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Zales Jewelers Essay

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Jewelry retailer Zale Corp. named interim chief executive officer Mary “Betsy” Burton to the post permanently and launched a search for a new chief financial officer. Zale’s board tapped Burton, a director, as its interim CEO in late January after forcing the resignation of Mary Forte, CEO since 2002. Zale’s board made the change following the failure of Forte’s campaign to shift the advertising and merchandise at the retailer’s flagship Zales Jewelers to appeal to a more upscale and fashion-conscious clientele.
Zale, Irving, Texas, has annual sales of over $2 billion. In the United States it operates under the Zales Jewelers, Zales outlet, Gordon’s Jewelers, Bailey Banks & Biddle and Piercing Pagoda brands. In Canada, its brands are …show more content…

“You don’t have to go inexpensive to show great value,” she says. Forte also claimed that Zales was able to offer better quality jewelry because it had finally started to buy products directly from overseas supplies. “We were working to improve the business and these things take time,” Forte says. “We were staring to hit our stride, but direct sourcing was still new was just beginning to infiltrate the inventory”.
Since taking the reins, Burton, years old, has scrapped Forte upscale strategy, recast Zales Jewelers’ advertising campaign to focus on value rather than fashion and shifted the division’s merchandise back to a heavy focus on diamond rings and jewelry. She also overhauled Zale’s training and commission programs.
Zale put former chief financial officer Mark Lenz on administrative leave in May 2006 for allegedly failing to inform Zale’s auditors that roughly $8 million in payments to vendors recorded prior to the end of Zale’s fiscal year on July 31 2006 were actually received by the vendor in August. Zale has since April faced a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation focused on multiple topics, including vendor payments, warranty programs, leases, and executive severance and stock

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