Wedding rebound: Is the pandemic-prompted engagement slump ending?
Pandemic-prompted social distancing put a major dent in couples’ plans to marry. But beginning in 2024, the nation’s largest jeweler believes that dating and getting engaged will become common again.
Cue those wedding bells.
Signet Jewelers — which owns Blue Nile, Diamonds Direct, Jared, Kay Jewelers and Zales — said couples get engaged just over three years after they start dating, on average, according to CNN Business, which said that’s based on Signet’s “proprietary data.”
The prediction is backed by the fact that states like Texas and Florida that opened up earlier after the pandemic are seeing a more normal pre-pandemic pattern of engagements compared to states like California and New York, which were social distancing and taking other precautions longer, Signet CEO Virginia Drosos said during a company presentation recently.
Drosos expects the rebound over the next three years, according to CNN. “In 2024, Signet expects engagements will reach 2.4 to 2.5 million,” the article said.
Per CNN: “Why are we confident that engagements will recover? Our confidence is based on 45 proprietary milestones we track to measure a couple’s journey toward engagement,” she said during the call last month. “Not every couple experiences all of the 45 milestones we track, but we know that once they reach 25 to 30 of these milestones, they become, statistically, significantly more likely to move on to engagement.”
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The relationship stages, she said, include meeting, becoming exclusive, commitment and then engagement.
What Drosos calls “early relationship triggers,” like going to a sports event or concert, have improved by 7% compared to the same time last year.
MarketWatch noted a couple of weeks ago that Signet raised its full-year profit outlook based on signs that more couples will become engaged in 2024.
A bump to pre-pandemic engagements matters a lot to Signet, the company reported, since sales related to engagements and weddings make up about half the company’s overall business.
