Introducing The Vibe
The Vibe is designed to give retailers exclusive and regular access to independent jewelry store sell-through stats. It is meant to help you better run your business.
How do we gather this info?
Our Edge Pulse program pulls sales data (anonymously, of course) from nearly 1000 retailers - totaling more than $5 billion in annual sales. No one else in the jewelry industry has this breadth.
We plan to send The Vibe out the 2nd week of every month.
For those of you with Edge Pulse, you can access this data anytime. For more info on Edge Pulse, click here.
Cheers,
Sherry Smith and The Edge Retail Academy Team
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The Vibe Stats
Let's start with the stats. The sell-through data below was collected from Market Trends (last 21 days) in Edge Pulse, ending December 31, 2018.
Commentary (what the numbers mean...)
Mastercard, which bases its SpendingPulse report on a combination of aggregate sales activity and surveys,reports that jewelry sales were up 3.7% over the holidays and overall retail sales were up 5.1% over the same period.
The Edge Retail Academy data shows that independent jeweler’s holiday sales were down slightly (-3.1%) for the last 21 days in December.
Retailers should look at both the national trends as well as the independent jewelry trends to gauge their own holiday performance.
We continue to see a decline in overall units, but an increase in the average retail sale.
Lower price points (silver and alt metals) appear to be taking the biggest overall hit, suggesting that independents are focusing their efforts on fine jewelry, particularly in the diamond category.
Sherry