Sales Strategy

Jimmy De Groot: The Bag of Peas is Getting Smaller December 20, 2024 (0 comments)

Green Bay, WI--A jeweler recently asked Kyle Bullock and me how his store can deal with inflation. We are currently discussing this subject at length in our SLOW GROWTH BUSINESS PODCAST. In the last podcast I brought up how my wife is constantly ticked off at the shrinking size of our grocery packaging and contents while the price continues to rise.

Now one fortunate aspect of the jewelry business is that the buying cycle is longer than the one-week grocery cycle, thus price increases are hardly noticeable to customers. So when you do need to charge more for your wedding bands, customers tend to take into account that prices have risen pretty much everywhere.  

But what’s important to understand here is that you cannot operate your business in stagnancy out of fear that customers will cease visiting you if you raise your prices. I know of jewelers who are charging 1995 prices for watch batteries and sizings for this very reason. I’ve actually seen the price sheets!

So, the second step in dealing with inflation after realizing your true current cost of doing business (from the last article) is to determine that you are going to raise your prices to achieve a healthy margin so that you can pay yourself.

 In the next article we’ll begin discussing how you can do this and communicate it positively to your customers. In the meantime, your homework is to shed your fears of losing customers due to inflation. To stay in fear is a sign of going out of business.

James (Jimmy) DeGroot is a professional jewelry sales and operations trainer from the jeweler’s side of the counter. Having been in management and the jewelry business for over 20 years, Jimmy offers weekly training to jewelers nationwide via the Train Retail website. Jimmy is an AGS titleholder and specializes in training relevant and timely methods for jewelry teams. He can do a full training on making Bridal Presentations the best they can be, among many other regular training options. Contact Jimmy at jimmy@trainretail.com or call 920-492-1191.