Excellent product quality alone can help family-run jewellers stay afloat: Anup Bhatnagar, Owner, Swarn Tarash Jewellers

Customer loyalty, the trump card for standalone jewellers, has gone forever with the advent of the millennial customer. This generation is more interested in making their purchase from the branded stores and behaves differently there. For instance, no one bargains at branded stores but to stand-alone jewellers, bargaining is part and parcel of any transaction.

This reduces the profit margins of independent jewellers, who have no other option but to compromise with the quality of the product. The retailers will have to look for cheaper inventories in the market because of the low budget. Therefore, a standalone jeweller will have less variety and regular designs to show and earn reasonable profit from.

This shrinks margins acutely and harms business sustenance. Such compromises are a trap; it eventually degrades the jewellers’ reputation. It leads to the customer opting for branded stores forever and pushing the other party towards a dead end.

With time, the legalities and formalities have increased manifold in the jewellery business. Unlike previous times, when the family members could jointly run the business, a well-equipped team is the need of the hour. So, the costs have definitely increased for the single store jewellers.

With the increase in gold prices, the sales volume has shrunk and retailers, in order to maintain the sales volume, give huge discounts on the rates which are not beneficial for the retailers. They’ll need to accept the fact that the sales of the brands will always be higher because of high investments.

Instead, retailers should build a position of strength were they should be confident enough to tell customers that they can compare their products with that of any other brand. They should give confidence to the customers that they will get the same quality of a branded store at the family-run jeweller’s store.

One advantage the family-run jeweller has over a branded jeweller is that the former’s products are always cheaper.  Even today, 70% of the customers compare prices before buying jewellery. So, great quality of jewellery and a reasonable price will be a win-win situation for both the buyers and the jewellers. Otherwise, branded stores will push independent jewellers out of competition slowly and gradually.

As told to Manoj Chakraborty