Bulgari CEO on buying jewellery online, LVMH’s Tiffany deal, Chinese consumers and the future of luxury
- Jean-Christophe Babin, who has headed Bulgari since 2013, has turned the Italian jeweller into another success story for parent company LVMH
- He believes in five years that in all countries where Bulgari offers online sales, digital stores will outperform physical ones
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic last year, while much of the world’s population was stuck at home clad in cosy loungewear or trying out skincare routines in their bathrooms, the world’s rich were buying fine jewellery.
You would think that indulging in diamonds amid one of the worst economic slowdowns in recent history may seem incongruous, even for wealthy individuals who have continued to do well thanks to a booming stock market. But both in China and the US – the world’s top luxury markets – jewellery has been one of the most resilient categories.
“Jewellery is always more resilient and always recovers faster than the rest of the luxury market,” says Jean-Christophe Babin, chief executive of Bulgari, the Italian jeweller founded in 1884 that since 2011 has been part of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury group.
“If you think about it, jewellery is the oldest form of luxury; it started 15,000 years ago to celebrate the mating between a man and a woman in every civilisation and corner of the world. Fifteen thousand years later, the role of jewellery has remained the same: the celebration of things in life like mating, and today it can be a man and a woman or two men.”
As Babin sees it, it was a confluence of factors – some predating the pandemic – that have helped Bulgari, and other jewellery brands, weather the crisis.
