Jewelry ‘Bright Spot’ for Kering Amid Overall Sales Slip

Kering’s jewelry brands performed well in the third quarter, scoring double-digit revenue even as other divisions faltered.

Sales at Kering’s “other houses” segment — which includes jewelry, watches and additional fashion products — fell 5% year on year to EUR 652 billion ($755.9 billion), the French luxury conglomerate, which owns the Boucheron, Pomellato, Qeelin and DoDo brands, said Wednesday. However, the company’s fashion brands, which all saw sales slide, caused the decline.

“The jewelry houses saw very solid momentum, with revenue up double digits,” the company explained. “Boucheron’s development in the US and Asia Pacific was particularly encouraging. Revenue was up at Pomellato, whose high-jewelry line was very well received. Qeelin maintained its very positive trajectory in Asia Pacific.”

Overall, the group’s jewelry brands had turnover of around EUR 1 billion ($1.16 billion) over the past year, Kering chief financial officer Armelle Poulou said in an earnings call transcribed by Seeking Alpha. The company has jewelry offerings across the price spectrum, all of which are proving popular with its customers.

“The hard luxury does represent still a quite substantial part of the business, not yet at the full potential,” chief operating officer Jean-Marc Duplaix explained in the call. “But if you combine the sales of our jewelry brands, but also the jewelry businesses of our fashion brands, we start to have a quite substantial business. And it’s clear that also our jewelry brands are quite relevant in the different segments of jewelry, so meaning high jewelry, fine jewelry and more accessible jewelry.”

Group sales for the three months that ended September 30 decreased 10% to EUR 3.42 billion ($3.96 billion).

In the first nine months of the year, group sales dropped 14% to EUR 11 billion ($12.76 billion), while sales for other houses slipped 12% to EUR 2.11 billion ($2.45 billion).

Image: A Qeelin jewelry store in Hong Kong. (Shutterstock)