newspider.in
- Fashion
- April 22, 2025
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From Valenza to Rome: Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin maps out global jewelry expansion
Nothing seems to slow down Bulgari’s chief executive, Jean-Christophe Babin, who has just assumed leadership of the Watches division at LVMH. Under his direction, the Roman house inaugurated on April 16 the world’s largest jewelry manufacturing facility in Valenza, located in the Piedmont region of northern Italy. FashionNetwork.com spoke with the CEO about Bulgari’s growth strategy, market outlook and an ambitious new project in Rome. Jean-Christophe Babin – Bulgari FashionNetwork.com: You’ve just inaugurated a new facility in Valenza, eight years after you opened what was then called “Europe’s largest jewelry factory.” What prompted this new expansion? Jean-Christophe Babin: This is now the largest jewelry factory in the world working with precious materials. We’re not talking about costume jewelry here. This site, launched in 2017, was Bulgari’s first true manufacturing facility—a large-scale operation that brought together all trades. We organized large-scale production while preserving the spirit of responsibility typical of small jewelry workshops, which often represent the strength of small businesses. However, the project turned out to be far too small, even though we thought it was very large. By 2020, we realized we needed to expand because we had already reached capacity. That’s when we launched the Valenza 2 project. FNW: Can you share more details about this new project? JCB: The new facility covers 33,000 square meters. We currently have 1,100 employees and plan to grow that number to over 1,600 while doubling production by 2029. We also collaborate with approximately 1,200 people through partner companies in Valenza. Altogether, we engage nearly 30 percent of the city’s workforce, including around 6,000 jewelers—a significant share. FNW: Won’t this increase in production capacity dilute Bulgari’s exclusivity? JCB: We clearly have ambitious growth plans, and recent developments have shown these are realistic. As we’ve grown, internal production has decreased due to capacity limits. We aim to restore that balance. So, while production is increasing, it’s not enormous for Bulgari because we’ll outsource…
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- Fashion
- April 7, 2025
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Trump makes good on threat of far-reaching tariffs; fashion and retail industries react
Liberation or decimation? While the 47th President of the United States is often seen as mercurial in his decision-making and penchant for threats, Donald Trump made good on a promise to impose further tariffs, this time mainly reciprocal to U.S. trade partners. In the first 48 hours of the announcement, stocks plummeted, and affected countries, including the EU and China, slapped back with promises and even actions to do the same. The consensus among economists—who have warned that tariffs could end up causing a global recession—is that consumer prices for produce, clothing, electronics, cars, and many other goods will rise. President Donald Trump – White House President Trump claims this extreme action is needed to bring manufacturing and related jobs back to the U.S. (though tariffs will negatively affect factories and jobs like those of foreign carmakers, such as Hyundai, who already operate in the U.S., punishing existing compliance with said goals). Economic pundits and journalists have blown holes in Trump’s theory and claims, according to the Washington Post, most of his understanding of tariffs is incorrect, and the President’s claim of bringing in hundreds of millions of dollars from China during the tariffs in his first term was closer to $75 million, of which $28 million went to bail out the U.S. farmers affected; he also claims NAFTA resulted in the U.S. losing 90,000 factories, another figure the result of Trump’s exaggeration. In this round of tariffs, Canada and Mexico are not included, despite being maligned by the President just weeks ago as “bad faith actors” who hugely benefit from the U.S., leading some analysts to posit that he is using backroad attempts to build and rely on existing manufacturing and trading with the neighbors to the North and South. Economists said tariffs will likely raise prices consumers pay for everyday necessities like phones, cars, apparel, and groceries, a word Trump recently deemed “old-fashioned.” Thus, while the fashion industry…
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- Fashion
- March 4, 2025
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‘Printemps New York is not a classic department store’
“Not a department store”: in recent weeks, some of New York’s cabs have shed their traditional yellow to be adorned in green and display this graffitied phrase. The first wink from French department store Printemps ahead of its opening. In mid-2022, the French group surprised the department store world by announcing plans to open in the Big Apple. The project, entrusted to Laura Lendrum (formery of Gucci, Saint Laurent U.S.), was to install Printemps in the imposing 1950s Art Deco building at 1 Wall Street. After months of work, during which architect Laura Gonzalez combined the spirit of the Parisian department store with the heritage of the New York building, the two-storey, 4,000-square-metre space opens its doors this Thursday and will be inaugurated on March 20, to celebrate spring. The opening is part of the building’s renovation, and Printemps is presenting a concept combining fashion, luxury (with French, American and international brands) and gastronomy with a proposal entrusted to American star chef Grégory Gourdet, with no less than five restaurants in its spaces designed to provide visitors with a memorable experience. The Red Room, an imposing ten-metre-high space featuring a 1,200-square-metre purple and gold mosaic that was once the reception hall of a bank, referenced for its historical capital, is the pinnacle of the space and will house the department store’s shoe area. Those behind the project are determined to make the site more than just a department store, in a district undergoing transformation. This is a major gamble for the French group, in a complex context for department stores in America and one of globalized commercial tensions. Ahead of the opening, FashionNetwork.com spoke to Jean-Marc Bellaiche, chairman of the department store group, which has been owned by the Qatari Disa fund since 2013. Jean-Marc Bellaiche, CEO of the Printemps group – Le Printemps FashionNetwork.com: You’re opening this New York department store a few days after Donald Trump, the American…
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- Fashion
- January 28, 2025
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Inside the troubled house of Tiffany
By Bloomberg Published January 27, 2025 When Tiffany & Co. executives were looking for ways to boost staff morale, they rolled out an internal app called “Tiffany Joy.” They asked workers to post photos celebrating couples getting engaged, colleagues’ big sales and other meaningful moments at stores. Web Tiffany & Co. It didn’t take long to turn into a chore. Executives started telling US staff they weren’t posting frequently enough and asking workers to “like” posts more quickly. Within a few months, by early 2024, some US employees had given the app a nickname: “Forced Joy.” What started as a way to make Tiffany a more enjoyable place to work turned into a reminder that the iconic jeweler was not hitting the mark in the US under Christopher Kilaniotis, the head of Americas at Tiffany. Employees said they were surprised that Kilaniotis, who is responsible for nearly half of Tiffany’s global revenue, focused on an internal app while stores were missing sales targets and employees were leaving for competitors, according to current and former executives, managers and employees familiar with the app who were unauthorized to speak publicly on the matter. Kilaniotis and Chief Executive Officer Anthony Ledru joined Tiffany from Bernard Arnault’s Louis Vuitton after the fashion tycoon’s conglomerate, LVMH, bought the jeweler for $16 billion in 2021, the world’s biggest luxury acquisition. LVMH aimed to combine the venerable jewelry retailer’s history and design with the conglomerate’s extensive resources to expand Tiffany’s presence in markets like China and India, enhance its digital capabilities and capture a new generation of luxury consumers. So far, though, Tiffany’s performance doesn’t appear to stack up against Louis Vuitton, Dior, Bulgari and the other prestigious brands under LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, which reports earnings on Jan. 28. LVMH doesn’t break out figures for Tiffany but sales at the conglomerate’s watches and jewelry segment dropped 4% in the last quarter, the division’s third straight quarterly sales decline. Roughly four years after the Tiffany acquisition, LVMH continues to ask…
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