Understanding Change
Leads to Performance Improvement
Part 1 of 3
KEY POINTS FOR THIS SERIES OF RETAIL JEWELRY INSIGHTS™
Specialty jewelry store sales growth to date has been influenced by changes in consumer expectations and perceptions about different competitors in the marketplace. Specialty jewelry store performance has also been affected by the consumer’s unanticipated reaction to cumulative changes in specialty retailer’s merchandising, marketing, and operational practices including 1) one-time changes due to sales declines caused by the “Great Recession” and 2) equally unexpected reactions to previously successful merchandising, pricing, marketing, advertising, and promotional strategies.
What is becoming apparent is that specialty jewelry store operators cannot assume that what once worked successfully, will be equally successful today. Assuming some of the traditional drivers of sales and profitability for specialty retail jewelers is no longer effective, while others are less efficient, understanding the effects of change is a key first step in developing solutions to improve business performance and mitigate other forces that are inhibiting specialty jewelry businesses from achieving full performance potential.
Decision-makers must 1) put in place methods to identify, continuously, business strengths and weakness, 2) plan processes to develop solutions to problems that arise from change, and 3) find ways to manage and integrate those solutions into the businesses operating practices much faster than in the past. For an in depth discussion about how understanding change can lead to performance improvement, read the entire article.
This issue of RJI is the first of a three part series discussing change and the effects on jewelry retailing in the U.S. market place.
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder of Facebook said, “It’s tough to say, exactly, what things will look like in three to five years, but there's a lot of work to do in just moving along the path that we've already set out”. Likewise, for most business owners and managers the issues foremost on their mind is not where their business will be in a half decade, but where the enterprise will be in three to five months. However, given the scope and scale of change in the marketplace today, is that the most risk free perspective?
Today, change is the rule, not the exception. Driven in part by internal jewelry industry change due to technology, how product is made as well as what, where, and the way we buy goods and services changes faster than say ten years ago. Now, owners and business managers can expect leading competitors to either introduce or creatively apply new technology every year to create new product, enhance services, and improve productivity. The effects of change are evident in all parts of the supply chain and none more so than at the retail store level. That statement may come as a surprise for some, but consider this. Today jewelers not only can offer products for sale in traditional bricks and mortar locations, but over the internet via a website or an iPhone like application...
