High gold prices ‘a nightmare': French luxury jeweller Boucheron's CEO
This is because gold prices have been rising steadily – up almost 40 per cent year on year and close to 70 per cent from five years ago. Yet, the maison has only raised prices by 3 per cent annually, just like it did before gold prices started spiking, says its chief executive officer, Helene Poulit-Duquesne.
'We do not pass on to clients the rise in cost of production, which I believe is a good way of treating them,' says Poulit-Duquesnet over a teleconference call from France in early July. Speaking to The Business Times in conjunction with the launch of Boucheron's latest high jewellery collection, she added candidly, 'It's (also) a nightmare for us because we have to cut our margins'.
A piece from Boucheron's latest Carte Blanche high jewellery collection. PHOTO: BOUCHERON
Despite that, the Kering-owned brand, which does not disclose sales figures, must be doing extremely well, as Poulit-Duquesne is 'very happy' with its performance. Boucheron's business has been growing strongly everywhere apart from Europe, where things have been 'difficult'.
Since she took the helm after leaving Cartier as its director for international client and business development a decade ago, the avid horse rider has done much to raise the brand's profile and expand its business.
Boucheron has more than doubled the boutique count from about 40 to some 95 stores around the world, with 17 in China and three in America – all opened within the last six years.
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More men are also wearing jewellery today – a trend Poulit-Duquesne says started in Asia – and something she'd been fighting for, for years.
'We were really the first, five years ago, to put high jewellery on men and at that time, all the journalists were super surprised. But it was not for the purpose of creating collections for men but because we thought our jewellery is above gender. Then two years later, all the competition decided to put high jewellery on men.'
High jewellery continues to be 'super resilient' in the face of a gloomy economic environment as its buyers consider items in the category to be an investment. The segment's boom led Poulit-Duquesne to expand capacity by acquiring a high jewellery workshop with about 60 artisans in late 2023. This takes care of its ability to produce jewellery for the top-end of the market for the next 10 years.
For Boucheron, high jewellery refers to pieces priced above 250,000 euros (S$371,553), fine jewellery to those priced between 50,000 and 250,000 euros and jewellery for those below 50,000 euros – which makes up over 80 per cent of its turnover.
The maison launches two high jewellery collections every year – Histoire de Style in January, where creative director Claire Choisne casts a fresh eye on archival designs, and Carte Blanche in July, where she has total creative freedom.
Impermanence, like previous Carte Blanche high jewellery collections, uses unusual and avant-garde materials. PHOTO: BOUCHERON
Its latest Carte Blanche collection, Impermanence, was inspired by the Japanese philosophy of wabi sabi and the art of ikebana. The very innovative, 28-piece collection is designed around six delicate botanical compositions. Like previous collections, they are crafted from unusual and avant-garde materials such as borosilicate glass, ceramic, rock crystal and Vantablack coating – said to be the darkest material on earth.
But is it justifiable for Boucheron to charge top-end prices for non-precious materials?
'At Boucheron, we have a precise answer to that,' says Poulit-Duquesne. 'We question what is precious, because what gives value to the piece is not only the precious materials we're using, but the emotion that the product gives to our clients. This allows Claire to use pretty much every material in the world and the reason why she's so innovative.'
She says the maison sees its products as works of art – which some of its clients are collecting. 'Of course, we use diamonds and precious metals, but it's just like when you buy a painting, you don't think about the price of the materials used. What you buy are the aesthetics, the poetry, the emotion.'
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