How a Jewelry Shop and an Outdoor Furnishing company overcame the Recession

Both companies have experienced severe loses starting from the mid of 2008 when recession forced consumers to change rapidly their spending habits. “It was over a night that our numbers dropped” admits the owner of Gallery Jewels from San Francisco. “So we took immediate action. We have renegotiated the rent for our shops and we started week after week to organize special events”. By inviting celebrities to their shops Gallery Jewels manage to reconnect their customers with their products. Another positive idea that saved the business from crashing was that they have expanded their repairing services. People were coming back to fix something was broken and the company provided them with the best service. By having satisfied customers from the repairing service the company turned a lot of them into buyers.

Outdoor furnishing suffered also from the Property Crash. In 2009 the absence of sales forced “Marin Outdoor Living” to go back into the basics, and research where they could find potential customers. They discovered that people will go on holidays even in a recession so they have focused upon this target group to regain sales. Then they evaluated the range of their products and they kept only the ranges that were selling. A more Eco – Friendly approach to their furniture was the turning point to their business. The company imported an Eco- Friendly outdoor furniture series with high quality standards. By doing that “Marin Outdoor Living” increased rapidly their sales even the products were expensive. “We added more value to our customers purchases, by using Eco Friendly Furniture” says the owner Michael Galica.  

What these two companies had in common? Both they have been affected from recession. And both of them they didn’t let the circumstances to knock them down. Gallery Jewels and Martin Outdoor managed to overcome the hard times by thinking out of the box….What about you and your business?