THANKS TO ALL JEWELERS FOR A BIG CONFIDENCE VOTE

One of the most basic pieces of advice for any retailer is, “Listen to your customers.” If you’re not responsive to their needs, chances are you’re not going to have a successful business.

The same basic advice is equally important for publishers. Magazines, like retail stores, do not exist in a vacuum. We also must be responsive to our subscribers’ needs. The good news, from our point of view and I hope from yours, is that JCK seems to be providing readers with the information they both need and want. This positive reading comes to us from a new readership survey which has just been completed.

To be valuable, such surveys must be objective. To be sure of that, we hired an experienced firm in the field, Globe Research Corp. of Melville, N.Y., to do the study.

This is the first study we’ve done in about eight years and I’m very pleased to tell you that you still rate JCK and our editors as your No. 1 source of information on jewelry. Overall, you rated JCK almost twice as useful as National Jeweler and more than three times as useful as Modern Jeweler – a pattern that held largely unchanged from the last survey in 1988.

Specifically, Globe Research (without indicating in any way the magazine it was working for) asked a random, cross-section of jewelers, “If you could receive only one of the following four magazines, which one would you choose?” The answers: JCK, 44.4%; National Jeweler, 23.4%; Modern Jeweler, 13.0%; and Jewelers’ Quarterly (JQ), 3.7%. Interestingly, the larger jewelers, those with annual volume of more than $1 million, particularly like JCK. Almost 58% of these jewelers rate JCK the one magazine they’d pick if they had to choose among all four.

The pattern of preference extends throughout the various areas of interest covered by all the publications. For example, JCK is the very clear magazine of choice as a source of management information (43% of jewelers rate JCK No. 1; National Jeweler comes in next with an even 20% of the vote) and of information about new products. We’re also the clear favorite for coverage of the diamond and colored gemstone markets (38% voted JCK the leader compared with 27% for National and 15% for Modern) and for coverage of the watch market (30% for JCK, 17% for National and 14% for Modern). To our pleasure, jewelers also regard JCK as their No. 1 source of industry news, though here we only just edge out National Jeweler.

There’s too much information in the survey to cover here so I’ll offer some more insights next month. For now, I’d just like to thank all those jewelers who took part in the study for their strong vote of confidence.