[Jewelry making - Article 01156] - Re: [Orchid] Hagglers at your jewelry booth

[Richard Hart]

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>     For those of you raising your prices just so you can discount it,
>     in my book this is at best ambiguously unethical (at worst
>     downright unethical). 

    Bargaining is cultural for some. There also is a social aspect.
    Negotiation is a skill. It can be pleasant interaction with another
    human where you both feel like it was a win-win. Play the game anyway
    you want. That is all business is. A game where we move stuff around.
    Smoke and mirrors. Some people were raised to bargain. Not to long
    ago negotiating the price of a new automobile was common practice. 

    This subject gets so blown out of proportion. When I bought my house,
    my real estate agent got the price down by $5000 from what was being
    asked. Day of closing he negotiated another $5000 discount because of
    work that was going to be needed to be done. 

    Setting the price that you want and being able to have a little
    leeway is hardly "ambiguously unethical". 

    There was a news program, they sent men and women to get car repair
    estimates. guess who got higher prices? Seems like a smart woman
    would at least consider bargaining if she thought it was possible
    that whether intended or not, she was getting a higher price than a
    man would. 

    Perhaps it is just being able to be flexible rather than ridgid. It
    is not life or death. If it was such a moral issue tell your customer
    to feed the poor instead of buying a bauble. 

    Maybe it is just me, but the way things are going in this country
    with our economy, it might become necessary to negotiate. I have been
    planning to get a long term lease on the property I rent for my
    business, and I will be asking for a short term freeze on my rent. My
    business is down quite a bit from last year. In my first post about
    this I mentioned I told my staff not to discount now because metal
    prices are so high we cannot replace at the same price. In effect if
    we do not reprice all the jewelry they are getting a discount. When
    some have asked if we can do better that is what they are told. 

    What would be interesting would be if there was some way to track who
    does better in the long run, those that discount or those that do
    not. When the economy was better a few years ago, if someone bought
    $300 of sterling jewelry, there were times I would give them a
    discount without them asking. Perhaps it is just my imagination, but
    I feel people get warmer towards me when I am nice to them, and a
    discount seems to qualify as nice thing to do. 

    I do not know if could make more money by not discounting, but I am
    really clear about how many repeat and loyal customers I have.
    Crossed my mind recently that because I am flexible, people will
    come to me when times are not good as they know I will do what I can
    to try to make things easier. I have told some people that I give
    discounts too that something they are looking at cannot be
    discounted. They are always fine with that. 

    If a customer seems really interested in something and it is a high
    enough dollar value, I have closed many sales by waiting as long as
    I could to see if I can close them without discounting and to move
    toward closing, I would offer a discount either to get the person to
    commit, to get them to purchase two items they cannot make up their
    mind which one to chose, or my time is more valuable then the small
    amount I lose in discounting just to get them out of my store. 

    I do not confuse bagaining with self worth or self esteem. Just the
    way I roll. Good food, rock and roll, make jewelry. I look forward to
    going to work every day. 

Richard Hart
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