There’s an App for Pandora

The Pandora jewelry company, known for its charm bracelets and its $2 billion initial public offering, has launched iphone and Facebook applications designed to create an interactive shopping experience.

The Copenhagen-based jewelry company’s first iPhone app allows consumers to share Pandora fine jewelry pieces via Facebook, e-mail or by adding it to their personalized Pandora “Wish List” page online. Consumers will have instant access to all of Pandora’s collections, including customizable charm bracelets, rings, earrings, necklaces and watches.

Pandora’s “Bracelet Designer” is a bracelet building Facebook app. Its 150,000 Facebook fans can select charms from the company’s “Moments” collection to create a personalized charm bracelet and share their unique bracelet designs with others. This app actually launched in October. Consumers can select from seven different sterling silver or 14K gold bracelet options and more than 800 charms.

The Facebook app tracks the cost of each charm selected along with the total cost of the bracelet. When done designing their personal bracelet, consumers can find the nearest Pandora store locations and print or download a picture of the bracelet with the list of selected charms to take to the store or share with others as a gift idea. They also can post their newly created Pandora bracelet to their Facebook status and Twitter page. Once a bracelet is designed, consumers can share comments and "like" designs of other fans as well as view international and local top ten charts listing the bracelet designs that have received the most "likes" and bracelets with the most comments.

Timepiece Tuesday: Antiques, Girl’s Luxury Watch, Special Editions, An Awards Preview and a Social Media Contest

Chinese Watch Collectors Have Appetite for Vintage Pieces

Is there anything regarding luxury that the Chinese don’t want? Each season, Christie’s presents a range of 19th-century timepieces made especially for the Chinese market. This year, at the auction house’s Dec. 2 auction of watches, five 19th-century timepieces made especially for the Chinese market are coming up for sale. One, a circa-1877 gold-and-enamel pocket watch depicting three angels, is estimated to sell for between HK$320,000 and HK$480,000 (pictured). In addition, in 2005, Asia overtook the U.S. as the biggest market for Patek Philippe. Collectors are buying both new and vintage models, but there is an increasing focus on older pieces, according to the Wall Street Journal blog, Scene Asia.

Antique Clock Auction

Clocks will be a major focus in the Skinner, Inc. annual auction of Science, Technology & Clocks on November 20 in its Marlborough, Mass., gallery. Among the timepieces on the block, is a very important regulator by the Bond Shop (pictured). The Regulator No. 396 is was one of three made; No. 394 was developed for the Harvard Observatory, No. 395 for an observatory in Liverpool, England, and No. 396 for the personal use of Bond in his chronometer shop. As the director of the Harvard Observatory, Bond was one of the first to work towards establishing standard time. It is estimated at $300,000 to $500,000. Other clock highlights include a Newport tall clock, c. 1725 by William Claggett of Newport, R.I., which is the earliest American clock being offered in the sale. The piece is estimated at $60,000 to $80,000. The sale also includes a number of Willard clocks.

Frederique Constant to Introduce Luxury Girl’s Watch

The U.K. trade publication, Professional Jeweller, has learned that Frederique Constant will introduce a girl’s luxury watch at BaselWorld. “The company’s global sales director, Ralph Simons, confirmed it with a nod of his head during an interview this week,” the publication wrote. Stay tuned.

Marvin Unveils Sébastien Loeb Collection

Swiss luxury watch brand Marvin has created a new limited edition line in partnership with its ambassador, World Rally champion Sébastien Loeb. Two exclusive chronographs have been developed with Loeb and they both carry his signature. Their design is the work of two creative watchmakers: Jean-François Ruchonnet, best known for the TAG Heuer Monaco V4 and the Cabestan, and Sébastien Perret, the Neuchâtel designer who has been associated with all recent Marvin collections. The new Loeb Special Edition has a 44 mm diameter steel case flexible red horns mounted on spring suspensions, buttons coated in black PVD that resemble gear change paddles, and counters designed like dashboard instruments. The collection is limited to 777 pieces, representing Loeb’s seven world championship titles.

Grand Prix d'Horlogerie Preview

The 2010 edition of the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève will be November 18 at the Geneva Grand Théâtre. Ten timepieces have been shortlisted for each of the competition’s seven categories, including best ladies, men’s, design, jewelry, complicated, sports and the Petite Aiguille watch prize (the best timepiece under SFr5,000). There will also be four special awards, including the public prize, voted for by 5,000 participants. Brands shortlisted include Bulgari, Van Cleef & Arpels, Ralph Lauren, Audemars Piguet, Piaget, Chopard, Chaumet, Graff, Harry Winston and Chanel. The Financial Times has written a preview of the prestigious event that can be viewed here (subscription required).

Baume & Mercier In Search of ‘Very Special Reporter’

Baume & Mercier has launched a contest appealing to its social media fans. The Swiss luxury watch brand has invited its 75,000 Facebook fans to upload videos explaining their love of the brand and why they would make ideal "Very Special Reporters" at the upcoming Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie in Geneva, Jan. 17–21, the trade show for high-end watch manufacturers and buyers.

Jewelry and Watch Brands Score Low on their Digital IQ

E-tailers and department stores lead the rankings and Jewelry & Watches and Accessory brands lag behind in their digital IQ.  Image source: Digital IQ Index: Specialty Retail, L2

E-tailers have the highest digital IQ, department stores saw the largest gain in their digital IQ during the past year and the digital IQ of home furnishings brands fell from the prior year. However, it is jewelry and watch brands who rate below every category with the exception of accessories.

The good news is that with a score of 68 the jewelry and watch category “vastly improved (over 2010 results) as brands began making investments in social media,” according to L2, a digital think tank, which published the ranking of 64 companies in eight specialty categories.

For its second annual survey titled, Digital IQ Index: Specialty Retail, L2 based its ranking on the following criteria:

* Website functionality, content and brand translation, 30 percent;

* Digital marketing, 30 percent;

* Social media 20 percent; and

* Mobile, 20 percent

This year’s rankings placed a stronger emphasis on the explosion of mobile purchasing (m-commerce) and the exceptional growth of facebook as both a social media marketing tool and as a newly minted e-commerce platform, known as f-commerce.

Based on the criteria, a scoring methodology was created and rankings for the brands were based on the following categories.

Genius, 140 and above;

* Gifted, 110 - 139;

* Average, 90 - 109;

* Challenged, 70 -89;

* Feeble, 70 and below

The only jewelry and watch brand that made the Gifted” category was Tiffany, which ranked 19th overall with a score of 118. “A jewel of a mobile app and smart digital cross promotion,” the survey noted.

Even e-commerce diamond jewelry standout, Blue Nile, took a hit in the survey, ranking 38th overall, which places it in the “Average” category with a score of 98. “Dated site for a child of the medium,” according to the L2 survey. Ouch.  

Others getting an average grade are

* 43 Cartier, score of 96, “Good-looking, but faulty site mechanics;”

* 45 Swarovski, 94, “Social media properties shimmer, but site has lost its sparkle;” and

* 47 Swatch, 92, “Multi-site e-commerce navigation lacks intuition.”

Zales Jewelers, which ranked 52nd, was the only watch and jewelry brand in the “Challenged” category with a score of 83; “Enhancing mobile and YouTube offering would help.”

Then there’s Tourneau, which ranked dead last in the survey at 64th with a score of 43. It is one of only two brands to place in the “Feeble” category for failing to have an e-commerce site. “Clock is ticking before getting completely left behind,” the survey states.

No jewelry and watch brands made the Genius category.

“On average, users spend more time on brand sites with higher Digital IQs,” L2 said in its survey. “This uptick in site visits also translates to more site visits per user and higher frequency visits.”

There is some good news in the survey for jewelry and watch brands. It includes:

* Tiffany & Co. is among those considered a facebook overachiever based on its facebook page popularity;

* Swarovski facebook page attracted nearly 1.3 million "Likes," the ninth highest among those surveyed.

* Cartier has one of the fastest growing twitter accounts, ranking eighth overall;

* Cartier ranks third and Tiffany ranks fifth among brands with the most upload views on YouTube; and

* Cartier's Calibre de Cartier, Mechanics of Passion, (Short Version) Youtube video is among the most popular brand videos, ranking eighth, with more than 1.3 million views.

Other survey highlights after the page break:

* The top three companies in the survey and the ones only earning a spot in “Genius” category are Macy’s, Victoria’s Secret and Nordstrom. Rounding out the top five are Sephora and Urban Outfitters.

Apart from search engines, facebook is the leading source of both upstream and downstream traffic to and from nearly every retailer’s site.

* Examination of retailers’ facebook walls reveals that fans are most receptive to product-related messaging.

* Thirteen percent of brands surveyed are on the cusp of breaking into f-commerce, offering heavily curated product catalogs with live links from their facebook page to product pages on their e-commerce site.

* The most profound shift from the 2010 Index was the pace of mobile adoption across platforms. In last year’s study, less than 30 percent of brands were optimized for a mobile platform. This year 67 percent of brands support a mobile site, and nearly 45 percent have an iPhone app. Adoption of the iPad is nascent, but rapidly gaining momentum, growing six-fold since 2010.

* “A missed opportunity for retailers in mobile is Android adoption,” L2 said in its survey. Android users’ ad impression share surpassed that of iOS mobile users in December 2010. In April, Nielsen reported that more consumers plan to buy a smartphone powered by Android than any other OS.8 Gilt Groupe, Rue La La, and Macy’s were the only brands in the study to offer any type of Android app.

FT Business of Luxury Summit: Boucheron Leads the Way Online as Most Luxury Companies Lag

At the podium Vanessa Friedman, FT Fashion Editor. From left: Luca Solca, senior analyst luxury goods and general retail of Sanford C. Bernstein, Fabio d’Angelantonio,. executive vice president and luxury retail and chief marketing officer of Luxottica Group, William Powers, author of Hamlet’s Blackberry; Reggie Bradford, chief executive officer of Vitrue, and Jean-Christophe Bédos, president and CEO of Boucheron.

The Internet was the main topic of conversation during the FT Business of Luxury Summit. It was refreshing to see that the luxury industry was finally waking up to online marketing and e-commerce opportunities. However, the questions raised at the two-day conference show that the industry as a whole is still behind the times when it comes to understanding and using the medium.

The frustration over the questions being raised during the summit at the Beverly Hills Hotel was summed up by a marketing director from Paris who said the following during the black tie gala outside Paramount Studios: “They are asking the questions that were answered two years ago,” he said. “They keep asking whether luxury companies should get on the Internet. That question has been answered. The question they should be asking is how we should do it.”

Indeed, panel after panel, often led by editors of the Financial Times (which hosts the annual event), focused on whether companies, whose main selling point is their exclusivity, should be online promoting and selling their products to the mass market online. The answer, by and large, is yes. That promoting and selling their products and services online doesn’t delude the exclusivity of the brand or cannibalize sales. That if done correctly, this medium can increase awareness, aspiration and sales for a company’s product the same way that advertising and event marketing has done for years. Not that it will work for every company that wants to attract and service wealthy clientele, but for the vast majority, a sophisticated online strategy will be a benefit to the brand.

It’s refreshing to know that a luxury jeweler is one of those taking a leadership position online. Jean-Christophe Bédos, president and CEO of Boucheron, talked about the venerable Paris-based company’s decision to start selling products online in September 2007, before many others and how they use social media sites, such as Facebook, as a marketing tool.

“We realized through surveys that the majority of our clients are affluent people who were buying online already,” he told the audience of luxury professionals. “The studies are still showing that the highest spenders online are the most affluent people. At the same time our objective and our decision was if these people are online we have to meet them where they like to be. They like to come to our stores. They like to have a retail experience. But increasingly affluent people also want to meet wherever they decide. And the internet is one of those places where they like to be. So consequently we like to be there. There were no real metrics behind it. No real sales pitches. We built our site like a service to our clients. And we decided on a learning approach because we are learning as we go.”

So if you go to the Boucheron Web site (which like many luxury Web sites is a bit flash heavy, thus, a little slow for an online medium), you will be able to buy a $10,000 watch, a $9,800 diamond and platinum pendant or a $4,800 diamond and gold ring. And if you go to the company’s official Facebook page you will find the latest product releases and stories written about the company. There are also two Facebook sites that appear to have been started by fans of the company.

Bédos stresses the importance of being on social network sites in order to become part of the online conversation. He says on the Web you do lose control of at least some of your message. However, if you are not part of the discussion about your company, then you have no control over your message online.

This might be old hat for most industries but for many traditional luxury brands it is a sea change in how they do business. Bédos recognizes this but he says it’s more important to a luxury brand’s future to embrace the change rather than fight it.

“At the end of the day, who people trust is very important and I believe that in recent years, increasingly, people trust their friends and their family rather than institutions, rather than media, rather than politicians, rather than brands. So how can brands address people without being mistrusted? I think the issue for me is to see where the people go, where consumers go in order to meet those who they trust and Facebook is a very good example. When something is recommended by a friend it has more value than by the brand that sits in its ivory tower and doesn’t talk to people. By tradition, especially luxury brands, tends to talk at people. There is a very huge shift at the way luxury brands have to market themselves and have to try to meet people because the consumers of today, they don’t want to just be taught. They want to share. They want to give their opinion. And they want to tell us, the brand, what they think about us. Therefore, the Web is definitely a marketing vehicle that will trigger viral marketing. It’s very efficient from that point of view and the question for me is not whether we should be marketing on the Web or not—whether we like it or not. I know the hard luxury goods industry is extremely cautious about the Web. They fear it might destroy their brand image. They fear it might destroy the control they have on their distribution network. But you have to accept today that to a certain extent that you lose a little bit of control.”

Vanessa Friedman, FT Fashion Editor who moderated the panel discussion, asked whether it is a good business or marketing strategy to be reactive to the Web, in the sense that you have to be on it just because everyone else is or because someone will take that space even if it isn’t the right thing to do for a company. 

“Sometimes you have to be reactive. Sometimes you have to be proactive if you’re a brand manager,” Bédos said. “One of those preconceived ideas I think is that we consider the Web as being a mass market vehicle. We should question this. It’s not more mass market than the street is mass market. Yet, specialty brands have directly operated stores on streets. The web to me … is like a street. You have the best. You have the worst. You have dirty streets. You have clean streets. You have affluent streets. You have down market streets. And when as much as a street could be, you can find everything. The question is not whether you should be on the street or not. The question is not whether you should be on the Web or not. The question is how you want to be there and how you want to be perceived there. This is still under your control. If you decide not to be there, you are totally losing what can be said about you and therefore I think you’re not facing your responsibilities as a brand manager to monitor what is being said about you on this space.”

In addition to Bédos and Friedman, participants for the panel titled, “Do 600,000 Facebook Friends Equal one Sale,” were Reggie Bradford, chief executive officer of Vitrue, a social media management company; Fabio d’Angelantonio. executive vice president and luxury retail and chief marketing officer of Luxottica Group, a luxury eyewear company, Luca Solca, senior analyst luxury goods and general retail of Sanford C. Bernstein, a wealth management company; and William Powers, author of Hamlet’s Blackberry.

The FT Business of Luxury Summit was held June 14 and 15 at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Helzberg Diamonds Sponsors Kentucky Derby Jockey

Jockey Javier Castellano in his Helzberg Diamonds racing suit. Photo credit: Helzberg Diamonds

Jewelry retailer Helzberg Diamonds is hoping it picked the winner in today’s Kentucky Derby through its sponsorship of jockey, Javier Castellano, who will ride Gemologist.

Castellano and Gemologist are currently the favorite at 9-1 odds in the 21-horse field.

Castellano has been involved in the North Kansas City, Mo.-based company’s promotion for the Derby through personal appearances, interviews made available on the retailer’s Facebook and Twitter pages and this video on the Helzberg Diamonds website.

The Berkshire Hathaway-owned jewelry retailer has also has been using the Derby tie-in for several cross-promotional activities that include its “I am Loved” Mother’s Day button, a fashionable jewelry guide for women to wear on Kentucky Derby day and a “Derby things we love” Pinterest page.

Heading into the Derby, Castellano and Gemologist have won four straight races, including the Grade 1 Wood Memorial. Castellano is currently the leading jockey in major wins and earnings. He will be riding Gemologist in an effort to join other undefeated Kentucky Derby winners. A total of seven horses have won the Derby undefeated and Gemologist will be the 23rd to attempt this feat since 1900.

In 2011, Castellano finished as one of the top five jockeys in the nation, with 11 Grade 1 victories, more than any other rider that year.

The Kentucky Derby post time is scheduled for 6:24 p.m. The race will be televised on NBC.

Blue Nile Launches Facebook ‘Click for Mom’ Campaign

Online diamond and jewelry retailer, Blue Nile, is giving its Facebook fans an opportunity to get mom something special for Mother's Day this year with its "Click for Mom" campaign.

Launched under a custom tab on the company's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/bluenile), fans can enter for a chance to receive $25 off a $50 purchase, or gift certificates valued at $50, $100, or even $1,000. All prizes can be redeemed instantly on www.bluenile.com. The Seattle-based company also says that everyone who enters wins something for mom.

The campaign ends at 3:00 p.m. (PDT) on Friday, May 6.

Elysee Turns to Facebook Friends for its New Face

German watch brand, Elysee, is turning to its Facebook friends to find the latest brand ambassadors for their timepieces. The brand's "Face Of The Month" contest provides U.S. consumers with the opportunity to win an Elysee men's or women's watch of their choice up to $750 retail, their photo on the Elysee Facebook wall for the following month, and a chance at a trip to Las Vegas in June.

Each month, consumers who "Like" the Elysee USA Facebook page can upload their photo, a short bio, and a comment on why fans should consider them as the most likable face. The contestant who receives the most Facebook "Likes" becomes the Elysee Face of the Month winner. Official contest rules are available at www.Facebook.com/Elyseewatches.

The 50-year-old European brand entered the U.S. market in 2010. A retro style is one of the company's hallmarks of its automatic and quartz-powered watches. For the other styles, construction is enhanced with high-end complications, surgical-grade stainless steel and finely-stitched leather bands. The collection includes timepieces for women and men. All timepieces are designed and crafted in Germany, with retail prices ranging from $295 to $995.

Fine Jewelry Flash-Sales Website Launches a Blog, Facebook Page and Twitter Account

While much of the jewelry industry is taking baby steps onto e-commerce, one company is taking a giant leap forward.

Ajaline is billing itself as the first members only flash-sales Web site for the luxury fine jewelry and watches market. The new site is set to launch in early February. It offers its members the opportunity to safely and securely acquire fine jewelry and watches at a 30-70 percent savings off recommended retail prices. It is currently accepting members.

What the company did launch Wednesday was its insiders blog, which will include “trend forecasting, commentary and news from leading industry experts,” the company said in a statement. It will feature a number of guest bloggers within the jewelry, fashion, and celebrity arenas. 

Ajaline co-founders Jim Conte and Meeling Wong

The blog is hosted by the well-connected Ajaline co-founder, Meeling Wong, the former John Hardy president and David Yurman national sales manager. Her partner is Jim Conte.

The company  also launched a facebook fan page and a Twitter account.

“We created Ajaline for the consumer who appreciates luxury,” Conte said. “The interactive blog is meant to invite people to share their passions for fine jewelry and their favorite brands. Our consumer can connect directly with fashion trendsetters and fine jewelry experts to learn the latest news and information, as well as facts about fine jewelry itself.”