Jewelry/Watches in the Supermarket

By Bruce Shawkey

Found this interesting article in a 1960 issue of Europa Star magazine:

Sales of costume jewelry are on the increase and many of these are made by novelty chain organizations and department stores. This is where these large organizations, in other words the supermarkets, are steadily encroaching on territory which used to be solely that of the jeweler proper so that the small man, once firmly established in the scheme of trading, finds the outlook for the future somewhat clouded. Supermarkets have managed to build up an image of themselves in the public eye as being efficient and cheap. They will not hesitate to sell clocks, watches and costume jewellery cheaply as eye-catchers if these bring in customers with money to spend on more profitable lines. Success of the supermarkets is really due to this pattern of salesmanship which makes people think they get better value there than they do elsewhere.

The small jeweler is faced with heavy competition from the supermarkets, many of which offer their merchandise on some form of credit. This is frequently good business for these large stores, for the purchaser utilizing credit will often buy a more expensive piece than he would have if the transaction had been a cash one. But where the small jeweller is confined to cash business, he loses out on a number of today's sales, and often finds the going extremely hard. Once the jeweller was an individual specialist, but much advertising has tended to destroy the image of the jeweler's independence. No longer is he a specialist — just a depot for advertised goods. Nor can he afford to ignore these highly advertised products. No, he must build up the image in the public eye of being an independent specialist in another way. One of the very best is to have a tidy watchmaker in a clean white coat with his modern watch-cleaning equipment and electronic timer in the window or at least in the shop. 

Today, you can find jewelry and watches in a Costco store, among other places, next to the produce or bakery departments, all self-serve or, at best, sold to you by a worker who stocks the meat cases. I have seen $2,000 Rolexes and $1,000 diamond rings at Costco. This phenomenon is not new. It started back in the '60s, as the above article points out.