More than 500 U.S. jewelry retailers went out of business in the first three quarters of 2009, according to a report by the Jewelers Board of Trade. That pace is up 14 percent from the same period in 2008. These figures are based on a database of jewelery businesses not individual stores.
The rest of 2009 promises more of the same. The International Diamond Exchange’s (IDEX) Online Research estimates the U.S. market will lose over 700 speciality jewelry businesses this year. However, that’s actually a good sign. IDEX points out that at the beginning of this year, it was forecasting the market could shrink by more than 1000 jewelry businesses. A slowdown in failures over the summer—historically the peak period for jewelry retail store closings—helped to moderate the contraction.
While this year’s business closure rate is running 20 percent ahead of 2007 and 2008, IDEX states that’s “about in line” with the average annual loss of 688 specialty jewelry businesses for the past decade. 2009’s failures are offset somewhat by the more than 185 stores that opened through the end of August, cutting the total number of retail jewelery businesses in operation less than two percent on a net basis. Overall, the level of closings “has not been dramatically higher than in prior boom or bust periods, as many people had expected,” concludes IDEX.