Editor’s Note
Gucci has opened its first high jewelry boutique on Paris’s prestigious Place Vendôme, marking a strategic move into the ultra-luxury market. This expansion underscores the brand’s ambition to compete directly with the world’s most elite jewelers.
PARIS (Reuters) – Gucci entered the exclusive circle of jewelers on Place Vendôme on Tuesday with the opening of a boutique dedicated to exceptional jewelry, aiming to bring the fashion brand into the realm of ultra-luxury.
Buoyed by extraordinary growth over the past two years, the main profit center of the Kering group intends, following Chanel and Dior (owned by LVMH), to carve out its place alongside historic jewelers such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels (Richemont group) or Boucheron (also owned by Kering).
Louis Vuitton (LVMH group) also took the step in 2012 by opening a boutique on the famous square, later transferred to a huge brand store located a few steps away.
Kering does not hide its ambition to accelerate the pace in a promising sector, whose annual growth is estimated at around 7% per year by Bain & Co, driven in particular by new and numerous Asian fortunes.
The group is allocating significant investments to this. The Hôtel de Nocé, the historic headquarters of Boucheron located on the square, has just been completely renovated.
Gucci, which already sold gold jewelry between 1,500 and 2,000 euros, here offers more than 200 pieces of high jewelry inspired by mythological bestiaries or the Garden of Eden, mixing diamonds and colored stones presented in ebony showcases lined with aqua green silk.
The jewelry is designed by Alessandro Michele, the artisan behind Gucci’s creative renewal and its meteoric success with younger generations, and manufactured in Italian workshops.
Prices range from 50,000 to 800,000 euros.
The market share held by major jewelry names is estimated by industry players at less than 20% of the sector’s total sales.
For fashion brands that have ventured into jewelry, however, the bulk of their revenue still comes from gold jewelry, fine jewelry, and costume jewelry.
The sector remains dominated by Cartier, owned by Richemont, with sales estimated at around 5.0 billion euros, ahead of the American Tiffany (4.4 billion dollars) and the Italian Bulgari, owned by LVMH (around 2.5 billion euros).
With sales estimated at a few hundred million euros, the jewelry of Louis Vuitton and Boucheron lags far behind.
After two years of exceptional growth of 45% in 2017 and 37% in 2018, Gucci decelerated in the first quarter of 2019, while still posting growth of 20%, well above its competitors.
The watches-jewelry division of Kering, which includes, besides Boucheron, the watch brands Ulysse Nardin and Girard-Perregaux as well as the jewelry brands Pomellato, Dodo and Queelin, constitutes the smallest division of the Kering group.
Its figures are not made public.