Pandora Sinking?

The Canadian market tends to adopt trends later and keep them later than our US counterparts.  Following are the only four actual responses to a Rob Bates (JCK) article on Pandora’s “sinking revenues.”  Keep in mind that responses to blog posts tend only to be offered only by those with strong opinions, so this doesn’t represent the feelings of all Pandora dealers.

Thegildedartisan 
My Pandora sales are way down.  They seem to be missing out on the bead business, trying to build other lines.  People want new beads and they just don’t have them.

                 

Martinsmith21 My Pandra sales are way way down. Pandora has opened too many stores and has lost its mystique. It is no more something special.

                 

Harbinger08 We dumped Pandora a year and a half ago when we saw the writing on the wall. We were a dealer for 5 years and the first jeweler in our area. By the time we got rid of it there were 5 dealers, including Jared, and you could buy Pandora on Ebay for 40-50% off. We are so glad we got out when we did.

                 

Rktime Just another repeat of an old story. The brand uses the independent jeweler trade-class to set the stage, create a sense of quality, image, and retail success than uses those tools to expand the trade-class distribution into much bigger, higher volume, often discounted trade classes that can generate 100 X's the sales volume that the jewelery trade class can. No surprise. Too bad the retail jewelers don't learn from their continueing mistakes.  If they don't change their business model, they won't survive trying to battle the new trade classes. Compare the necessary working cost % of sales to the Independent jewelers and you'll see the reason. 

                                   

I’m not sure if anyone will be hugely surprised when similar sentiments begin showing in the Canadian market.  If Pandora does fall-off, I’ll actually miss it.  Now that many of my dealers have reached inventory plateaus and paid for shop-in-shops, they’re actually making net profits which are being used to build other product categories, such as mine.