Take a Moment

Published

15 years ago

February 10, 2009

And then get up, dust yourself off and get back to being the very best you can be.

The holidays are over. Hype has quieted, dust has settled, prognoses and forecasts have become history, fears and hopes are now reality. Here’s the new reality. According to INSTORE’S latest Brain Squad survey, more than 70 percent of you saw your business go down in December. And nearly 40 percent of you saw your business go way down (25 percent or more) in December.

So … we’re in it. While it may not be Great Depression 2, it’s pretty darned depressing, nonetheless. Many of us — in fact, most of us — have lost some ground and it’s going to take time to regain it.

To express our pain and frustration, let’s all moan together for one minute. Or depending on your preference, cry, sob, roar like a lion, howl like a wolf. We prefer to moan in the manner of a ghost floating through a misty, moonless forest.

Ready? (Mooooaaannnn.)

OK, finished. Hopefully, that made you feel a bit better. It did us. Because right now, there’s only one thing that we can do — and that’s to pick ourselves up off the pavement, scrub the tire marks off our foreheads, and get back to being the very best we can be.

To help get you started, read “Best of the Best” on page 56. In it, we present six jewelers whose benchmark behaviors will hopefully get the juices of inspiration going inside you again. Study this story for ideas on being the smartest, leanest, most efficient, most innovative, most memorable jewelry store that you can be.

Let’s get ’em back!

Wishing you the very best business …

DAVID SQUIRES
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER
dsquires@instoremag.com

When There’s No Succession Plan, Call Wilkerson

Bob Wesley, owner of Robert C. Wesley Jewelers in Scottsdale, Ariz., was a third-generation jeweler. When it was time to enjoy life on the other side of the counter, he weighed his options. His lease was nearing renewal time and with no succession plan, he decided it was time to call Wilkerson. There was plenty of inventory to sell and at first, says Wesley, he thought he might try to manage a sale himself. But he’s glad he didn’t. “There’s no way I could have done this as well as Wilkerson,” he says. Wilkerson took responsibility for the entire event, with every detail — from advertising to accounting — done, dusted and managed by the Wilkerson team. “It’s the complete package,” he says of the Wilkerson method of helping jewelers to easily go on to the next phase of their lives. “There’s no way any retailer can duplicate what they’ve done.”