When Customers See Items They Sold Us

We buy or take in on trade jewelry and watches from a lot of people including our retail customers. Sometimes those customers happen upon something we bought from them in one of our retail cases or newsletters. This can cause an upset with our customer if not handled properly because the customer sees our retail price and thinks we screwed them based on what we bought the item for. If this happens with your customer, besides telling them that we buy more from customers than we sell on the retail side, it helps to also explain our buying process.

Everything we buy has to be held for 30 days. After that we try and retail the items in our store. We do put high retail prices on them because a lot of work is done to get that item ready for sale in our cases. It has to be researched, inventoried, repaired and marketed in order for the item to potentially be sold. If after all that has been done the item still has not sold, then it is put on sale for significantly lower than the original retail price. Often times, the item never sells and we have to wholesale it (sell it to a dealer) to recover what we paid for it plus the cost to refurbish it. Because of that, we always need to buy items at a price for which they can be wholesaled later if necessary.

If you explain this to your customer, he or she will usually understand how much work goes into trying to sell the item and why the price has to be higher than what we paid. If the customer still seems upset, then ask the Sales Manager or the COO to come out and smooth things over.