If We Had a Nickel…

We've heard it 100 times, likely more: “If I had a nickel for every time someone asked me that, I'd be a millionaire by now!”

In our case, “that” question is: “Do you know how much the gift industry is worth?” The queries come from newspaper reporters, analysts, Ph.D. candidates, sometimes even banks. We're hardly ever asked the question by someone from within the industry, though. We all know better!

We know that the task of putting a dollar value on our biz would be like that of Sisyphus, the mythical king of Corinth who was doomed to roll a boulder uphill for eternity. Every time we would come up with a number, someone would add a new gift or gift category to knock our boulder down the hill — and we'd have to start all over again.

But when we began working on our State of the Industry several months back, the idea of putting a dollar value on our industry became one of those burning issues that can turn…well…obsessive. After all, if people keep coming to us because they believe we're its experts, our expertise should include evaluating the economics of the gift business; or at the very least providing an educated estimate.

We also reasoned that no such report could possibly be complete without presenting some evaluation of the industry's financial worth. The results of our Sisyphean challenge — admittedly still a work in progress — are included in this, our first annual State of the Industry report.

Included also are pages of in-depth research and information about consumer buying habits, snapshots of the industry's major categories, the status of Internet use by those in our business and more. A special section in the report is devoted to 25 of the most “gifted” independent retailers in our biz.

In fact, in the process of assembling Gifts & Decorative Accessories' State of the Industry, our editors gathered such an abundance of significant data that we couldn't fit it all between the two covers of this issue. So we uploaded it to another of our brand's popular resources, giftsanddec.com. Clicking on the State of the Industry logo will open a wealth of additional information.

And by the time readers finish absorbing and processing all the information we've gathered on the industry's status quo, it will be time for our annual look forward: Gifts & Dec's Trends and Forecasts report comes your way in December. Between these two valuable resources, we think Gifts & Dec's readers will head to the winter markets armed with the best information available.