Don’t argue with the data…just wait for your slice

It is beginning to feel more like a job as a leader-writer for the Financial Times than a jewellery trade magazine, but there is just so much positive news out there it cannot go without comment.

Yesterday the Birmingham Assay Office release the all-office hallmarking figures, showing a year-on-year rise yet again, for the month of August. It’s fair to say that 9ct gold and sterling silver carried the boost – up 10.9% and 18.2% respectively. There were some drops throughout the table compared with last year, but these tended to be in much less popular categories: Brittania silver (of which only around 1,000 per month have been marked this year) or 900 parts platinum (11 items). True 950 parts platinum at c.19,000 items dropped 10.2%, but really this is not indicative of overall market behaviour – remember gold and sterling sell in the hundreds of thousands of articles, not the tens of thousands.

Then there’s shop vacancy rates. The Local Data Company says they have fallen to 13.3% for August, the lowest rate since June 2010. The research firm said that the figures equate to around 400 additional shops opening in just a month. And finally, there’s the CBI’s claim that retailers are at their most optimistic since 2002, with 51% of respondents to a survey reporting an increase in sales volumes.

True, it will not be felt in every corner of the UK just yet, and it would be unwise to imagine that macro-economic statistics mean the trade can universally breathe easy. It is a still a slog and shifting stock requires hard work. But hasn’t it always? It’s never been easy to make money and at the very least we can all turn up for work with well-founded optimism that revenues will climb soon,  if they haven’t already.