Watchmaker and Jeweler Charriol Relaunches Fine Jewelry
After reconsidering its product lines during the COVID-19 pandemic, Swiss brand Charriol is stepping back into the fine jewelry space with a new 18-karat and diamond offering.
The category, which currently consists of the Celtic Heritage collection playing on the brand’s roots in Celtic iconography, will range between $900 and $10,000, with the bulk of pieces hitting the “sweet spot” between $2,000 and $5,000, according to chief executive officer and creative director Coralie Charriol.
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Totaling 10 pieces divided into the Celtic Knot, Celtic Dream and Triquetra sets, the fine jewelry will play on precious materials but also feature the steel cable the brand has made one of its signatures.
“This is the direction I want to go in, [initiated] with the launch of the Navigator watch during Watches & Wonders [last March]. It’s a more complicated watch for ladies first, at a higher price point. And I want this 18-karat gold jewelry to match those watches in a better price bracket,” she said.
While the designs released this month are new, the brand “always had gold jewelry,” but the CEO decided to curtail that offering early into the pandemic, focusing on watches and the steel jewelry that sells to the tune of 100,000 units a year for a range priced between $150 and $500.
For the executive, this relaunch also signs a new higher-end era after what she euphemistically called “a rock ’n’ roll” period.
The brand, which celebrates its 40th anniversary and sits around the $80 million mark in retail sales this year, was founded in 1983 by her father Philippe Charriol. Watches came first and the jewelry soon followed. When he passed away in 2019 aged 77 following a race car accident, Charriol, who had been creative director of the brand since 2003, had to step up as CEO in the run-up to the pandemic.
Daunting as the moment was, she used it as a way to reassess the markets in which Charriol was present with some 3,000 points of sale, but also “taking a brand with all this history, know-how and a certain look and bring it to today, give it your own voice,” the executive told WWD.
In addition to repositioning the brand, a first move was to pull back on distribution, coming down to today’s 70 stand-alone Charriol boutiques, 300 shops-in-shop across all markets and overall 1,500 points of sale. The website was also overhauled.
With the anniversary, the time felt ripe once more for Charriol. And not only because she is an “April baby,” so diamond is her birth stone, she quipped.
With 65 percent of her sales happening over e-commerce in the U.S., Charriol feels there is major opportunity in this market, where the family business has been present for 35 years. “It has the best growth potential in the next couple of years for the brand,” she added.
In her opinion, the American market has “always understood 18-karat gold jewelry more than any other market,” making it her priority for 2024. “I know that my full range is very interesting to a lot of department stores,” Coralie Charriol continued, adding that she was in advanced talks with two major department chains in the U.S. who are interested in the full Charriol offering.
That said, with a geographic breakdown that sees one-third of the business done across the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, another third in the Americas and the final third in Asia, she “doesn’t want to get pigeonholed” into one country or region.
Watches will also remain a strong focus for the label. “I think there is a gap in the market for my kind of watch at my price — particularly for women,” said Charriol, who plans to animate the latest line with, say, a moon phase for ladies.
But men won’t be forgotten. “We’ve always had unisex jewelry but for some reason, the brand always seems more feminine [so] I want to make sure I have enough variety for men too.”
While she’s going a mile a minute on projects, there’s one objective that stays clear. “I want to tell my story,” Charriol said, with the five-year anniversary of her father’s passing next February. “I’ve been under dad’s wing for 20 years, working with him for so long. And it’s time to come into my own light and shine without guilt.”
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