Jewellers speak the language of raffles once again

Dubai jewellers have learnt at last that raffles can make the real difference when it comes to sales.

It's almost one year since Dubai's jewellers took the collective decision to do away with the raffles and do a 'good business' with a uniform and standard rate to be announced by the umbrella body - Gold and Jewellery Group - which represents more than 400 members from the retailers and wholesalers in Dubai.

Since the move was a much bigger need for the smaller jewellers in Dubai, they endorsed it full-heartedly.

The scenario prior to this was that some of the larger jewellers with broader branch network used to run raffles one after another, in order to have a hold on the precious market share.

These raffles, inevitably became a vicious circle from where they could not escape. Even if one wanted to blow whistle to the raffles for a while, he would be forced to jump onto another one to combat a raffle from his competitor.

The raffles which had been hitting the market one after another, left the relatively smaller fish in the market to resort to other crowd-pulling tactics like reducing price - which was in sharp contrast to the once-agreed theory that the Gold and Jewellery Group would decide the basic selling price of the gold for all retailers.

But those who threw this agreement to the winds said, "There were such agreements on the raffle also. All had agreed that no individual raffles would be allowed in the market. So this is the only way to grab a portion of the market though we know that this is a war of attrition,"

However, the leaders in the trade convened meetings hurriedly and were successful in thrashing out solutions.

"No more individual raffles. No more compromising on the Group-decided price," the decision was well received among the jewellers.

But the shops in the other emirates were smart enough to introduce the same sort of raffles there in a much aggressive way. Dubai started complaining again.

In fact, the shops in the neighbouring emirates like Sharjah started flourishing at the cost of the Gold City's sales.

Disillusioned with the earlier theories, once again Dubai jewellers began speaking the language of raffles once again.

This time with a much louder voice. If the discussions materialise on the next mega raffle being talked about currently, we will soon hear the gold souk in Dubai spreading news about offering more than one million every month through raffles.