Challenges to Sales Growth for
Guild Store Owners

This issue of Retail Jewelry Insights™ will focus on the challenges facing guild jewelry store owners in developing and sustaining profitable sales growth during the second decade of the millennium.

Specialty Jewelers Lose Market Share

Amazingly, 2009 market share declines may well have erased any sales benefit specialty jewelers derived from the closure of approximately 1,400 competitor’s stores in 2009. Despite a strong fourth quarter finish and continued gains in 2010, specialty jewelers have lost market share since 2008. If history repeats itself, better jewelers aren’t going to recoup that loss.

In fact, specialty jewelry market share has declined from nearly 73% in 1971 to about 46% today, a decrease of about 37%. Clearly, the loss wasn’t evenly distributed over the intervening years. However, the collective consequence of new formats, recessions, the growth of non jewelry store competitors, and the emergence of competing luxury products over the last four decades has eroded specialty jeweler’s dominance of the luxury gift category...

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