The jeweler Mauboussin wants to increase its Italian clientele, after focusing on the French market to develop its European offer.
In September 2020, the jeweler Mauboussin moved to Italy with the ambition to take advantage of a flourishing market for the manufacture of luxury products for the home. The opening of seven corners as part of its new strategy initiated in the fall, located in Milan, Bologna, Bergamo, and Rome, as well as in the Coin and La Rinascente department stores, strengthens its presence on the Peninsula.
“I chose Italy not to run a sprint but a long-distance race. For the moment we are sowing, even if it will take longer because of the health situation“, explains the CEO of the company, Alain Némarq.
The Mauboussin jewelry house, founded in 1827, has recently focused on France, the market from which it originates and which accounts for 70% of its turnover. In 2014, Mauboussin will leave the United States and Russia, although the brand will maintain its retail site in the Great Bear.
The CEO has implemented an ambitious strategy with the opening of dozens of boutiques in small French conurbations, cities that for the most part are not among the most promising for luxury jewelry.
The Mauboussin house has 80 stores in France and 30 boutiques internationally, most of which are located in Asia, mainly in the land of the Rising Sun where the jeweler has been established since 1999. The brand has also established itself in the Maghreb countries (Morocco and Algeria) and now plans to expand into Italy, the first European development country after Switzerland.
Alain Némarq, the company’s CEO since 2002, is familiar with the Italian market, having worked for 17 years in the fashion industry, notably as the boss of the Yves-Laurent Man and then the Kenzo Man. “Italy is a market that I know well,” comments Alain Némarq, “I am convinced that the unique segment adopted by Mauboussin is in line with Italian society, very close to the French mentality“.
Although engagement rings and wedding rings remain a thriving segment in the luxury jewelry industry, the French jeweler wants to modernize its product range, with the aim of feminizing it. Mauboussin aspires to design jewelry for autonomous women who wish to buy their own jewelry pieces.
“The definition of jewelry that we have in France, corresponds to a minimalist and easy to wear piece of jewelry, which the woman buys for herself as a kind of second skin“, explains Némarq. However, this vision of jewelry was not the same before the 2000s, when “jewelry was exclusively offered by men, fiancés, husbands, and presented as trophies testifying to their wealth“.
Stéphanie Testa joined the Mauboussin Italy adventure last August in Milan as sales manager for Italy, after 15 years as manager of Mauboussin boutiques in France. According to her, “the story of Mauboussin is still to be told to Italian women, but the positioning of accessible luxury, which does not cut across creation or detail, already seduces them. This is particularly evident with our affordable watches, whose dials are adorned with a shower of diamonds“.
Under the direction of Alain Némarq, Mauboussin is targeting Italian department stores because “they are places of passage, inspiration, and gourmandize“, but he has already announced that he does not wish to settle in the famous dogma of Montenapoleone in Milan. Having left the Place Vendôme in Paris for the Rue de la Paix, the CEO declares “I’m not interested in temples“.
While its e-commerce site has just seen the light of day in a period that is conducive to online sales, Mauboussin is proud to announce the successful repatriation of its production to the Old Continent, which will begin in 2014. The jeweler, which previously relocated three-quarters of its production to China, India, and Thailand, has increased to 60% of products manufactured in France, 25% in Italy, and the rest in Spain.
“The Italian know-how is interesting because it is elegant, it allows us to make untied objects“, concludes the CEO. Alain Némarq has thus favored a Milanese workshop for the manufacture of his stand-alone piece “Chance of love“, imagined from a clover design. A flagship piece of the company, 150,000 copies of which have been sold since its creation in 2005.
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Featured photo : © Mauboussin
