THE MAJORITY OF jewelers anticipate their “best ever” or “better than average” sales for 2021, according to the 2021 Big Survey results.
The annual survey found that some 40 percent of jewelry stores expected 2021 to be a once-in-a-decade year for sales, while a further 40 percent expected it to be better than the previous 10-year average.
Just 6 percent predicted that 2021 would be “worse than average.”
“Jewelry has been a major benefactor of this pandemic in that people weren’t able to spend luxury dollars on other things such as travel,” one jewelry store owner told the survey.
Other sector players said that uncertainty and pandemic lockdowns had unleashed bottom-line cuts and creativity that fed into a profitable 2021 retail recovery.
“There’s always room to cut the fat and become a leaner and meaner machine,” said a Big Survey respondent.
“We were surprised that things didn’t shut down for us but rather increased … [because] we immediately reacted by going online and generating orders,” said another respondent.
The 2021 Big Survey was carried out between August and September, attracting more than 600 anonymous responses from owners of independent jewelry stores across the United States and Canada. The full results will be published in the upcoming November issue of INSTORE.