The basement of one of Hong Kong's top shopping districts amply demonstrates the lemming-like behaviour that sometimes grip the city's retailers.
Grouped next to each other are a handful of trendy jewellery chains that sell funky but affordable lines to the teenage to 30-something demographic who shun traditional jewellers popular with their mothers and grandmothers.
Spartan in their retail design, the stores and their product range - modern designs, often featuring white gold and diamonds in place of jade and the heavier gold favoured by the older generation - sometimes look like they came from the same identikit.
The Brand Company partner James Stuart says the similarity extends to pricing as well. "When one gets a design the other copies," Stuart says, while stressing that the chains need to build brands that attract customers on things other than price and style.
"Jewellery is an emotive purchase, not a logical purchase, and, (chains) need to have a strong emotional attachment (to their customers)," he says.
A pioneer in the youth jewellery sector, Just Gold believes it has got the formula right. It opened back in 1991, extended to a Just Diamond line in 1994 and in 2000 added gifts to its range. The success of the chain and another long-time contender Ma Belle appears to have encouraged other well-established jewellers who feared losing ground to the youth jewellery brands to jump in. Chow Tai Fook and Luk Fook - two long-time players of the Hong Kong jewellery trade - are relative newcomers, opening their ctf.2 and Ice.g operations only in the last two years. While the market may not yet be saturated, some experts warn that in the future they will have to differentiate to survive.
Among the players, Just Gold enjoys a stronger brand image though the clutter in the category is making it increasingly difficult to stand out.
Associate brand director of Leo Burnett, Kara Yang, who handles the Just Gold account, said the brand was successful because it was willing to push the boundaries of design, evident in collections such as its new denim jewellery line, incorporating Levi's denim.
Just Gold brand manager William Hui claims the company was the first to make shopping for jewellery more like shopping for clothes. "In those days you had traditional goldsmiths where you had to go through security bars and pick (your purchase) by pointing at the jewellery," Hui notes.
"Instead we introduced a concept where you are free to browse like in a boutique. The feeling of intimidation was no longer there."
Burnett's Yang said this was evident in the store design, which aimed to create a boutique, or gallery environment, with soft lighting.
As one of the first to launch, Hui said Just Gold attracted a number of "copy cats", but he remained confident that the company's investment in brand-building would pay off. With 16 outlets in Hong Kong, 28 in Taiwan and one in Beijing, the company is searching for new opportunities to open stores in Beijing and Shanghai in the near future.
Another established player and one of the largest youth market jewellers is Ma Belle, which has 46 stores, and celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. Ma Belle operations director Theresa Tong said her company was the first in the youth market to concentrate on diamonds.
"Demand is changing quickly as more people consider diamond jewellery as accessories to match fashion trends," Tong notes.
Ma Belle's way of differentiating itself is to provide about 100 new styles each month. The company plans to spend more than HK$20 million (US$2.6 million) this year on promotions both locally and on the mainland, with aims to open an extra 14 stores in Hong Kong this year.
With the increasingly cluttered niche, the latest arrivals - Ctf.2 and Ice g, despite their parental connections - will face an especially difficult branding themselves so long as consumer sentiment remains bleak. Ctf.2 marketing manager Cynthia Cheng said the company now has four stand-alone stores and eight counters within established Chow Tai Fook stores. "A lot of customers have grandmothers and mothers who buy from Chow Tai Fook so we have a loyal following," she says.
Another spin-off from a major chain is Ice g. which first arrived on the scene as a collection series in Luk Fook stores and by the end of 2001 was launched as a new jewellery brand with seven stand-alone outlets.
"We have adopted an edgy, fun and humourous style for advertising, illustrating that it is not a mother or grandmother's type of jewellery," Ice g spokeswoman Icy Chung says.
Which may go some way towards explaining Ice g's sponsorship of ageing rapper Vanilla Ice's concert at press-time.
The Luk Fook group has spent about $5million developing its youth brand and its current 'Ice Cool' advertising campaign in which a suitor is rudely seen off until he turns up with an Ice g gift - hardly the kind of sentiment to conjure up the romance of jewellery buying.