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