Shane CoMy apologies for such a delay between blog entries; retail in December is nothing short of crazy.
I am currently writing from an airport Starbucks in Kentucky. I have finished my Christmas week of selling in our Louisville store.
A lot of the people at the Shane Co. home office travel to our stores quite extensively throughout the year (as I mentioned in my previous blog post) but Christmas week is a whole different animal. There is no time for the normal dinners with the team after the store closes for the night. No long management meetings evaluating the store’s performance. There’s really not much time for anything but selling…and I absolutely love it!
Having spent the past seven days in our store in Louisville, and having visited five stores in five cities in the past three weeks, I was able to speak to several dozen customers across the country. Besides helping them with their jewelry purchase, we always end up speaking about more general topics, such as the economy.
In general, most of the people that I spoke to are all tending to feel like things are trending for the better, economically speaking. The feeling seems to be that while unemployment remains high, those with jobs are comfortable that they will be able to keep their jobs. There was mention that Ford, a large employer here in Louisville, just announced that they were adding a new model to be built here locally, instead of the alternative which was to be (I believe) in Mexico. This is a small sample size, and a single example of course, but the overall sentiment appears to be positive with our consumer group.
I’ve noticed more positive newspaper headlines lately as well, whereas over the past several years, media reports have been primarily negative.
Of course, most economic fundamentals are factual, and scientific in nature…but I believe that whether people are feeling uncertain or optimistic about the economy, those feelings influence their spending; when optimism generally takes hold, as it appears to be, it leads to an overall rebuilding of a strong economy. This “soft analysis” (newspaper headlines, speaking to our customers, etc…) regarding people’s sentiments, is where I’m seeing the most improvements.
This is a very strong country, filled with very strong people, and I’m excited to see, hear, and feel better about the way the economy is headed.
My favorite news headline of the week, but on this one I’m of course biased, has to be that Shane Co. formally emerged from bankruptcy, strong and intact. This story is of course another good story across publication headlines.
Happy Holidays, and a very happy, healthy New Year. Enjoy the time with loved ones, and we’ll chat next year.
Anna Gionet