Berkshire Hathaway’s Omaha retailers, Borsheims Fine Jewelry and Nebraska Furniture Mart, reported record sales during their weeklong discount period for the corporation’s shareholders.
Borsheims’ sales were up 45 percent from 2010 — in part because of Berkshire Chairman Warren Buffett’s one-hour stint as a salesman on Sunday afternoon and in part because of a decision to sell jewelry for the first time during the annual meeting at the Qwest Center Omaha in addition to the store at Regency Court.
Buffett “definitely closed some sales that wouldn’t have happened without him,” said Borsheims CEO Susan Jacques, including a $30,000 ring for one woman and a diamond bracelet for a man who held up his credit card and said he just wanted to buy something from Buffett.
The price of gold — up about 25 percent from a year ago — was a slight factor in the increase, Jacques said Wednesday, but selling jewelry in addition to memorabilia at the Qwest Center was a bigger reason. Shareholders snapped up the lower-priced jewelry items and bought eight pairs of 1-carat diamond-stud earrings, at about $2,000 each.
The Regency store attracted 14,000 people Friday evening and a record 8,000 on Sunday, Jacques said, and they were more eager to buy than in recent years. Sales in 2010 were up only slightly from the recession-dented receipts in 2009, she said, but this year, “I was pleasantly surprised. It was an extraordinary crowd.”
The Furniture Mart’s Omaha store and parking lots were full during the week, said Robert Batt, executive vice president, resulting in a 1 percent increase in sales from last year’s record $33.3 million.
Berkshire week is the biggest week of the year for both retailers, Jacques and Batt said.
Batt said prices for electronic products continue to fall, down an additional 20 percent from last year. The store sold more television sets, for example, but revenue didn’t increase.
“We’re in a non-inflationary sector,” he said. “The electronics business is very tough because they make them better, they make them last longer and they make them cheaper with more features.”
Overall, he said the sales volume was close to the store’s ability to keep up. “I’m not sure how much more business you can put in the pipeline when you are at capacity.”
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