Comments on: Sticker price vs. good price – at a jeweler

By: the weakonomist

the weakonomist — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:19:24 +0000

First of all, thanks for including my link!

For the Toronto real estate agent: In my experience the negotiating tactics are similar, but you do need to know the industry in order to gain some leverage. For cars you need to find the volume dealers and play them off of each other. Also let them set the prices.

In jewelry you need to establish some kind of baseline like “oh well we really can only spend $900 but we were really hoping to get this ring”. You say this with the expectation of a counter offer higher than $900. Then you say something like “wow $1200 is great but that is out of our budget, at $1100 I might be able to talk the wife into it”.

Same game, different players.

By: real estate agent in Toronto

real estate agent in Toronto — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 18:49:16 +0000

Being a real estate agent, I find this story fascinating. Flexible prices are part of my job (negotiation is a big part of buying and selling real estate) but I never dreamed that I could negotiate jewelry prices. I can’t help but wonder: are these unique negotiating tactics for each industry, or do the same basic principles apply everywhere?

By: Michael

Michael — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 12:27:23 +0000

@Abigail: Great story – thanks for sharing. And you and I both know they still made money on a $1,000 sale, showing you just how rich those jewelry margins are!

By: Abigail

Abigail — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:25:38 +0000

We accidentally negotiated my husband’s engagement ring. (I said if I was marked as “Back off, boys” he had to have something similar for the ladies. He didn’t care; he thought it was a good excuse to get a cool ring.)

He found one that he absolutely loved at Fred Meyer’s Jewelry. But it was around $1300 or so. We were discussing it after Tim had tried it on. I winced at the price. I said to Tim it was a little higher than I was comfortable with. The lady at the counter asked what we were looking for. I said we were hoping to keep it under $1000. She made a single call and got it okayed. (I still dragged him around to several other jewelers to check around, then we went back before closing and bought it.)

Doing the math, that means we saved 27% total without any real work on our part.