what's the difference between me holding it in my hand and getting it in the mail? To me, it's like, well, if I don't have to drive in the middle of a snowstorm, um, you know, we're kind of we're good. So that's kind of where I want to at least kind of put a pin in the discussion about the year over year sales. I want to shift into talking about Black Friday Cyber Monday sales because increasingly, oh not increasingly, but it's a big deal for us. We've been paying attention to it, and Brian was kind enough to uh do a uh data poll for me and give me this um set of data for Black Friday transaction count, the number of sales, and the max transactions, as well as the same set of data compared to Cyber Monday. Um, so again, Black Friday, day after Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving. So you probably are thinking, obviously, Cyber Monday is going to be much more e-commerce heavy. Uh, you would be right. That is how it should trend, but in years past, we actually saw more e-commerce in 2020, 2021, and 2022. We saw more e-commerce uh transactions on Black Friday than we did on Cyber Monday. Side note, I think that Cyber Monday was like kind of a are there too many days? Like, are there too many? Like, there's you know, Blackout Wednesday, and then there's Thanksgiving, and then there's Black Friday, and then there's Small Business Saturday, and then there's uh Cyber Monday. I'm like, okay, do we got too many of these? Like, also, what is Sunday? How come Sunday isn't on there? I guess it's like Hop and Shop, that's what my town did, but um, we saw this big boom in 2020, 21, and 2022 uh for both Cyber Monday, Black Friday. Um, they were really crushing. We saw the number of transactions really skyrocket. It they peaked in 2020 and in uh almost exactly the same in 2021, but they fell right off a cliff in 2023. I sometimes was a little bit hesitant to talk about this because I'm like, ah, like, did we do something wrong? Did we break something? Um, I think that there was just a cool-off and like kind of a re-romanticization of the the in-store experience in 2023. I myself, like, I went to a lot of restaurants because I was like, oh my gosh, like I don't have the DoorDash food anymore. And I think that a lot of shoppers were doing that too. But what's really interesting is that since 23 we've seen a growth in 24 and now in 25. Um, it's pretty significant. It's I wouldn't say it's doubling, but in some instances it Cyber Monday um the sales doubled year over year, uh, two years in a row. So we went from yeah, just about actually tripled from 23 to 24 and then doubled from 24 to 25. But at the same time, it's not necessarily uh doubling like that in Cyber Monday. It's kind of a little bit more um uh conservative, but it's definitely up and to the right for both of those. I think that in 2026, I'll probably do this episode again, and I would love to talk about like what changed, but I really am seeing that the change in uh shopper dynamic is a little bit more hmm, like considered. I don't know if that's the right term. It's like people are approaching this less as like a must do, but more of like a I prefer this. So the shoppers that like shopping online are shopping online as opposed to um, you know, during the pandemic, everybody was like, I have to do this kind of thing. So I think if I was to make a prediction, I think that uh Cyber Monday is just going to increase. And I think that gold prices, man, are just continuing to go through the roof as inflation continues to go crazy and uh the US dollar is sometimes a little bit shaky. Uh, I'm not an economic expert, so don't don't hold that against me. I am expecting the price of gold to continue to go up, and if I was um predicting, man, I would probably. Predict that the average order value that we're seeing on our platform to also continue to go up. Uh, I I think that's a pretty uh safe estimate. I wouldn't be surprised if the average order value is in the 650s or maybe even a 700 um average order value uh next next year. That is purely just buoyed to the fact that um you know gold if if it's if it doubles again, man, I would hate for that to happen, but if gold doubles again, well, suddenly, you know, whatever they buy, they're either gonna have to buy less gold or it's probably gonna be double the price, you know. Because I if there's one thing I know about jewelers, it's like you're kind of um reliant on the price of gold to know what you should be pricing things. I mean, that's what vendors do, right? So I think as it starts to track upwards, I think you're gonna just see the average order value. We're seeing it, it's kind of interesting. It sort of like did this um, you know, upward trajectory for a couple years. It really dipped. As I think, personally, I think 2023 the result was because of um the lab grown diamond of prices going down so much, and suddenly there was like a race to the bottom, and people were buying. I'm looking at the monthly number of sales, and the monthly number of sales are pretty much the same when it came to 23 and 24, uh, a little bit better in 24, but the average order value is like you know,$100 off comparatively, and that went down further um throughout the year in 23. And why I think that the result of that, it's just the lab grown diamonds got like even more um inexpensive, and it just results in lower average order value. So, how can you capitalize on this? I think I've said this before, and I think I'm gonna beat this drum a little bit more. This is gonna be my mantra. I genuinely believe that uh the way to get things going on e-commerce is let's put some charms on your website and put some reasonable prices for your uh gold jewelry and make sure that they're updated regularly, maybe to your point of sale system. Um, making sure that you have some lower price point items. People love, I think the best landing page you can have on your website is um shop products less than you know 150 and having that as a link in your navigation. People love that. Go on there, they shop through, they see what's under$150 because sometimes I open up a jewelry website and it's like the first you know, 50 products are like over$3,000. And I'm like, I can't, I'm just not in this market. And maybe this website isn't for me. But if it allows me to shop for cheaper stuff, well, I'll stick around. I'll I'll see if I can find a deal. I'm seeing that with charms, and like I mentioned with that one client, um, they're just consistently making 70 sales, 80 sales a month, which is, you know, that's nothing to sniff at. Their average order value is like in the 200s, but I would be surprised if they if that's not really kind of affecting their their sales process. We have a bunch of clients that are just selling a lot of um skinny gold chains and just uh charms and silver earrings and stuff like that. Everybody wants to sell an engagement ring online. Like I get that. And I just think that there is less opportunity for it. I think there's a lot of things going against you to sell the engagement ring online, with like, you know, a certain percentage of people want to have that in-store experience. But I think that that statement, a certain number of people want an in-store experience, is less true when it comes to, you know, huggy earrings, huggy gold earrings, you know. So if you have those on there and they're, you know, 300 bucks, I think that it's more likely that someone is going to check out on them. And having those front and center is a decent option. Okay, what am I expecting? We're seeing more clients on our platform um getting over this uh 100k mark. I think that if you get over 50k, you're doing something right, 50k in a year. I think that 50k is a really reasonable target. Uh, I think if you're, or I guess 48k, that means you're doing um$2,000 uh a month in sales. I think that is a very within reach uh goal for every jeweler, just about. But then I think that the next one is 100k, and we're gonna have more clients than ever before reach over 100k. Uh so that's really exciting. We, you know, used to want to have, I used to want to have a client do like, you know, millions online because I thought that would be so fun. But I think it's more about how can we make it so that more jewelers are selling a very substantial amount as opposed to having like a few jewelers really crushing it, buoying our um our sales numbers up. And I think that if if I was you, when you go to start thinking about your business, I might consider just setting yourself an e-commerce goal too, and checking in with yourself every every quarter. Um, you gotta remember Q1 is always a little bit slow when it comes to e-commerce. Q2 should improve, then three, then four. I would probably say if you've never really made e-commerce a focus, I might consider making uh 50k um in in e-commerce sales for next year your goal. I think that's a pretty reasonable one. If it's not 50k, I I mean you know your business better than I do. But I also, if if you've already done 50k, maybe set 100k is your goal. You can't get to 100k or 50k without having a pretty ironed out process for dealing with online orders. As an online order comes in, you kind of gotta, you know, who's going to go into the case and pick out the product, who's gonna put it in your box and get ready for shipping and print the shipping label. Who's going to do that? You have to have that figured out in order to get to that point because otherwise it's just gonna be a nuisance and you're essentially losing money on it. Okay, so the TLDR 2025, very strong for e-commerce, the best one in the last uh two years or three years. And I'm predicting 2026 to be even better. I'm predicting 2026 to have a higher average order value than even 2025. I think we're gonna start seeing it press towards the 650, maybe even 700 area, purely based on the price of gold. If the price of gold continues to go up, which it seems like I don't see any reason for it not to, I guess. And I think that Black Friday, Cyber Monday, I think Cyber Monday is going to continue to grow in popularity compared to Black Friday, and I think we're going to see more clients doing pretty well. Uh, those are all my predictions. I'll check in with you guys in about one year, and we'll do this exact same episode and I'll probably talk about it again. All right. Thanks everybody. Next week is the final wrap-up episode with the best of the rest, and uh I hope you enjoy. I'll talk to y'all in the new year. Cheers. Bye. Alright, everybody, that's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, Michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cocker. Don't forget to rate the podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts and leave us feedback on punchmark.com slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E. Thanks, and we'll be back next week with the last episode of the season. Best of the rest. Alright. Cheers, everybody. Bye.
