Don’t Poke the Bear
There is no difference in rarity between a .50ct and a 2.00ct laboratory-grown synthetic diamond (in spite of what the sellers of synthetic diamonds will tell you). The cost to produce them is simply linear – time in the reactor = size of the cube. Period.
Exit
Is it a bad thing to not have a succession or exit plan in place or do you intend to be the one who turns out the lights – the last owners of your business?
Vaping
Watching a news program about the problems associated with Vaping, especially with young people, it dawned on me that we have our own Vaping issue: Carbon Vapor Disposition, or CVD man-made diamonds.
X + Y = People
In addition to what is an analytical thought process, try thinking about these... sales as customers, not items. Think about what you have to offer the thousands of people who want to buy from you... Merchandise for people...
Vanity, Sanity & Reality
I mentioned to him offhandedly...that we work with jewelers who have very impressive top line sales...with very low net profit as well as challenging cash flow, to which he simply said: “Vanity, Sanity & Reality”.
Forget Budgets!
When you think about the budgeting process (work with me here) you have to look back at your history, sales and margin trends and changes in expenses, inventory levels and profit. Zzzzzzzzzz… So, don’t look back, look forward.