Iconic Design

TAKEAWAY: Iconic Design

AUDIENCE MEMBER:
I had a question regarding the aesthetic design of your products. To which extent do you focus on the long-term visions of Tiffany's in terms of aesthetics, curating the brand image, and so on, versus keeping your finger on the pulse of changing tastes and trends? And are you easily able to strike a balance between those?

BOGLIOLO: 
It’s a very important question, because even if it is in the world of luxury, you have a totally different approach if you deal with fashion, or leather goods, or if you deal with jewelry, or for that purpose, also watches. In fashion, it’s all about what’s hot this season. And for jewelry, it’s all about it will be there forever. 

And it’s not just because of a diamond is forever. Honestly, also, a tiny sterling silver bracelet, return to Tiffany, that maybe you give to your daughter for graduation—you can be sure that she will never throw it away. So it’s not a matter of the value, because you can buy her a beautiful handbag for $2,000 and a bracelet for $200. But being sterling silver, that bracelet will always remain in the jewelry box of your daughter, while the handbag sooner or later will be dismissed. So it’s not a matter of price, but it’s a matter of approach, because the mentality of the consumer is that it’s not how much money I’m spending but it’s I am buying a durable product as opposed to a disposable, seasonal product. 

That is where design becomes crucial. In fashion, design has to be different and revolutionary every season, because I must attract you back to my store four seasons a year. The weather helps for that, but my design has to do that as well. In jewelry, it’s different. Of course, newness—people want newness. But newness has to be distinctive and iconic newness, because what you want from Tiffany is a design that you are sure that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, it will still be beautiful, which is the opposite of the apparel you will buy a beautiful—my wife recently bought a pair of boots that are quite striking yellow—I think next season, it will be over. But that is not the approach you want to have in jewelry. 

So to be a little bit more businesslike—quantitative—in jewelry, the percentage of sales deriving from newness typically is in the range of 10, maximum 15 percent. That is the golden rule, because if you introduce less than that, then there is not enough newness. But if you start going in the 20 to 25 percent, then you kill the eternity of your products. And this is why I’m very proud that—and we are the only luxury brand in the world that can claim this—that as still of now, one of our big bestsellers is the Tiffany setting. Now, the Tiffany setting—the diamond Tiffany setting—was launched by Charles Lewis Tiffany in 1886. And it’s a bestseller now, 130 years later. So that is what I mean by iconic design.