When most of the U.S. jewelry industry is witnessing falling of individual businesses, the wholesale sector is combating the trend. There are nearly 7,700 jewelry wholesalers in the U.S, which has increased by over 50 percent from the past two decades from nearly 5,000 jewelry wholesalers in 1986, according to combined data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Census Bureau. But, the trend since the starting of the decade shows that the number of jewelry wholesalers is declining a bit.
Generally, the wholesale connection in the chain of distribution is the first to dissolve when a business segment stabilizes. Despite steadily decreasing numbers of independent specialty jewelers and also fewer total jewelry stores, the number of businesses that describe themselves as “jewelry wholesalers” has continued to increase.
The maximum point in U.S. jewelry wholesalers happened in 2002, when there were nearly as many as 8,700 wholesale jewelers, according to the Census Bureau. At the same time, the BLS showed that there were just 7,100 jewelry wholesalers in America.
There is considerable difference between the BLS census data and the Census Bureau numbers. It supposedly because wholesalers are an deceitful group. Wholesalers did not require anything other than a telephone, some storage space for a restricted amount of jewelry, and not much else, because their main role is to keep a manufacturer connected with a retailer. Thus, inspite of scrutinizing by the government census counters, most of the wholesalers may be overlooked as they are so small.
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