The Choice Is Yours

Published

14 years ago

May 3, 2009

Pick a strategy and go with it. It’s you who will most determine how your year will be.

Hard to believe it’s June already. (Though I’m actually writing this in the first week in May, after eight years of this, I really do feel I live in a not-very-distant future where my "present" is the moment you crack open this magazine.)

So, let me say it again — it is hard to believe it’s June already.

By now, you’re probably emerging from the gloom of fall and winter — between Geithner’s "green shoots," the rebound of the stock market, and more sales (for the first time in 2009, the number of jewelers in our monthly business survey reporting that their business was the same or better was more than 50 percent). Then there was the energy and hopefulness shown at our own Smart Jewelry Show in Chicago in April.

(My mini-review: a great event, most notable for the incredibly positive attitudes of both the retailers and vendors attending. Were you all just showing "the instore spirit," or is it instore showing your spirit? See more online at www.instoremag.com/smartshow, or read what people learned from the show on page 103.)

Have you decided what kind of year it’s going to be? "The Era of New Austerity"? Or "Happy Days Are Here Again"?

How do you plan to play this year? Go aggressively to gain market share? Buy normally? Buy cautiously in case the "green shoots" were a false spring? Or will it be another year of The Turtle Strategy? (a.k.a. "I ain’t buying anything ’til I sell what I got.")

The right answer will be different in different markets. But whatever choice you make, commit to it and maintain your commitment to doing everything better.

Wishing you the very best business …

David Squires

dsquires@instoremag.com

Time for More “Me Time”? Time to Call Wilkerson

Rick White, owner of White’s & Co. Jewelry in Rogers, Ark., knew it was time to retire. Since the age of 18, jewelry had been his life. Now it was time to get that “me time” every retailer dreams about. So, he chose Wilkerson to manage his going-out-of-business sale. White says he’d done plenty of sales on his own, but this was different. “Wilkerson has been a very, very good experience. I’ve had the best salespeople in the history of jewelry,” he says. “I recommend Wilkerson because they are really the icon of the jewelry business and going-out-of-business sales. They’ve been doing it for decades. I just think they’re the best.”