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Showing posts from May, 2018

Fine Jewelry in 2018 - Suppliers in Transition

Suppliers are regularly in turmoil over how to respond to the significant shifts in distribution and consumption.  It should be noted that many suppliers are far upstream, and feel the realities of the front lines last. We already see that upcoming technological and demographic changes are causing distress at the retail counter, and we covered some of that in the last blog.  Suppliers have been forced to make changes in their modalities, sometimes painfully.  What factors are at work: The number of retail operations is shrinking, and so are the number of outlets.  That means fewer retailers as customers available. The market has been forced to adapt fully to the fact that the US is a very mature market, and has been way over-stored for a long time. What might have been a more gradual adjustment to supply and demand (fewer stores to serve a stable, slow-growth market) has been radically accelerated by Internet marketing. Internet marketing puts everyone on a service-oriented pl