Is Gems and Jewellery Retail affected by crisis?

If you're reading this, you are either a jewellery retailer yourself or you are a part of Gems and Jewellery industry. In any case, this article is going to talk about some important factors about on-going myths around market condition. I recommend you to read until the end to get a complete gist of it and encourage you to leave your feedback at the end. 

I have been continuously receiving updates from various business owners of Gems and Jewellery Retail industry, regarding the slow down in the market due to multiple reasons. The first and prominent factor is souring high prices of the metal, coupled with high volatility in the prices, resulting in reduced client footfalls in the stores. 

Secondly, the impact of global slow down, due to impact of Corona Virus and multiple isolation, has certainly limited the free movement of the goods across the places. Since the transport has become a concern, the industry is not moving the way it should be, again resulting in the slow down of the overall business. 

Certainly these are the days of concern and caution. However, these are just the "days", neither "months" nor "years" of worry. This period of slow down is NOT permanent and is just here for a few days. Hence, here's what all the jewellery retailers need to do, in my opinion, when the footfalls are declining every day. 

Tip #1: Stop discussing market condition with fellow members

Yes, I am 100% sure that the discussions of poor market conditions are NOT going to change even 0.001% of the present scenario despite you talking to every single person walking to you. Instead, it amplifies your stress and burden and distracts you from a certain obvious solution to pull your brand out of this crisis. Let us TRY to avoid as much gossips as possible and FOCUS on the business most of the time. 

Tip #2: When SALEs decrease, SKILLs should improve

While reading above point, you would have had a thought "How can I focus, when I don't have enough work load?" Or "Our salesmen are almost sitting idle these days". Think for a moment, isn't this the BEST time to upgrade the SKILLS of yourself along with your team? If you upgrade your SKILLS now, it will upgrade your SALES tomorrow. Here are some things you could work upon: 

1. Train your sales team for Digital Marketing 
2. Train your accounts team for cloud based inventory management
3. Train yourself with Data Analytics for better decision making: Gone are the days when decisions made on the traditional insights were always true. Currently, we need more data and analytical skills coupled with business insights. Only market knowledge and experience won't help. If you don't take data driven decisions, you risk the future of your brand. 
4. Train your Marketing team with salesmanship : This is very essential because often the marketing guys don't know what the customers want and they end of marketing inefficiently for the brand. That hampers the brand value significantly. I would rather suggest to use this time to give your marketing team a hands-on experience of sales, so that they can also learn what customers want. You could afford to do this only during the slow-down, because you cannot experiment during the peak seasons. 

Tip #3: Invest when the market is slow

This proverb is relevant even in the retail industry. You need to invest in technology, invest in up-gradation, invest in training, invest in inventory and invest in future expansion, when market is steady or slowing down. Only if you do it now, you will be able to reap the fruits of that when the market is bullish. If you try to invest in the highly progressive market, you will end up paying a hefty premium amount with a lesser ROI. The normal investors try to SELL when the market is slow, the great businessmen actually INVEST. Are you willing to invest in technology? If yes, how aggressive on investing on technology? Again, digitising your inventory or installing just a POS (Point-of-Sale) machine isn't just enough. You need to invest in the things that will give you multifold results in coming 2 years. 

Investing in Technology is the key factor because technology is going to drive your sales in less than 24 months from now. How prepared are you for the same? Are you equipped with a technological upgradation of jewellery retail? Or are you going to repeat the story of the companies like Kodak or Nokia or Blackberry, which, despite being the giants of their industries, had to shut their shops because they did not align themselves for technology at the right time. By the time they tried to upgrade themselves, it was already too late. Hence, it's my sincere request and recommendation to Adopt new Technology of Retail. 

Here's a check-list of things you can implement immediately: 

1. Create a whatsApp business account
2. Start promoting your brand through social media (Ofcourse, with engaging content. Sending a Jewellery design every day is not just enough)
3. Build your E-commerce website (It doesn't cost much if you think of it's return.)
4. Implement virtual jewellery Try-On (Use JewelTRY to increase client engagement) 
5. Create Digital Catalogues and share them with clients

I am sure that this time is very temporary and it is a GREAT opportunity to invest in building our strength, so that, when the market is aggressive again, we are ready to reap the fruits and fulfill the market demand without a single day of delay. 

I once again urge all the jewellery retailers to relax and reflect upon the upgradation plan they need to stay ahead of competition in coming months. Do something extra-ordinary to get extra-ordinary returns. 

In the end, I'd like to give away something. If you have a plan to move DIGITAL and want to review that plan and get insights on the same, I'd be happy to review and share insights, at FREE of COST. (Click Here to reach out to me)

Kindly share your story with me and any other insights you have so that we can learn from you.