The Real Cost of a Diamond?

I recently visited my in laws to be in the Midlands. It was lovely to see Ella’s parents but this visit had another special reason. With my wedding looming, we decided to visit the famous district of Birmingham called ‘Jewellery Quarter’ to find our ultimate wedding bands.

If your not familiar with Jewellery Quarter, it’s Europe’s largest concentration of businesses involved in the jewellery trade, which produce 40% of all the jewellery made in the UK. It seemed like the perfect place to find our special wedding bands.

Now as you can guess price differs drastically from store to store. Ella and I were shopping on a Saturday afternoon and the streets were fairly busy with excited couples looking for a special token of affection. As we visited each shop a couple of things became very clear. There was a huge difference in price and not necessarily in line with the quality you expected. Almost all jewellers made a big thing about the price and one even tried to persuade me to buy Palladium when I mentioned platinum because it was ‘a fraction of the price’. Then when presenting their offer (which was the cheapest of all the shops we visited) followed it with ‘is that too much?’. Well it is now!

This is a great example of price elasticity and assuming your buyer’s objections before you KNOW them. The shop assistant didn’t ask any questions about what we wanted apart from style and metal, then assumed we were only after the cheapest price. Big mistake to assume all buyer’s motivations are the same…

The good news is, we got our rings and from the most expensive shop because he made us feel special, took time to find exactly what we wanted and then added a few finishing touches to the sales process. We collect them in three weeks. It’s getting very close to the big day now!

Get in touch and let me know when someone selling to you made a bad assumption. I’d love to hear your stories.

Take care and I’ll speak to you soon,

Dominic