Small and medium-sized businesses are rushing into the market. How big is the potential of the crystal jewelry market?
Shiny objects always make people lose their rationality. Pink quartz attracts romance, yellow quartz brings wealth, and green phantom boosts career. Crystal is like a wishing well that can accept all kinds of wishes of young people. It seems that as long as you wear it right, your career luck, love luck, and health luck can all be controlled.
In the current consumer market, a new trend is quietly surging. From Xiaohongshu to Douyin, and then to the live broadcast rooms of celebrities, crystal is becoming popular at a visible speed and has become a frequent item in young people's shopping carts. At the beginning of 2025, this phenomenon has become a hot topic of public concern, bringing a completely different impact, especially the changes in the crystal market are particularly significant.
The crystal market has shown a significant growth trend in recent years. According to Statista data, the global crystal jewelry market is expected to grow from US$1.29 billion in 2022 to US$22.83 billion in 2028, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.5%. This growth is mainly due to consumers' emphasis on the aesthetic value and symbolic significance of crystal, as well as the wide application of crystal in fashion and decoration.
In addition, the booming crystal market has brought new business opportunities to emerging industries such as live broadcast training and crystal healer certification, attracting a large number of young people to participate. This has not only injected new vitality into the crystal market, but also provided more employment and development opportunities for related practitioners.
01 / Crystal "metaphysics" explosion
Since ancient times, crystal has been endowed with mysterious energy and is regarded as a "feng shui stone" for luck, warding off evil spirits, seeking wealth, and praying for blessings. In both Eastern and Western cultures, the legend that crystal has energy has a long history. The ancient Egyptians believed that crystal could resist foreign enemies, and in China, crystal zodiac carvings were unearthed during the Spring and Autumn Period.
Among contemporary young people, crystal is not only seen as a decoration, but also as a life attitude and spiritual sustenance. The cost of crystal is relatively low, and the price is relatively affordable. Crystal has many attributes that conform to the current consumption trend - low-cost self-pleasing. In a sense, the popularity of crystal is also a "lipstick effect".
As crystal culture gradually becomes popular, more and more young consumers begin to pay attention to its aesthetic value and symbolic meaning. In particular, female consumers, as the main consumer group of crystal jewelry, have higher requirements for the cultural connotation and design sense of the product. Xiaoyou, a post-00s office worker, shared her experience of buying crystals, "In addition to blessing good luck, I am also impressed by the beauty of crystals. As a fashion accessory, it adds highlights to my outfit." Crystals are rich in colors, and naturally formed transparent and dazzling crystals can be mixed and matched with crystals of different colors and materials and accessories to make unique customized bracelets.
In addition, through social media and online platforms, crystals are favored by users at home and abroad. On TikTok overseas, videos with the tag #crystals# have accumulated 6.2 billion views, while videos with the tag #crystal healing# have nearly 4 billion views; in China, users on social platforms also have a high degree of discussion about crystal products, and on the social media Xiaohongshu, the popularity of crystal-related topics is surprisingly high. The number of views of the topic #水晶# alone reached 2.23 billion, and there are more than 5,000 notes related to the content related to "Crystal's Complete Benefits".
Various celebrity anchors and experts have been promoting crystal products in their live broadcast rooms. For example, the matrix live broadcast room of Make Friends has added an account called "Make Friends Light Luxury Real Affordable Selection", which currently mainly promotes crystal jade products. Data shows that in the past 30 days, "Make Friends Light Luxury Real Affordable Selection" has conducted 35 live broadcasts with products, of which 32 are crystal-specific live broadcasts. Most of the crystals on the shelves are popular products such as Super Seven and Green Phantom, which are around 100 yuan. The estimated sales volume is as high as 5 million to 7.5 million. In addition, celebrities such as Xu Yiyang, Yi Nengjing, and Yu Zheng have also joined the ranks of crystal promotion, further boosting the market's popularity.
02 / Small and medium-sized businesses rush into the market
The crystal market has been further boosted, and a number of small and medium-sized businesses have also joined in. In addition to batch production, the business of customizing crystal bracelets has also emerged among businesses.
On social media, some small and medium-sized businesses that are good at attracting traffic have already generated explosive sales in the customized crystal category after only three or four months of entering the market. Li Jin also caught up with this trend. She said that since August, she has found that there are more and more crystal-related marketing, and the main feature is that it is tied to the zodiac, eight characters, chakras and other metaphysics. As a practitioner of astrolabe tarot, she decisively entered the customized crystal market.
Like most beginners, after a series of screenings, she chose an offline crystal healing training institution. She told us that the courses are mainly offline, including clearing negative energy, identifying crystals of different textures, singing bowl healing, etc. The training class consists of 10-15 people, and the offline class is one hour per week. The total cost is about 10,000 yuan. Everyone has a different entry period. It took Li Jin only about a week to master the quality and appearance of crystals.
Due to the accumulation of previous star plate customers, she closed her first order on the third day of her crystal business. "There are all kinds of people in this business. Some people can't make a single order in three months, while others have become very popular in three months." Unlike some crystal bracelets that are sold in large quantities in live broadcast rooms, customized bracelets often need to be customized and matched according to the specific situation of the customer, and the price generally ranges from 200 yuan to several thousand yuan. Take Li Jin as an example. Her customization process is to match the energy for the customer through the star plate, and then "bless" after confirming the communication plan. She mentioned: "The cost of a customized blessing is more than 2,000 yuan."
Donghai County, Jiangsu Province, is the largest crystal market in China and the raw material distribution center of natural crystal in the world. The crystals here are sold all over the world and also to major crystal live broadcast rooms in China. Li Jin's crystal raw materials also come from here. In the chain of crystal business, the first step is to pull stones from the mine for original processing. This part of raw materials is often calculated by tons; the next step is that wholesalers give the supply to second-hand and third-hand dealers, and then supply them to major live broadcast rooms and small and medium-sized retailers.
The profits of crystal customization and even the entire industry may depend more on quality and pricing. For example, the recent crystal live broadcast of actress Xu Yiyang has caused controversy over the high price. Li Jin said that as a non-standard product, the price of crystal bracelets varies greatly. "In some online celebrity customization shops, ordinary golden quartz can be sold for more than 8,000 yuan, but this quality can be sold for about 2,000 yuan here."
03 / How big is the potential of the crystal market?
In recent years, there has been a wave of pursuit of physical and mental health around the world, and people are increasingly interested in natural therapies and spiritual pursuits, which has brought unprecedented development opportunities to the crystal jewelry market. According to Grand View Research data, the crystal jewelry market in North America is expected to reach US$8.1 billion by 2025, and in Europe it will reach US$6.5 billion. The demand for crystal jewelry in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in China and India, is growing rapidly, and is expected to become the main driving force for the growth of the global crystal jewelry market in the next few years.
Faced with this huge business opportunity, the tentacles of modern business are rapidly extending. Domestic and foreign brands are pouring into the market to compete for a limited market share. For example, in October 2024, the entry of TikTok and JD Logistics into the crystal market brought new development opportunities to Donghai County, which is rich in crystal, and opened the era of full-hosting of crystal cross-border e-commerce. Official data show that the crystal transaction volume in Donghai County has climbed to 41.2 billion yuan last year, of which the overseas market accounted for as much as 65%. The United States and Southeast Asia, with sales accounting for 40% and 35% respectively, have become the main export bases for Donghai crystal.
From the perspective of market development prospects, the crystal market has certain positive trends.
On the one hand, the change in consumers' aesthetic concepts has led to personalized needs becoming the mainstream, which will bring more development opportunities to the crystal market. In order to meet the individual and diversified needs of consumers, merchants will continue to explore and innovate in product design, materials, and craftsmanship; on the other hand, technological progress is conducive to the development and production of crystal products, which can improve product quality, increase output and reduce costs, thereby expanding market demand.
In this process, there are also some undesirable phenomena. The phenomenon of using metaphysical concepts to sell ordinary crystals at high prices has existed for a long time, and this phenomenon is getting worse. Li Mingzhu, an expert in appraisal from the Crystal Industry Association, said, "From the perspective of the entire crystal industry, the profit margins of merchants vary greatly, ranging from 20% to 2000%."
At the same time, in terms of industry standards, crystal products currently lack classification and grading standards, and there are no special service standards. The lack of a unified standard system is destined to make it difficult to achieve breakthrough development. "Facing the challenges and risks of the crystal market, improving product quality and consumer trust is the key to future development. Crystal merchants should pay attention to product quality control to ensure the authenticity and value of the crystals they sell." Li Mingzhu said.
Some people say that the popularity of crystal is a "victory of metaphysics", while others say it is due to "emotional value". On the surface, it seems to be the popularity of metaphysical culture, but in fact it is the pursuit of emotional value by young people. Smart businesses know how to make good products and how to provide users with full emotional value.