The average man on the street has been buying online for about ten years now. Whether it's books, DVDs, holidays, or high priced electrical equipment, online retailers have proven to be a very popular source of cheap goods. Businesses have followed suit: office supplies, new computers, and even great big jars of fair trade coffee are regularly ordered online. It seems that the whole world is reaping the benefits of online ordering.



But there is one group of buyers who have yet to embrace the full potential of online purchasing: jewellery retailers.

Having been in the jewellery business for many years, first as a retailer, and later as a wholesaler, I can say with confidence that jewellery retailers (whether high street shops or market traders) are amongst the most conservative buyers in the business world. If something has been done a particular way for twenty years, then it will continue to be done that way until circumstances force a change.

New jewellery retailers are not burdened by old ways of doing things, and have been quick to utilise online wholesalers. The benefits of sourcing jewellery online are many, providing newer businesses with an immediate advantage over their more established competitors. Let's look at those benefits in more detail.

1. Cheaper. Online businesses are generally far cheaper than their bricks and mortar equivalents, and wholesale jewellery companies are no exception. A dedicated online business selling to retail customers does not need a showroom, does not need a sales team driving expensive company cars across the country, and does not need a prime location in the heart of Manchester's or London's wholesale district. These cost savings are often passed along to retailers.

2. Wider Range of Stock. Most of the big jewellery wholesalers in the UK are generalists and popularists. This means that they focus on lines of stock that will appeal to the greatest number of people, in the same way that bookshops like W.H. Smiths only stock best selling books that may appeal to the average buyer. Online wholesalers however, have the ability to focus much more heavily on particular markets or niches, be it gothic body jewellery, children's tiaras, or wedding jewellery. Targeting the 'long tail' in this way can be very profitable (as Amazon is testimony to), and provides savvy retailers with access to lines of stock they may never have encountered before.

3. Convenience. Jewellery retailers in Manchester have had it good for years now. The city is home to many of the largest jewellery wholesalers in the UK, making restocking and sourcing new lines very easy. With the advent of internet buying, every retailer in the UK now has the same advantage. In the space of a single evening, a retailer can browse through twenty or thirty different online wholesale shops, place one or more orders, and sit back and wait for the goods to arrive. Some of the earliest jewellery retailers to avail themselves of internet buying were from such out of the way places as the Shetlands, Highlands, and the Channel Islands - all very far from the showrooms of Manchester. Online wholesalers level the playing field, and allow retailers in every town and city across the UK to compete with their counterparts in London or Manchester.

The current state of the UK economy is such that many small businesses will go to the wall in 2009. The ones who succeed will do so because they are capable of adapting to changing circumstances. Jewellery retailers who continue to ignore online wholesalers - whether out of ignorance, disinterest, or simply because they don't like change - will be the most likely to fall.