Gstaad, SWITZERLAND — Richemont-owned Piaget is bringing back one of its most celebrated timepieces in a bid to jump-start its luxury watch division and promote what chief executive Benjamin Comar describes as “visible but not vulgar” luxury.

The Polo 79 — recognisable for the yellow gold strips that run seamlessly through the watch’s case — was a well-regarded symbol of status and taste in the 1980s, worn by artist Andy Warhol, tennis champion Bjorn Borg and Swiss actress Ursula Andress.

The relaunched timepiece retains its unusual, riveted design and solid gold bracelet, but is larger than the original at 38mm in diameter. It also features a raft of contemporary technical upgrades, including the use of one of Piaget’s in-house automatic mechanical movements in place of the original battery-powered quartz.

Speaking to The Business of Fashion, CEO Comar said the $73,000 Polo 79 was “not an overstated watch or an understated watch” and that its solid yellow gold case and bracelet would appeal to the American market, where the brand is “not at the level it should be.”

The US is now the biggest market for Swiss watch exports, according to the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry, having overtaken China and Hong Kong, which dominated the market for two decades leading into the pandemic.

The Polo was originally designed in 1979 by Yves Piaget — the company’s fourth-generation leader who spearheaded the use of quartz movements to allow for ultra-thin haute joaillerie watches. It sits in a similar niche to Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak models, which have driven explosive growth at the Piaget rival. With a similar solid gold design, but slimmer silhouette, the Polo is an opportunity for Piaget to try and capture some of these clients. The mix of industrial elements like exposed rivets with high jewellery techniques like trompe-l’oeil gadroons also give the watch unisex appeal, as watchmakers and buyers increasingly embrace the notion that most timepieces can be stylishly worn by any gender.

While the launch could generate significant buzz, its impact on Piaget’s broader business will be far from immediate: the company aims to craft an ultra-exclusive narrative around the new design by initially producing just 79 of the watches this year.

The Polo

It’s less of a mystery why Piaget is bringing back the Polo 79 than why it took so long to do so. “I can’t say before me,” said Comar, who was appointed to the top job two years ago. “I’ve been yearning to do this since I joined the company.” He said the revamped watch was two years in the making and that the company had been through more than 100 designs before settling on the revamped Polo 79. The company is using the re-release to celebrate its 150th anniversary this year.

“It’s probably the most iconic watch from our company,” said Comar. “And it matches all our paradoxes: classical and yet daring, night and day, sporty and classy. And at the same time, it’s visible but not vulgar.”

Designs from a similar era have been the bread-and-butter of high-end watchmaking over the past decade. Updated editions of Audemars Piguet’s Royal Oak and Patek Philippe’s Nautilus, originally introduced in 1972 and 1976 respectively, have energised both the primary and secondary markets, while last year IWC revamped its 1976 Ingenieur SL to keep up with the trend.

Piaget, meanwhile, has differentiated itself by allowing its women’s business to lead the narrative: its campaigns more often celebrate jewellery collections like the “Possession” line or formal, feminine haute joaillerie watches like the jewel-incrusted Limelight Gala.

Piaget is betting that the Polo 79 can generate the sort of interest that would protect the company during what analysts are saying will likely be a difficult year for luxury watches. Comar admitted he is taking a “very cautious” view of the market in 2024, although he declined to comment on the brand’s performance, in line with the policy of Piaget’s parent company, Richemont.

According to Richemont’s most recently quarterly report to the end of December, sales in its specialist watch division were up 3 percent year-on-year at constant exchange rates, but down 1 per cent at actual rates.

Morgan Stanley’s influential annual watch report gauging Switzerland’s top 50 watch brands suggests Piaget’s revenue fell by around 5 percent year-on-year to 265 million Swiss francs ($304 million) in 2022, during a boom in the broader Swiss watch industry. Morgan Stanley found Richemont stablemate Vacheron Constantin saw its revenue surge from 635 million Swiss francs to 825 million Swiss francs in the same period.

“We hope for the best, and we see the economics,” said Comar. “But the numbers of all the luxury groups [released in January] were good and I’m happy that the luxury market is so dynamic. Nobody expected that, not even the best analysts. The better luxury is, the better it is for everyone. We have an anniversary year and we have to be cautious, but we have a good product to start the year.”

At 38mm, the watch fits the current industry trend towards more unisex case sizes and designs, but Comar said he expected around 80 per cent of Polo 79 buyers to be men. “I see it more as a men’s watch,” he said. “But the world has changed and everybody is free to wear what they want.”

He acknowledged that yellow gold is more popular in the US, compared to Asia, where rose gold products tend to outperform. But he said the decision to make the Polo 79 in yellow gold had primarily been about respecting the original 1979 design. “The success of the original was a US success, and I think it will be the same this time,” he said.

Piaget is hoping to create an ultra-exclusive narrative around the relaunch, initially producing fewer than 100 of the Polo 79 this year. But Comar said he expected the watch to generate interest in the brand and to stimulate sales of the standard Polo, which was issued in 2016 and has since become the brand’s best-selling model. The original appeared in a variety of case shapes and sizes, but Comar said there were no plans to do the same this time around.

Piaget’s business is split roughly 50/50 between its watch and jewellery collections, but the momentum is currently stronger for jewellery, Comar said. “Post Covid, it was with watches,” he said. “But now it’s with jewellery. It changes every year, so we are happy to be in both categories.”

Don’t call Loro Piana, the uber-luxe label owned and worn by LVMH owner Bernard Arnault, “quiet luxury.” Its chief executive Damien Bertrand who joined the brand two years ago from LVMH stablemate Dior is having none of it. Arnault last month described the northern Italian brand as having enjoyed “magnifique” growth over the past year.

But Bertrand takes issue with those who argue Loro Piana’s sales surge is down to a vogue for pared back luxury despite stellar results at logo-free labels.

“Sometimes, people ask me the question, ‘Is Loro Piana quiet luxury?’ I invariably answer ‘No.’ Loro Piana existed before quiet luxury and will exist afterwards; there are a lot of things [about the brand] that are not quiet at all,” he says.

As an example, Bertrand points to the launch of a prominent pop-up store in the middle of the elite ski resort Zermatt this winter. “It’s not so quiet, but people love it. They have hot wine and browse our collections. We’ve had a lot of new clients who have discovered us,” he says. “We were the first luxury brand in Zermatt, now all the brands want to be there,” he says. “In Dior we did a lot of disruption, in Loro Piana we are doing it too but in a Loro Piana way.” Next year, he plans to take the pop up somewhere else.

If that seems a different tack for the super-pricey, conservative northern Italian cashmere label LVMH acquired from the Loro Piana family a decade ago, that’s because it is. Arnault famously tells families he is not going to change anything when he buys their business. Loro Piana was no exception, according to members of its founding family. Yet the house has changed since its acquisition a decade ago, transformed from cottage industry to global luxury brand. The appointment of Bertrand, a native of Marseille, who spent 20 years at French FMCG behemoth L’Oréal and was made head of womenswear at Dior in 2016, is testament to that evolution.

Under Bertrand’s leadership, Loro Piana’s strategy has shifted subtly in a bid to make the brand more contemporary, and appeal to a wider clientele. Bertrand argues today that, far from being a label solely for the ultra-rich, the “potential of Loro Piana is infinite.” A key part of that new strategy has been the launch of leather goods, the brand’s fastest growing category, says Betrand, albeit from a low base. Last year, Loro Piana finally launched a long-awaited handbag range, the Bale, named after the pillow shaped wool bundle that’s the start of the supply chain. It’s a crucial step.

Arnault acquired Loro Piana a couple of years after failing to seize control of French family-owned ultra luxe maison Hermès. And it’s been clear from the outset that Arnault aims to turn Loro Piana into a credible Hermès rival. Loro Piana is dwarfed in size by Hermès. Analysts estimate annual revenues at the Italian label are around the billion euro mark. Hermès group sales hit 11.6 billion euros in 2022, the latest number available. Still, with last year’s launch of the Bale bag, Loro Piana has decisively entered the segment that drives the majority of Hermès’ growth.

The intention to rival Hermès seems to burn bright for Bertrand, even if it goes unstated. “My mandate is to make Loro Piana the pinnacle of luxury and the most desirable maison in the world,” he says. The Bale bag was just “the beginning of a category.” Interiors are another frontier Bertrand intends to grow.

It’s all part of an overhaul of Loro Piana’s image to make it more contemporary and appeal to a wider clientele. Bertrand says he took his first two years “to rework completely the silhouette,” and to make it “more modern and more harmonised between men and women.” He has also introduced seasonal themes in a (gentle) nod to runway rhythms. This Spring/Summer is an ode to artisanal manufacturing inspired by Italy and Japan. That’s helped drive the brand among younger consumers with shorter attention spans. Bertrand says the average age of its clientele has dropped to between 35 and 40 years old.

Still, Loro Piana’s central raison d’etre remains constant today: the creation of ultra luxe garments out of prized, and increasingly finite, raw materials with stellar price points to match. Access to rare fibres has been fundamental to the label since its founding by the Loro Piana brothers in 1924, but it’s taken on increased commercial significance as the Covid-19 lockdowns made clear the importance of supply chain resilience. Add in the impact of the climate crisis, both extreme heat events and water shortages, and deft management of Loro Piana’s supply chain has become increasingly key to its capacity for growth.

When LVMH bought 80 percent of Loro Piana for €2 billion in 2013, observers attributed its rich premium to its vertically integrated supply chain. Today, that sum is looking like money well spent as brands engage in an arms race for increasing scarce raw materials and manufacturing talent. It also means that Loro Piana’s growth potential is balanced on that finiteness: there is a limit to how much Loro Piana can produce, but perhaps not how much it can sell its goods for.

Loro Piana’s Extraordinary Bale competition is a case in point. The nub of the competition, begun by the Loro Piana family more than two decades ago, was to spur merino farmers in Australia and New Zealand to produce ever finer and higher quality wool. Italian academic Stefania Saviolo has argued a shortage of raw materials will mean the supply chain is going to become a branded luxury good itself, right down to the farmers who produced top quality wool. The winners of this year’s Extraordinary Bale competition “Pyrenees Park” fit that bill.

According to Bertrand, products made from the Extraordinary Bale competition’s winning wool are sought out by “some very good clients who love it,” he says. “There is only enough of the wool to make about 50 suits: the product we get out of the record bale is a very small quantity, very rare, very pricey and very prized as well.”

But all is not well in the supply chain. The wild vicuña which provide the rare fibres for Loro Piana’s top end ranges are increasingly moving higher into the Andes to avoid hotter weather putting them potentially out of reach of shearers who have rarely worked at such high altitude.

For Bertrand, Loro Piana’s growth model is also linked to a specific relationship with time. Bertrand makes a distinction between Dior, which has a six-month turnaround for collections, and Loro Piana. “It takes us up to 14 months [to create a new product]; the fashion brands do not have the luxury of this time,” he says. Of course, that concept of time without deadline is a pull for the restless global elite who wear Loro Piana themselves (Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are clients) and apparently have little of it themselves.

Bertrand is also driving the stickiness of the brand by encouraging Loro Piana clients to see themselves as members of a tribe (the 0.1 percent given the $980 price tag on a pair of its popular Summer Walk Loafers). Customers tend to be “connoisseurs who can recognise each other,” he says. “You will never have big logos but there is a look and feel of our garments.”

The notion that Loro Piana is a badge of belonging to the elite is being fostered by the label’s new sponsorship of elite sports events: it backed the Ryder Cup for the first time last year, and this year will sponsor the Giraglia Regatta, a feature of the summer season on the French Riviera.

But is there a club Loro Piana would rather not be part of? Roy family characters in the hit television series “Succession” wore the brand, including Jeremy Strong’s odious Kendall Roy. Bertrand doesn’t miss a beat. True to the maxim that all publicity is good publicity, Bertrand says he’s “never had or heard a comment from anyone suggesting it was bad publicity.” The clothes were chosen by the actors and production and weren’t product placement, he adds.

Another key issue for Bertrand is manufacturing talent. Loro Piana has 1,200 artisans with the know-how to work its woollen garments, but it’s now doing talks to school children, especially in the regions famous for Italian luxury manufacturing clusters, such as Tuscany for leather goods, Piedmont for textiles and Marche for shoes, to encourage them to become artisans when they leave school. It’s also seeking architects and engineers out of universities.

Those engineers are necessary because today’s Loro Piana “is a mix between the hand and the machine,” says Bertrand. “I need people who can project themselves into the future but we are a gatekeeper of a tradition too,” he explains. He’s not talking about the use of robots but artificial intelligence. As of last year, Loro Piana engineers have been using AI to rapidly spot defects in colour or weave in a bale of wool. “We are implementing it in our factory as we speak,” he says.

It’s another sign this isn’t your mamma’s Loro Piana.

Pre-owned fashion platform Hardly Ever Worn It, or Hewi, has launched a storefront on Amazon Europe, the e-commerce giant announced Tuesday.

While Amazon customers in the US have been able to shop from a selection of secondhand accessories courtesy of What Goes Around Comes Around, the Hewi partnership marks the first time shoppers in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy can purchase resale on the e-commerce website.

”We’re always looking to innovate and engage with our diverse customers, and launching pre-owned goods allows us to do just that, whilst also creating an opportunity for us to offer our customers accessible luxury,” Ruth Dias, VP, Amazon Fashion Europe, said in a statement.

Though Amazon has become one of the largest retailers of apparel, it has yet to crack the code for upscale fashion. In 2020, it launched a new category called Luxury Stores, carrying brands such as Oscar de la Renta and Altuzarra. But the vertical has not gained traction among shoppers nor vendors; the selection of product is slim compared to other e-tailers such as Net-a-Porter and MatchesFashion.

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Snap Inc. is reducing its workforce by roughly 10 percent worldwide, joining the chorus of technology companies that have announced a fresh round of cuts since the start of the year.

The social-media company estimated that the reductions will result in pre-tax charges of $55 million to $75 million from severance and related costs, as well as other charges including $45 million to $55 million in future cash expenditures. Most of these costs will occur in the first quarter, Snap said in a filing Monday.

Snap said the cuts are being made to “best position our business to execute on our highest priorities.”

Like its social media peers, Snap has been working to offset a deceleration in ad revenue, coping with the slump by cutting jobs and culling projects that are no longer seen as a priority. Just four months ago, Snap announced it was closing a division focused on making augmented reality services for businesses, pulling the plug on what was its latest attempt to diversify the ad-dependent company. Shuttering the business was expected to cut 170 jobs.

The company employed about 5,400 workers as of September. A 10 percent reduction based off that total would amount to about 540 jobs lost. Snap said the mass layoffs may extend into the second quarter of 2024 while the company works to comply with local laws.

By Lynn Doan

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