“What a strange but good show.” Just about everyone

Retailers heading into the 2021 holiday season are not entirely sure what to expect. Will retail continue to rebound? Will the Delta variant - or another variant - continue to disrupt valiant attempts to return to life as we knew it? And how does all this affect your inventory planning?

Retailers who sell their goods online are often faced with challenges that brick and mortar retailers never had to deal with before. These challenges include managing inventory, shipping, returns, customer service, and much more.

Apple recently introduced an iOS 14 update that had a significant impact on advertising performance, primarily on Facebook. This has put a dent in many advertisers' marketing performance.

This article originally ran in National Jeweler.

Everyone in the fine jewelry industry knows that disclosures are necessary. The legal requirements help keep consumers properly informed. But many industry professionals struggle with how best to handle them. So, we talked to industry experts to get some top-notch guidance.

In 2018, De Beers sent shockwaves through the industry by announcing it would begin selling lab-grown diamonds.  The diamond miner and marketer made the announcement just ahead of Las Vegas market week. It seemed at the time that De Beers was trying to ensure that lab-grown diamonds would be used only for fashion, likely to protect the value of mined diamonds. Did it work?

The commercial real estate market showed a lot of movement at the end of June, as retail players gobbled up available space.

We all thought preparing for the 2020 holidays was challenging, but forecasters are finding it even harder to predict what will happen in 2021.

The National Retail Federation recently released a “Retail Gets Real” podcast episode on consumer expectations of retail stores. 

The mobile device in your hand probably isn’t the same one you used in 2011.

A Guest Blog by Robert Hoberman, CPA, Managing Partner of
Hoberman & Lesser CPAs, LLP

If you’re planning to build your own website, you have several good options today – options that didn’t exist (or weren’t nearly as good) only 10 years ago.

Any proclamation that retail is dead is premature and uninformed. It’s true that retail has paid a hefty toll during the pandemic, and will continue to do so until it is well under control, but retail isn’t going away.

It’s just changing.

Guest Blog from GemLightBox

Digital connectivity matters now more than ever. 

Making changes to your business as a 2nd or 3rd generation jeweler can be hard, but if there’s one thing that all business gurus agree on, it’s that businesses of every size must evolve and grow if they want to remain viable.

Television producers that did not adopt color technology (and it was expensive!) did not survive. There’s a great parallel here to websites, and to jewelry platforms as well.

Having regularly refreshed, visually interesting content is one of the best ways to attract new customers to your website. 

As technology evolves, it becomes easier to customize and less expensive to own.

For less than the cost of one cup of coffee per day, you could make a powerful investment in your company's performance.

Prepare for video sales calls the same way you would for in-store appointments, and you’ll get better results every time.