It’s at times like these that it is really difficult to come up with a theme to blog on. The jewellery market gossip machine is either broken or it has been accidentally (or not ) switched off.
In terms of the overall market view from the retail point of view there doesn’t seem to be much happening, the rate of business’s going under seems to have quietened down which is a good sign and a relief.
I say relief because every time a company goes under not only is it a loss of jobs it’s also potentially a loss of skills to the jewellery trade. I know that this applies to all business sectors but the loss of skill is more intense in these type of situations this is because the jewellery business is very much an artisan/craft oriented market and as such is heavily dependent on highly skilled work forces to produce items and a lot of these skilled artisans are let’s say not getting any younger and are not being replaced by new blood at the same rate as they’re going, because there is a general consensus that it is not a safe market to learn a skill in, which to some extent is true. I’m sure that this would also ring true in other artisan skill dependent markets such as pottery, fine tailoring/textiles to name but a few.
I know we can all point the finger at the far east and try and blame them for our state of affairs but we must also take a long hard look at why so much business has gone their for it’s product manufacturing and I’m afraid it comes down to one simple factor, the cost of labour. we have simply priced ourselves out of our own market.
To put the blame anywhere or on any one is neither useful or beneficial in solving the problem at hand. In fact I feel it is way to late to solve this problem and that the best we can do is to try and deal with the situation we currently have and to try and slow the rate at which it is continuing to occur,(it isn’t going to go away folks by ignoring it) and I’ll be honest I don’t have a solution save drastically cutting our labour costs which we can’t do because our cost of living is so high in the UK.
It may be we need a radical shake up of the whole UK structure from the political level and banking level down and almost go back to square one and start again, this may be the only way we can regain any foothold in manufacturing and trading on the world stage,
Let’s face it folks we can’t go on selling insurance policies and services in the domestic market and survive as any kind of economy and the government being so tied up by EU bearucracy can’t help us and they seem to be unaware that we have almost no manufacturing of any real kind in the UK any more and even less exporting of UK made goods, even I’m guilty of that one which I do to survive in business.
The Boss
