Taking Stock at Cartier

PARIS — Few luxury brand chief executives are likely to appear as cheerful as Cyrille Vigneron.

While many companies continue to grapple with economic jitters in key markets and volatile currency exchange, growth in the fine jewelry sector appears to be largely sheltered from the storm. And Cartier, the high jewelry house where Mr. Vigneron took the helm in 2016, is the jewel in the crown of its parent group, Richemont, which also owns labels like Dunhill, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Richemont has undergone a period of recent and rapid change, from brand introductions, acquisitions and a management shake-up, to a revamped online strategy amid a flattened watch market (timepieces account for 37 percent of group sales).

Throughout, however, Cartier has consistently remained its star performer, driving double digit growth for Richemont fine jewelry in the first half of 2019 and making its premium pricing and margin models the envy of rivals in the sector.

According to an annual ranking of the world’s top 100 brands, compiled by the research company Kantar and its brand strategy business Millward Brown, Cartier was valued at $7.04 billion last year. (Richemont does not directly break down brand-by-brand performance results within its earning reports).

“A revitalized Cartier remains the main reason to hold Richemont stock,” Rogerio Fujimori, luxury analyst at Royal Bank of Canada, wrote in a recent note to investors. “Thanks to Cartier’s strong comeback under the leadership of Cyrille Vigneron, including in watches, its margins are higher than those at jewelry maisons owned by LVMH or Kering.”

For Mr. Vigneron, the appointment as chief executive of the house was something of a homecoming. He initially joined Cartier in 1988, serving in a variety of positions there and within the Richemont stable for 25 years before being hired as president of LVMH Japan in 2013. After being lured back to take the top job at Cartier, he took on a series of bold decisions to move the maison into the 21st century.

“Put simply, I had three main areas of focus,” Mr. Vigneron said over a pot of tea in Paris earlier this month. “One, to re-establish Cartier’s brand territory in a fast-moving and global market. Two, to reconsider all product lines and make sure they fell firmly within the vision of those new parameters. And three, to revitalize our retail and communication strategies, which had become a bit conventional and dusty.

“Cartier has long been a leader because of the timelessness of our designs and craftsmanship,” he added. “However the challenge is also to feel timely, and to express that to clients of both new generations and geographies.”

In addition to a wide scale buyback of timepieces in 2017 (to avoid them being sold at knockdown prices) and the revitalization of signature styles from Love and Juste un Clou to Tutti Frutti or Coloratura high jewelry masterpieces, there have been several new lines, the latest of which is scheduled to debut next month. Mr. Vigneron stayed tight-lipped on specifics, although he did mention the collection would include rings and bracelets.

“I don’t think there has been a striking new ring launch in the jewelry market for a decade. I think this one can be, and I feel confident that we will sell it for years to come alongside our best-known collections that have never lost their appeal,” he said. “A worrying jewelry trend in recent years has been this rush to produce novelty or flash-in-the pan items. But distinctiveness is more important than newness in this business. That is what will stand the test of time.”

Revaluation and rigorous testing of pricing strategies was another key priority. According to Mr. Vigneron, a common thread of contemporary luxury is that customers are savvier than ever before about the value of the jewelry they buy.

“Luxury used to be a field of secrecy, but the world is more transparent in terms of what is worth what today. As a fine jeweler, you also have to be realistic about the value judgments your clients are then in a position to make,” he said, noting that values and spending patterns differ across different markets.

For example, millennials in the West — where the next generation is less affluent than its parents — shy away from big-ticket items, opting for more accessibly priced pieces that better fit into their less ostentatious, more casual lives.

In the upwardly mobile East, the opposite is happening.

“We don’t cater to need, we cater to desire,” Mr. Vigneron said. “So more and more, pricing in luxury is an art in itself and you need to ensure the right product is available for customers at every entry point to the Cartier brand. People of all backgrounds are more than willing to buy into a dream, but it has to be at the right price.”

In an evermore competitive market, however, this also means meeting customers in new ways. For Cartier, that meant investing heavily in renovating key flagship locations, including New Bond Street in London, which reopened in December, and ensuring these stores could also be used for meetings and events. The house also has hosted several high-profile museum-style exhibitions of key pieces from its archives, and reconsidered its product introductions. To celebrate the unveiling of the new Santos de Cartier watch in San Francisco last year, for example, Cartier held three days of talks with modern-day creative figures, campaigners and entrepreneurs.

“As digital gets evermore important so, too, has sharing, learning and finding a community in the physical world, too. If a luxury brand can move beyond product and also facilitate those relationships as they then develop both on and offline, then it is a very powerful thing,” Mr. Vigneron said.

A greater focus on such encounters, and on data to understand market changes better and to identify potential customers and how to reach them, has become paramount, he said. So has adapting to client needs and desires as they are shaped by shifting societal trends.

“Traditionally, luxury has always been a very centralized business, both physically and philosophically,” Mr. Vigneron said. “The guardian of the temple will remain an artistic director, but today you also need to democratize and spread and test yourself across new markets — far beyond just your stores — in order to really resonate wherever you are.

“Inclusivity is critical to most many luxury shoppers who are shaping today’s industry.”

For Cartier, beyond building its local teams worldwide, this has meant experimenting by, for example, adapting its video and social media campaigns for different cultures (like deciding its Sofia Coppola-directed video was too provocative and creating a different video for Middle Eastern markets) or male celebrities (like Lu Han in China) to model high jewelry designs directed at women. A retail innovation lab to test new technologies has been opened in Brooklyn, with sites in Tokyo and Shanghai planned for later this year.

Such heavy investments do not come without their risks. Fears around a luxury slowdown has rattled stock markets in recent months, fueled further lately by the knock-on effect of months of “Yellow Vest” protests against perceived social and economic inequities in France, which have roiled Paris. For his part, Mr. Vigneron remained upbeat, noting an ongoing sales momentum for Cartier in both the Asia-Pacific and North American markets.

“Luxury spending is less impacted by political or social uncertainty than you might think, especially in jewelry where purchases tend to hold their value far longer than, say, shoes or handbags. Things only really change dramatically when stock markets or real estate values start to crash,” he said. “What you are currently seeing, thanks to this more turbulent market, is the difference between those brands who are doing very well in this climate and those who are not.”

Mr. Vigneron added that this difference was not about large brands versus smaller rivals, though he acknowledged being backed by a large group could make a real difference to the prospects of a business.

“There are lots of big and well-known names spending a lot of money still getting it wrong, and a lot of small independent labels getting it right,” he said. “The key now is about maximizing brand recognition while steadily upping your brand territory. You cannot have any confusion about who you are or where you need to be. You must know your narrative inside out.”

“Here at Cartier,” he added with a grin. “We know we have become pretty good at storytelling.”