Seventy Percent Off What?

Our business is a couple miles east of a big box chain store. They have a jewelry counter in all of their stores and if you observe them you will see that they always have a "sale" on their "fine jewelry" which ranges anywhere from 30% to 70% off. Such discounts beg the question: 70% off of what? Is the customer really "saving" 70% of his or her shopping dollar or is it just another example of boderline deceptive advertising?
This company has a chain of stores in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. In the year 2006 the chain sold over 170 MILLION dollars of jewelry and watches. Do you really think that a company selling that kind of volume can stay in business by discounting their jewelry 70%? You do not need a degree in accounting to realize that the only way a business can consistently sell things with massive "discounts" is to put grossly inflated price tags on the items to begin with.
A huge corporation is not going to be able to meet their overhead (pay employees, taxes, insurance, building maintenence, etc. etc.) by truly discounting 70%. They cannot keep the doors open if they sell you a $1,000.00 pair of diamond earrings for just $300.00. What you are getting is a $300.00 pair of earrings for $300.00. Many times you actually pay too much for the mass produced, shoddy quality jewelry they sell. We regularly turn away business from people who want rings they bought there sized for the simple reason that we do not want to touch the rings - the gold shanks are too thin or the gemstones are not secure in the mountings. We guarantee our repairs and we cannot stand behind any work done on merchandise that was shoddy to begin with.

We had a young lady crying in our showroom because her boyfriend bought her an engagement ring there that was a size 7 and she wore a 4.5. We explained that we could not size the ring because of the poor construction - she cried in frustration because she had been told the same thing by 4 other independent jewelery stores.
Don't be fooled by this kind of advertising.

BIG NEWS!  J C Penney is putting an end to this kind of BS advertising at their stores! Halleluiah! They are dropping all prices by 40% and giving up on all the "sales" they used to have. Read about it here:
j-c-penney-ends-sales-binges

Comments

SheRidesABeemer said…
It's a shame they don't teach critical thinking skills in school. Too many people don't get what you're talking about - and it impacts your business 'cause your stuff is "full price".
Big Red Dawg said…
Take a look at the verbage used in the JC Penney ad. They admit that the "regular" prices are meaningless - they might not have ever sold any at that price and might not even have had the jewelry tagged at the "regular" price.

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