Almost every client and business associate who stops by asks me “How’s business?” and gives me a long earnest look…inevitably waiting for my miserable reply. The short sweet truth is that business has been very STEADY! We aren’t paying college tuitions early, in full, or maxing the 401k’s but, we have been keeping busy. Overall purchases of new items has fallen at the national average in our industry (I should say for stores similar to ours in size and style) of about 30% yet, our special orders, custom designs and repairs have jumped 40%! Easy to figure when folks are paying more attention to maintaining their precious jewels and using old, scrap gold to fund new design work. Many clients are stunned when they bring in a small bag of broken or mismatched gold items and find out that their stash is worth as much or more than the price to design a new piece!
One of the other reasons we have been keeping busy is that the retail jewelry landscape in Southwest Florida has changed rapidly in the last year. We are preparing for an exciting 25th anniversary year and many jewelry retailers are closing. We have also been meeting many new clients who have stopped in other stores with a particular request or difficult repair, only to be turned away from them because that store can’t do the work! We have been very fortunate in that we have kept every single one of our talented staff on board to be absolutely sure that when you walk in our doors, the best trained jewelry experts will be assisting you. Thank you for all of your friends and family that you have referred.
Many of you know that I am a tireless flag waver for keeping your business local, if at ALL possible, and I mentioned earlier about our upcoming 25th anniversary so I want to drop a subtle hint that our celebration plans will begin this October and will involve local businesses and clients of ours that own local businesses….stay tuned for more.