maybe it is telling that the announcement was written and signed off by someone other than CJ. I suppose there is not really much management can say other than they will investigate what went wrong with the auction, although its closing the gate after the horse has bolted. Fact is that all along they have stuffed up the their marketing strategy big time, firstly the debacle of the cut polish and sell strategy where the gem industry read the riot act to them , then to be followed up with the most recent debacle of sorting/grading the stones in a manner that was not what the buyers wanted and it would seem were not consulted on. Marketing 101 on not how to do things. They had not scraped the egg of their face from the first debacle before getting another dose of egg on the face. Seems to me that the only way to give some credibility comfort to shareholders is to take away the marketing role y from CJ, maybe let him just have operational responsibilities, and hire a marketing person to manage all future marketing strategies and sales.
And whilst they are at it, how about some transparency on the WTF happened to the special stones ( that went to Meg). Lack of transparency on this will continue to infect investors thinking. It may not be a big deal in the overall scheme of things but restoring credibility requires addressing these sort of things in a transparent fashion. Get it all out there, change management roles, and move on from there.
MUS Price at posting:
4.1¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
