While the pawnbroker industry effectively serves real customer needs and
has been around for many centuries, pawn shops are often misunderstood
and misrepresented. Pawn shops are regulated at the federal, state, and
local level and generally adhere to high standards of conduct and best
practices set by industry associations. Considering that almost a quarter of households in the U.S. are unbanked or underbanked, pawn shops and pawn loans offer a necessary and legitimate service to economically challenged customers in need of relatively small, short-term loans. Their business model relies on developing and maintaining strong relationships with customers, both for the loans and for the retail operations.
It can be surprising to see how broad the range of customer incomes can be, though in the end, the value of the pawn loan model is the speed and convenience with which one can gain short term liquidity. In spite of the value they provide, one of the biggest challenges in the pawn shop business is still public perception, and that’s something that Hembree has strives to reverse with his own brand of service at Gems N’ Loans.
Read complete article!
