This article is part of our Vogue Business Membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to Member-only reporting and insights, our NFT Tracker, Beauty Trend Tracker and TikTok Trend Tracker, weekly Technology, Beauty and Sustainability Edits and exclusive event invitations, sign up for Membership here.
Change is in the air at Chaumet. The 244-year-old brand — renowned as Napoleon’s favourite jeweller — has a new CEO, Charles Leung, who is already steering a strategy refresh.
Best known for tiaras, Chaumet has taken a new tack this summer, designing the medals for the Olympics (26 July–11 August) in Paris. The LVMH-owned maison also presented a high jewellery collection outside France for the first time this month, in Venice.
What should we infer from all this? “It means that we are opening our world and we will welcome a larger client base,” says Leung in an interview with Vogue Business at the Aman hotel in Venice, where the 38 pieces of the new Chaumet en Scène are displayed in cabinets and dotted with “reserved” signs.
Consider, for example, the diverse celebrity lineup in Venice, which included actress Emilia Clarke, Saudi entrepreneur Yara Alnamlah, Korean actress Song Hye Kyo and Korean actor and K-pop star Cha Eun-Woo. Leung, who has a strong sense of the history of Chaumet, says they represent a contemporary version of “noblesse” linked to Empress Joséphine Bonaparte, Napoleon’s first wife who was a Chaumet patron.
Although Chaumet does not have a store in Venice, the Italian city was chosen for its legacy in the arts, providing a suitable stage for jewels inspired by music, ballet and magic, says Leung. The event did nonetheless help to raise the profile of Chaumet’s first store in Italy, which opened this month and is located on Via Condotti in Rome, near Bulgari.
But the real story behind the choice of Venice is perhaps symbolic. It hints at Leung’s ambitions for Chaumet — Venice, despite its small, compact size, exerted an outsized influence in commerce and culture across Europe and beyond between the 13th and 16th centuries.
Growth is Leung’s speciality. At Fred Jewellery, as the very first Asian CEO at LVMH (appointed in 2018), Leung boosted business in Asia and the Middle East and grabbed headlines for including lab-grown diamonds in a high jewellery set. “It made sense for Fred, but it wouldn’t be right for Chaumet,” Leung explained in January, shortly after he took up his current role.
Europe still has potential
Before Fred, Leung had already spent 12 years at Chaumet, expanding the brand in Asia from his base in Hong Kong. Back again at Chaumet, he’s well placed to hit the ground running.
Chaumet’s turnover, estimated by Morgan Stanley to be close to €500 million, is only a fraction of that of Cartier (over €10 billion) and LVMH-owned jewellers Tiffany Co. (€5.3 billion) and Bulgari (€3.5 billion). But LVMH’s latest annual report notes that the maison “continued to post significant growth”, highlighting that last year’s Le Jardin de Chaumet collection generated record sales.
While the brand is solidly positioned in Asia and the Middle East, Leung is taking a long cool look at the old continent. “We are in Monaco, we have one store in Madrid, three stores in London, and we are in other cities in multi-brand situations, so I think Europe still offers many business opportunities,” he says. “It might take us some time to find a good location because we’re talking about only a few streets in Europe that matter, but we have time,” he adds. Commenting specifically on the new store in Rome, Leung says that Italy is a very important jewellery market because of its heritage and role as a tourist magnet.
Leung’s sentiment is echoed by Federica Levato, a senior partner at Bain who, in a presentation of the latest Bain Company Luxury Goods Worldwide Market Study, pointed out that Europe has never stopped being crucial for luxury brands and that there are still untapped opportunities linked to new tourist destinations in the Mediterranean and towns where wealthy people spend more time.
In recent years, Chaumet has been busy developing its three core collections, Joséphine, Bee My Love and Liens, stretching them downwards and upwards across different price points to catch different customer categories. The middle-priced segment features pieces ranging from €10,000 to €50,000 — often seen as the new entry price point for high jewellery buyers — and has progressively grown to represent about one-fifth of the total offer.
The new high jewellery collection reflects Chaumet’s preoccupation with a broader audience. Alongside En Scène, Chaumet is showcasing an additional capsule collection titled Signatures featuring beloved, classic designs from the house, set with investment-worthy gems such as a type IIa diamond of 11.30 carats and an exceptional Madagascan sapphire weighing 27.08 carats. “As Chaumet gains popularity, more and more customers are asking for the classic styles that define our signature, so since the demand is there, we decided to create a proper collection to cater for this specific need,” explains Leung.
Bernstein analyst Luca Solca says this focus on product design is critical for a brand the size of Chaumet. “The challenge for a small brand like Chaumet is visibility,” he says. “It is all about being so strong with products that you become the talk of the day, no matter what.” He notes that the brand still has some homework to do.
Finding growth in difficult times
Strong product is essential in the current challenging market conditions (Bain has forecast a luxury goods sector contraction of 1-4 per cent in the first trimester), a time when customers tend to prefer the most recognisable brands and styles, observes Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail research at HSBC. “However, the great thing about jewellery is that the bulk of sales is driven by non-branded jewels, so there can still be growth for everyone without necessarily having to take share from other brands, because you’re taking share from the non-branded space,” he says. (According to consultancy McKinsey Co, 80 per cent of the fine jewellery market, valued at $280 billion, is still unbranded.)
However, Rambourg says the current challenging environment may mean some difficulties for a brand of Chaumet’s size within the LVMH group, which also owns Tiffany and Bulgari. “Do you want to put an incremental dollar to renovate another Tiffany flagship that is a bit old-fashioned, or do you want to spend that dollar to boost a small brand?” Rambourg says, pointing out that in such times CFOs tend to take the lead.
However, judging by the spectacle put up in Venice, Chaumet knows a few tricks to project a larger image. According to data gathered by Launchmetrics, in just one week, Chaumet’s Venice event earned $2.6 million in Media Impact Value (MIV), just behind Cartier ($2.9 million MIV) and Louis Vuitton ($3.1 million) but ahead of Bulgari ($2.4 million). If that buzz materialises in sales further down the line, Leung may well win an Olympic-style medal for growth.
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
Diamond dilemma: Where next for De Beers?
High-ticket watches are booming as women and Gen Z shell out
‘Fewer launches, more impact’: How Piaget is fending off bigger rivals
