Pandora to Open Corporate Hub in New York City
Danish jeweler Pandora is in a New York state of mind, with plans to open a headquarters in the city in September.
“The biggest benefit we see coming into New York is access to a variety of talent across functional areas but with talent specializing in retail,“ explained Luciano Rodembusch, Pandora’s president of North America.
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The brand already has nine store locations in the Big Apple, including a flagship on 42nd Street in Times Square, and there are plans to further expand its retail footprint this year.
Rodembusch called the city vibrant, very active and a strong retail hub. “We also want to feed into this hub in New York so that our store teams stay close to our corporate teams, and so we can stay on the pulse of both talent and our clients at the epicenter of retail in North America,” he said.
While the Danish jeweler has yet to nail down an exact location for its headquarters, the aim is to find a 25,000- to 30,000-square-foot space in Midtown Manhattan, opening as a temporary space initially, while building out a permanent one. Rodembusch said that rather than a singular focus, the hub will be cross functional, including teams across sales, merchandising, marketing, finance, HR, digital and e-commerce, real estate, legal and operations, with an open floor plan to keep teams collaborative.
”Similar to our hub in Baltimore, we want to ensure that in the New York office there are a lot of communal spaces and that there is a great deal of light to spark innovation and good ideas,” he said. (That Baltimore hub, as well as a logistics center in Columbia, Md., will remain as important cornerstones for Pandora’s business operations.)
The move will also be good for the company’s diversity and inclusion, according to Rodembusch.
“Diversity and inclusion are an important part of our culture in North America. New York offers the quality of talent and talent attraction we are looking for to continue expanding, who understand the best way to deliver the best experiences for our clients,” he said. “Our employees and clients come from very diverse backgrounds, and expanding our talent pool in New York will only strengthen our brand.”
The new Manhattan headquarters hub marks a strategic next chapter for Pandora, which had a banner year in the U.S. in 2021, surpassing $1 billion in sales and 51 percent growth, “aligning with our ambition to increase our market share and double our revenue in the U.S. as compared to 2019 in the longer term,” Rodembusch said.
Pandora is now working to protect that growth through “fueling brand momentum, enhancing product offerings, driving strategic network expansion and building out a superior omnichannel journey and fulfillment,” according to Rodembusch.
“Pandora, just as any retailer, is impacted by the economic situation,” he explained, when asked about a possible recession in the U.S market. “There is less money in the market. But due to the fact that we have high-quality jewelry for affordable prices, and we focus a lot on important moments — this creates a natural hedge to a market in recession.
“The economic climate in the U.S. demands that we work harder to create real, unique experiences for our clients, and that we continue to adapt to make changes to support their milestones,” Rodembusch continued. “Our stores have seen clients put extra meaning behind each of our pieces that they are purchasing in this economy.”
Pandora is busy rolling out Evoke, its latest retail concept, opened in May in the Mall at Bay Plaza in the Bronx, N.Y., and which has since opened at Freehold Raceway Mall in Freehold, N.J., and at the Christiana Mall near Newark, Del. “The new concept makes shopping more intuitive and improves speed of service, with a focus on personalization and enabling clients to easily explore, find and try on products. We’re excited for additional locations coming up. We want to both bring these stores into new markets and also reward our loyal fans with this new shopping experience,” Rodembusch said.
The stores were previously rolled out in Europe and, according to Rodembusch, helped the company in fine-tuning it for the U.S. market, where it plans to open three more in New York as well as in Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco before the end of the year.
The updated layout is designed “with today’s omnichannel journey in mind for our more than 80 percent of consumers who start their shopping online, and offers a special brand experience, including interaction with our campaigns and on-site engraving,” he said.
Also on the retail front, Pandora is in the early stages of a roll out of shops-in-shop in Macy’s department stores, which Rodembusch said he “sees as a strong partner to bring in younger clients.”
Pandora opened in five Macy’s doors in late 2021 to test the shops-in-shop concept and things went “quite well,” according to the North America president. Now the partnership is ramping up, and the company has opened shops-in-shop in 14 Macy’s locations across the U.S., with additional expansion planned through the end of this year.
“We have great, hand-finished, affordable luxury offerings with collections like Pandora ME and Marvel that are popular with Millennials and Gen Z. So it was a very thoughtful, mutually rewarding partnership,” Rodembusch said. The Marvel tie in, which debuted in February, generated some 40 million impressions on social media — and a waiting list of 17,000 and counting for The Avengers Infinity Stones ring, priced at $100.
Pandora came into the U.S. market with the success of its well-known collection of charms as an entry point for customers, and now newer lines, like its Signature Collection, “are being discovered for everyday use and are doing well,” according to Rodembusch. Solid gold and gold-plated offerings have also become important contributors to Pandora’s North America business.
“Our Baltimore brand roots have been set over decades and our resulting relationship with the local community is super strong,” he said. “Now we are aiming to continue that in Baltimore and only add value by expanding and establishing our same values and behaviors in New York.”
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