February 2021 | Lab Grown Magazine

February 2021 | The Lab Grown Diamond Resource Book 20 To advertise call (888) 832-1109 | February 2021 21 Maybe a lot of all three.Thankfully, your con- trol will be restored and renewed at some point. Yet, when is that end point? No one can define or guarantee it. While Covid has forced us to restart, rethink, and relearn, what good is pow- ering up if you can’t power through? A computer virus can impede progress and your own driving sense of positivity.The Covid virus and the 2020 sustaining hangover we’re all trying to get through is not easy, but it is manageable. I hope you agree that the more you read, the more you will see that this pandemic may be seen as a strange blessing in disguise. That’s a large pill to swallow, but several examples can give us the knowledge to strategize and apply new ways of conducting business that just may be the way we live life. With retail bankruptcies dotting the land- scape and what may be the start of the end of economic slowdown by the late Spring or early Summer, the call for retailers to evalu- ate what is and isn’t working for their business has never been more imperative. And you’ve never had so much time to carefully plan, test, and evaluate to determine the best way to proceed. You may never have this stretch of time again. Before you know it, herd im- munity could kick in and, within a year, we would have discarded our masks, feel com- fortable being closer than six feet to people, and maybe even start shaking hands again. At the same time, the retail industry as a whole is at a pivot point in many ways. Innovative startups abound; consumer be- havior shifts will bounce here and there until large portions of the population trust in sta- bility again. And stability is as resilient as it is everlasting, but it needs us as much as we need a name to call what we will do as a unit, a team, a group. The New King of Retail is Online and Growing Many of the once-giants of retail have been dwarfed—some eliminated—all by a new retail King. For a small online company that simply sold books to a $13.4 billion acqui- sition of Whole Foods, Amazon went from non-brick-and-mortar to owning 460 stores in the U.S., Canada, and Britain nearly over- night. And let’s not forget AmazonGo. If you believe the Wall Street rumors, QVC is in first-round talks with Amazon on a pos- sible merger of the cable network still afloat amidst many layoffs in multiple countries and, of course, QVC.com. Remember, too, QVC purchased the Number Two home shopping cable network and online property, which retained the brand of HSN. Another rumor is that one of the largest mall anchor department stores will do an M&A deal before Q3 of this year.We haven’t even addressed Prime, offering not only free shipping but a video network, with some darn good original programming already us- ing its own products in the story line. People often dismiss Amazon as “lesser than” and not in their wheelhouse of thought since they think jewelry stores and the items Left: An example of a high-ticket mined diamond pendant for sale on Amazon for $35,060, and, yes, it will be sold. Right: An example of certified LGD jewelry. Many sellers add market- ing dollars to sponsor their product, pushing it up to headline status. (Photo: Amazon) >>