Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from March, 2018

Fine Jewelry in 2018 - In Trouble and Drifting

This year has been, if anything, disorienting.  We keep thinking that things should happen in the same way that they have happened in the past, even given the business cycles.  But somehow, they have not, even though the US economy, and the low unemployment figures, keep telling us that things are all moving in the right direction.  GDP is up, the stock market has hit record highs almost every day until recently, consumers are spending and credit card debt is rising (though that may not be that good!), and so forth.  And yet, the diamond and jewelry business seems stuck in a rut. If we are to develop progressive business policies, we need to look closely at market realities, especially those that we should accept as fundamental, not cyclical, trends.  So here are some thoughts. Retail as we have known it is rapidly disappearing.   We have lived through countless revolutions and evolutions in retailing over the last decades.  This one is different in scale and impact.  Large chain