Making the Last Critical Shopping Days Count

Retail Jewelry Insights™ has stressed that decision-makers need information and good analysis of how changing events are likely to influence demand for the products they sell.  That knowledge is important in assessing risk and developing realistic plans to minimize it.  This issue of Retail Jewelry Insights is about practical retailing just before and after Christmas, a checklist of sorts to help maximize sales as the specialty jewelers business finishes up the last Christmas selling season of the millenniums first decade.


Current Trends
With fewer than 10 days remaining before Christmas, it would be fatuous to predict how the 2009 Holiday selling season will end.  Current trends are mixed.  According to the latest National Jeweler survey about “53 percent of jewelers reporting sales were either "very good" or "good," an improvement over Black Friday weekend results” as of the December 4-6 weekend.

In Another article JCK’s Rob Bates suggested that clear trends seemed to be dominating this year’s holiday selling season.  According to Bates, “several themes emerge from this holiday: 1) sales are uneven — good one day, bad the next; 2) independents seem more upbeat than the chains; 3) even those who are doing well are finding it a hard, exhausting fight; 4) this is shaping up as a better holiday than last year...”

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