Since 1916, when the first jewelry store was opened in Reading, a town (not very large at the time) in Pennsylvania by two entrepreneur brothers, Kay Jewelers has worked hard to bring innovation in both the design and the making of jewelry and has provided consistently great customer service that has resulted in enviable success for the nationally recognized chain of retail stores of jewelry.
Till the beginning of 2005 the chain had about 780 outlets across the US, the number that has further increased to 918. This means in only about six years Kay Jewelers has opened 138 new outlets. This makes the rate of expansion about 3% on average but actually the company grew much quicker in the earlier years and has slowed down in more recent years, perhaps as a strategy but also, in part, under the impact of recession. As it has been said that the company grew at a higher rate in earlier years, in fact, it added about 50 new outlets in 2005 – 06 alone.
The year 2007 also marked the beginning of a shift in strategy and stores were opened in open-air shopping areas in contrast with the earlier strategy of opening stores in high end shopping areas. This trend grew further in the years to follow. This has also been in-line with the company’s strategy of not opening new stores in the metropolises. To achieve this purpose the division of Kay Jewelers that is responsible for overseeing the opening of new stores has developed rather stringent criteria for renting, leasing, owning real estate in metropolises.
Besides expanding in terms of opening new stores the company has also grown in terms of earned revenues, for instance the total sales of the jewelry stores increased by 15.2% in 2005 – 06 which is a huge number.
This huge growth on a number of indicators is not possible for a retail business in jewelry unless it has a large number of new and returning customers, and, we all know that the customers return only if they are satisfied with the products as well as customer service. In this particular case, however, we think both of those aspects are great and together they culminate into a superb overall experience and draw-in a large number of customers. The variety of products offered by Kay Jewelers in design, style, size, materials etc. is just great and almost everybody finds something of his or liking very easily. Whether a customer is male or female, rich or not so rich, old or young, married or preparing to marry, buying for self or to gift to a loved one there is something for everybody.
Such factors and several others keep on driving success and growth for the company as well as add attraction for the customers.