If you are shopping for a piece of fine jewelry it won’t be long (minutes) before somebody is claiming to be giving you a great deal or a huge discount. Most of the time the discount or deal is fictitious; the use of misleading sales pitches and deceptive advertising designed to divert your attention away from what you are getting to what you are supposedly saving, is a major problem that has undermined the integrity of the jewelry industry.
It is not that there are not some good buys out there, there is, but they are not as frequent or as wide spread as it would seem. The purpose of this installment of my Top Ten is to help you sift through the come-ons and false claims of savings so you can recognize a good value when you see it.
Have you ever seen a car dealer run 50% OFF the entire inventory of new cars every day? No, of course not. As much as we would all love that, they can’t discount a car 50% and they can’t get away with pricing a $30,000 car at $60,000 and giving you a “50%” discount. Of course this entire scenario sounds ridiculous, but it is what goes on every day in the jewelry business; because for the most part jewelry is a non branded item it is easy for some retailer to make claims of huge discounts based on inflated prices. Be wary of anyone claiming a 30% or larger discount everyday. The jewelry is over marked and no real discount exists. Most likely you are actually paying a premium for the jewelry.
Some jewelers don’t rely on 70% off banners in their stores to mislead you; but instead claim to sell “wholesale” to the public. This is simply just not true; if you are selling to the public, you are selling retail. More times than not the “wholesaler” is selling inferior quality jewelry at the going retail rate and relying on an inflated appraisal (more on this in my Top Ten on appraisals) to “prove” the savings.
The perception that the Internet is holy grail of great jewelry deals because nobody has any overhead and thus can offer prices that no traditional jeweler can ever match is widespread. This may have been true in the early days of e-commerce, but today the costs of running an on-line business are equal too any bricks and mortar operation. I know, I have both. The problem with buying on the Internet is you can't see what you are buying. No matter how good the photo is, no matter how great the price looks, you can not comparison shop off the Internet. You have no real idea what you are actually getting until the jewelry shows up and more times that not, the actual product is not the deal it looked like on-line.
So how do you tell a really good buy from some hyped up piece of crap with a fake discount? There are several ways to recognize a good buy. First and foremost is to educate yourself on fine jewelry and it's pricing. You need to become familiar with truly fine jewelry to be able to spot a beautiful piece vs a poor quality one.
As I mentioned earlier in this post be wary of any claim of huge discounts everyday on virtually the entire inventory, its is very simply impossible to offer 20,40,50% all the time with out padding the pricing.
Anybody claiming to be wholesale to the public, or claims to be selling you, the consumer, wholesale is lying, PERIOD. What else would they be willing to lie about?
Many good stores, mine included, will from time to time have an inventory reduction sale, moving sale or just a good old fashioned legitimate sale. These promotions last from a couple of days to several weeks and although they are time sensitive you can find some truly great buys.
Better jewelers will often have a sale case, or some sale items displayed in the cases. We also post jewelry on sale on our web-sites and new for us an e-bay store.
The key is comparison shopping and being able to recognize a good buy when you see one. Many times the best buy is not even on "sale". A few years ago Jody (my wife) and I went shopping for a nice bed frame. On our way to the store we like to shop at Jody suggested we check out the "discount" store (on TV 24/7 screaming about the huge savings) on the way. I hate shopping but said OK. We actually found a bed (to my surprise) that was very nice with a price of about $1500.00 after the discounts. It seemed like a reasonable price, but we decided (despite the salesman telling us not to pass up this great buy) to continue on to our original destination. The store we where heading to is not a discount store, as a matter of fact it is considered upscale (great quality) and quite expensive (which it is not). We found, at this "expensive" store, the identical bed (same brand and item number) for $1200.00, not on sale, the price non-negotiable.
Till next time that is how I see the world of jewelry from Rochester, NY
David West Nytch CGA www.westandcompany.com
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