Pandora facing a tempest

There seems to be so much fake pandora abroad. I've had many people come home from holidays saying that Pandora are so cheap abroad. Maybe some people don't mind fake?

Lots of people cheerfully carry fake handbags bought on market stalls.

Updated with a new article from the Professional Jeweler:
http://www.professionaljeweller.com/article-9817-no-love-lost-for-pandora-from-trade/

I find this quote very interesting:
"...pressures being put on them by this one brand to buy more and more stock or risk losing their place in the hierarchy. Its the fostering of this kind of monoculture that has damaged diversity and innovation in jewellery retail for several years now. Pandora aren't the only culprits but they're certainly the main one at the moment."

Wonder who else might be guilty of this?????

Smaug wrote:Updated with a new article from the Professional Jeweler:
http://www.professionaljeweller.com/article-9817-no-love-lost-for-pandora-from-trade/

Very interesting reading. I hope that TB is taking notes. In trying to get ahead, P resorted to repellant business practices. Some of these were similar to what a certain distributor, who was recently booted, was doing with TB.

TFS this article - very interesting !

Apparently there's going to be 'much ado' about it:
http://www.retail-jeweller.com/a-z/pandora/pandoras-float-investigated-as-police-called-in/5028268.article

Thank you I have really enjoyed reading these articles. I have heard from many jewelers about what an unpleasant comapny Pandora has been to deal with and about their supply issues.
I am in Germany at the moment and Pandora is everywhere, it is a well known and popular brand and Germans do like a known high quality brand. There is TB here ( apparentely quite a lot ) but you have to go looking and it's never obvious, whereas Pandora is in all the top jewelers on the high street and in the department stores.
In many ways I feel Pandora has shot itself in the foot and become too greedy and what has happened is kharma. They had/have a good product and were very smart on the marketing which is whay they became succesful but they then greed got the better of them. Their product became a bit of a fashion accessory and some have tired of it. Also the constant price increases has made people turn away and jewelers who dropped them a while back have stocked similar products ( Chamilla, love links ), there is also the fake/ cheap imitation issues too.
I really hope that Troll HQ learn a valuable lessson here as many ( myself included ) feel they have been going along a similar route.

Thank you for the interesting links and articles I recently visited a Pandora concept store (first time I've ever even seen Pandora), and while the beads held no interest, I was quite taken with the chains, macrame bracelets, rings and earrings selection. Seems they have positioned their product line to allow for a collapse in the "bead fad".
This is the most pertinent: " In a damning critique of what has gone wrong Leighton blamed the once-feted and fast-growing company's loss of form on "poor execution" and successive price increases which alienated an increasingly hard-up mass market customer base."
Hellooooo Troll, anybody there? I haven't bought a new bead at my LD's for months; seeing a $43 price tag on the new glass UU beads just makes me shake my head and walk by. After taxes, 2 UU beads costs closer to $100 than I care to spend. Really much too much.

I miss coming home with 4 beads for $100, not 2.

I agree with you, trollcat, that Pandora has more to offer in the way of earrings. I wish I could afford some of the semi-precious stone dangles but I have a pair of the spiral hooks that I use almost everyday. I have an enormous trove of convention sized hole beads and I raid it constantly for beads and combinations I can put on eye pins and hang from my Pandora hooks. I have even bought earrings -- like a recent pair of earrings with Lion's Paw beads -- and taken them off the hooks they came with to hang them from my Pandora hooks.

Interesting all of this, but it doesn't come as a surprise to be honest.
The 'sudden' move where the distributor for The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany was shuffed aside, and a new distributor took over.

LD's complaining about competitive marketing campaigns where Pandora announced their starter bracelet with one bead on it (where did we hear this one before), but LD's who ordered, had to wait more than one month before they were actually supplied with the stuff they had ordered. Very difficult especially because this was happening during the busy months, November and December.

I know of several LD's who have ended their relationship with Pandora, just because all of these issues. Not to mention stores in the US who were actually forced by Pandora to make a choise between Pandora OR Trollbeads....

By opening up their own concept stores, they hurt the smaller retailers who were loyal to them. Consumers in this economy favor the small home town retailer over the big company. I hope that TB pays attention and doesn't make the same mistake.

All of this makes me rather nervous about what could happen to TB. I am untrained in this, but it seems both companies have been employing similar business tactics. So if Pandora is tanking, will TB be next? Or are they a stronger company?

I notice that in the UK and Germany there are lots of Pandora deals- here in Germany it sems to be every shop is advertising a free bracelet or bead ! maybe TB should take note.