It was the event not to be missed in this early spring in Manhattan. A brief throwback to the “Gilded Age”, that golden period of United States history at the end of the 19th century. Even among easily jaded New Yorkers and heavily pampered A-List celebrities, the festivities for the reopening of the iconic Tiffany store have been unanimous, as evidenced by countless social media posts. For two days, the “monument” (“The Landmark”, in vo) with an art deco facade, installed at the corner of 5th avenue and 57th street since 1940 – the sanctuary of high-end shopping – orchestrated the revelation of its renovation, after four years of work under the aegis of the fetish architect of luxury, Peter Marino.
The turquoise blue ribbon, the favorite color of the jewelry brand created in 1837 (listed under this reference by Pantone in 2001), was cut on April 26 by Israeli actress Gal Jadot, star of Wonder Woman and one of the ambassadors of Tiffany & Co, alongside the vice-president of products and communication Alexandre Arnault, 30, the second son of Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH and Anthony Ledru, boss of Tiffany since 2021. A big evening brought together the next day the gratin cinema, fashion, arts and music, K-Pop included: Hailey Bieber, Blake Lively, Brooklyn Beckam, Katy Perry (who gave a concert), Zoe Kravitz, Anya Taylor-Joy, Pharell Williams…
$5.1 billion
With 10,000 square meters (instead of 6,500 previously), three additional floors, a glass dome at the top, diamond style on the building, a VIP suite, a restaurant (the ‘Blue Box Café’), the jewel in the crown , all in light wood, white marble and bay windows, is also a museum. About forty works by Damien Hirst, Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Anish Kapoor, some of which were designed exclusively, are exhibited over its ten floors. A renovation whose amount is kept secret – the experts evoke an amount of several hundred million dollars -, which reflects that of the entire company.
« The New York store is the world’s largest space dedicated to a single brand “, underlines Anish Melwani, at the head of the North American subsidiary of the luxury giant. For the twenty-sixth and most expensive acquisition in its history – 16 billion euros in 2021 – the group, whose market capitalization has just reached the threshold of 500 billion euros, did not neglect anything. Redeemed after five years sleep “, in the words of Bernard Arnault, the jeweler immortalized in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s with Audrey Hepburn has undergone a complete overhaul since its acquisition. Teams, products, prices, communication, stores, muses, each element of the strategy has been redesigned. Without denying the rich heritage of this favorite brand of Americans: the original manuscript of Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany’sis kept in the Manhattan store, among other records and drawings.
Stakes ? Widen the gap with the competition in the highly coveted field of ‘hard luxury’ – jewelry and watches, mainly -, which has enjoyed higher growth than the already very high growth of ‘soft’ – leather goods, cosmetics, fashion – since the end of the pandemic. And jewelry even more: according to the strategy consulting firm Bain, its global growth reached 25% last year, to 28 billion dollars. If the turnover of Tiffany (14,000 employees) has not been published since its integration into LVMH, the specialist in the sector within the HSBC bank evaluates its sales last year at 5.1 billion dollars, at the instead of 3 billion in 2020, the last financial year before the takeover, an increase of almost a third. According to this financial analyst, they could even reach 7.4 billion in 2025. While the operating margin would have already jumped from 16.5% to 23% during the same period.
Desirability
« Tiffany is an extraordinary brand, which needed long-term management, which its membership of LVMH now allows “, underlines Alexandre Arnault, who thus highlights the advantages of the withdrawal from the rating of the largest American luxury brand. ” We doubled the average price of the most accessible products. And quadrupled global fine jewelry sales “, adds the vice-president, at the helm since day one to imagine a communication” disruptive », slightly insolent and breaking with the sometimes stuffy codes of the sector. Among its initiatives, a campaign with Beyoncé and her husband Jay-Z, in the form of a wink for a highly commented April Fool’s Day, or that with the watchmaker Patek Philippe, creator of a turquoise blue Nautilus watch in edition limited.
On the product side, the revolution is all the more gentle as it takes two years between design and production. The teams at the head of the jeweler, including Nathalie Verdeille, the artistic director from Cartier, have chosen to develop gold jewelry, without giving up the emblematic silver ones. Among the recent successes, the Knot lines and especially Lock, launched in January of this year, whose prices range between 6,000 and 10,000 dollars.
The leitmotif revolves around the quintessence of luxury: desirability. ” When you create desire, profits follow “, confided Bernard Arnault to the Wall Street Journal. The founder of LVMH had already pointed out in 2022 that Tiffany embodied “the high point” of the year. After the New York flagship, new stores, renovated or recently acquired, will open their doors in Tokyo, Seoul, Milan or London. The acceleration will be planetary. Objective ? First in the world.
2023-04-30 07:00:00
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