Kendra Scott – Purchasing & Pricing Trends in Fine
Jewellery – 6 August 2021
Disclaimer
The information, material and content contained in this transcript (“Content”) is for information purposes only and
does not constitute advice of any type or a trade recommendation and should not form the basis of any investment
decision. This transcript has been edited by Third Bridge and may differ from the audio recording of the Interview.
Third Bridge Group Limited and its affiliates (together “Third Bridge”) make no representation and accept no liability
for the Content or for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies in respect of it. The views of the specialist expressed in the
Content are those of the specialist and they are not endorsed by, nor do they represent the opinion of, Third Bridge.
Third Bridge reserves all copyright, intellectual and other property rights in the Content. Any modification,
reformatting, copying, displaying, distributing, transmitting, publishing, licensing, creating derivative works from,
transferring or selling any Content is strictly prohibited.
Tiffanie Schadler (TS)
Specialist:
Head, Planning at Swarovski AG
Title:
Moderator: Nyree Hinton (NH), Third Bridge Sector Analyst
Agenda:
1. Kendra Scott's competitive landscape vs Pandora (CSE: PNDORA), Signet (NYSE: SIG) and others
2. Store closures and market share dynamics in the jewellery market
3. Consumer trends and coronavirus impacts to product preferences
4. New customer acquisition strategy
5. Growth opportunities across channels
Contents
Q: How would you segment the fine jewellery market? Could you highlight some of the main drivers and key
3
competitors?
Q: Could you discuss the category leaders? Necklaces are doing great this season and then, next season, it
could be bracelets. Could you speak to that dynamic?
4
Q: Could you discuss the market where Kendra Scott plays in and what part of the scale it is regarding
quality and premiumness? Where are you able to extract the most value in profitability and margin out of the
4
different product categories?
Q: Why do you think Kendra Scott plays in its strategic rationale, in a market where it seems the margins
and volume may be a bit high, but the price tag per item is incredibly low for an industry that’s built around
luxury? Is it just that there’s so much of a huge opportunity there to make your presence known and work
with an underserved customer, or is this a play to get into a bigger, much more premiumised market? How
hard is it, when you start out in this tier, to jump into another tier?
4
Q: Could you discuss your experience in apparel as it relates to strategy and segmentation, and how that
translates into jewellery? Why aren’t more apparel companies leveraging their brand to also offer fine
jewellery? If they have, are there any challenges with doing both because, like you said before, the consumer
is so used to one product or one price point or one perception, it’s hard for them to transition into another
field? It seems like there are lots of synergies between jewellery and luxury fashion. Could you speak to that
dynamic?
5
Q: How does the dynamic change when you have such a big push to online channels, e-commerce and even
all of these traditional luxury players, whether it’s Capri Holdings or others? Everyone has pushed online and
everyone is looking for growth outside of the US. Could you speak to how that dynamic has impacted
jewellery?
6
Q: What is the global opportunity for fine jewellery, given the price points that Kendra Scott plays in? How
does that dynamic play out, given American products are already super expensive due to the dollar vs other
countries’ currencies? Do you think Kendra Scott low-or-mid-tier position gives the company an advantage
on a global scale to reach markets that Marc Jacobs or Pandora cannot attract consumers in?
7
Q: Why can’t Kendra Scott acquire a more premium brand or try to upsell to be more competitive? Could
you discuss how coronavirus has impacted jewellery? I know we talked about a category shift to necklaces, to
earrings and to things that are very much able to be shown on the camera screen. How has the category or
value been impacted? Have people scaled back some of these purchases, given that they are very secure
financially? What can’t Kendra Scott do to get a piece of this Asian market because it’s so important to so
many companies who are not able to really thrive in the US?
8
Q: Could you speak to the promotional activity and jewellery in the different tiers? To the best of your
knowledge of Kendra Scott, how promotional are some of these items and the seasonal nature of it?
9
Q: Could you discuss the growth in the luxury jewellery category or the industry? I know you said you think
luxury will continue to grow because of the strong consumer base, but how about other areas of the market?
How are you thinking about other tiers for H2 2021 and then beyond, especially given we’re experiencing
such a volatile environment?
10
Q: Could you discuss the proliferation of some of these smaller, newer players that are coming to the market
purely online and the implications that has to the broader market? How closely are some of these big players
11
blocking the small ones who are just being unique in their approach but are virtually D2C?
Kendra Scott – Purchasing & Pricing Trends in Fine
Jewellery
Transcription begins at 00:00:07 of the recorded material
NH: Welcome to Third Bridge Forum’s Interview entitled Kendra Scott, Purchasing & Pricing Trends in Fine
Jewellery. I am Nyree and I’ll be facilitating today’s Interview with Ms Tiffanie Schadler, Head of Planning at
Swarovski AG.
Tiffanie, before we get started with today’s Interview, please state I agree or I disagree to the following
statement: You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any
such information, or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.
TS: I agree.
NH: Could you start by giving the audience an overview of your background and various roles you’ve held in
the industry?
TS: I’ve been in the retail industry, focused mainly on apparel, for over 20 years. Over the span of my career,
I, early in my career, had a focus in sales and account management, but, let’s say over the last 15 years, I’ve
been in planning leadership at Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors, Hugo Boss and then, most recently, Head of
Planning at Swarovski. My areas of responsibility have generally been US and Canada, however, I have had a
couple positions where the scope extended globally and, in terms of the business channels that I focused on, it
spans the gamut wholesale, retail, e-commerce, concessions, franchise partners. I think I touched on, for a hot
second, that a lot of my experience is in apparel, men’s, women’s, kid’s, ready-to-wear, but, most recently, over
the past couple of years, focused on jewellery and collectibles at Swarovski.
[00:01:56]
Q: How would you segment the fine jewellery market? Could you highlight some of the main drivers and key
competitors?
TS: For instance, as an example, the majority of the industry would segment out their business initially based
off of women’s and if they had any men’s or unisex product, some companies do have a small amount of
product that they consider kid’s, unless you’re dealing with, say, a retailer like Claire’s, and then, beyond that,
within the gender of the product, then you get a little bit more into the taxonomy. Generally, things are
grouped in terms of you have necklaces, rings, bracelets, earrings. Sometimes you can group things based off
of set, which you might have earrings and necklace or potentially even rings also together, and then, from a
jewellery perspective, you can also potentially segment out other types of, other being a catch-all for, say, hair
accessories, belly rings, any random type of accessories, brooches, adornments. Say with Swarovski, another
very, very crucial portion of the business is in collectibles. Those collectibles may either have some affiliation
with some major movie campaign or, for instance, we do a lot of collectibles that are focused on nature or
focused on wildlife and those tend to be higher-priced, and then you can also have another segment that’s very
important for, say, Swarovski, which is ornaments. We’re talking about higher-price-point Christmas tree
ornaments.
Private and confidential 3
[00:04:39]
Q: Could you discuss the category leaders? Necklaces are doing great this season and then, next season, it
could be bracelets. Could you speak to that dynamic?
TS: In terms of what’s trending and why it’s trending, one of the things that we’ve noticed over the past year-
and-a half with COVID is that the percentage share of our collection attributable to, say, necklaces and
earrings has grown, in part because that is what you can see over Zoom. If people are choosing to accessorise a
little bit, it seems as though, if they want a little sparkle in their meeting, then they’re not necessarily spending
as much money on rings and bracelets, which may be either unseen or bracelets be a particular distraction
while you’re trying to type or communicate while you’re working on a Zoom, but, for instance, high-sparkle
items or less subtle items that are earrings or necklaces are trending. One of the things that I’d also say is that
earrings as a percentage tier at Swarovski, they were important but they weren’t necessarily a growing
category, and, over the past year-and-a half, they have been a growing category, and necklaces has always been
an important category, one of the most important categories for Swarovski.
[00:06:33]
Q: Could you discuss the market where Kendra Scott plays in and what part of the scale it is regarding quality
and premiumness? Where are you able to extract the most value in profitability and margin out of the different
product categories?
TS: Let’s just start with the price points of where Kendra Scott plays. For instance, if you were consider, say,
Claire’s to be low end, very open in price point, then Kendra Scott is playing in the mid-tier, meaning that the
majority of their price points are USD 50 and under. If you read anything about them, or just understand how
their consumer is buying, customers are generally highly encouraged to get multiples and that’s how they’ll
increase the value of the discount. As I understand it, Kendra Scott is generally playing in an average ticket out
the door of generally two-plus items at USD 100 or less. They have very little in their assortment that is over
USD 100 and, from what I can tell, next to nothing that is, say, over USD 200 or USD 300. That puts them at
very low end of, say, a premium brand, and their competitors, like Pandora, who is the biggest player, at least
in the United States and Canada, in the jewellery space, or Swarovski, which is a smaller player but, again, just
as penetrated throughout the US and Canada, the average price points tend to be two times higher than what
you’re seeing from Kendra Scott. Maybe the unit multiples are a little bit less, but the out-the-door ticket value
is exceeding USD 100, if not more.
The difference in terms of the collection and the profitability of a Kendra Scott vs a Swarovski or a Pandora,
part of that is going to remain a mystery to me because I don’t get to see the cost of goods for Kendra Scott,
but, from what I can tell, if you’re selling bracelets, necklaces, charms, pendants at Kendra Scott for, say, USD
30-50, and just looking at the quality of construction and materials, and the amount of sparkle and shine,
that’s a Swarovski reference, you’re not getting, from what I would say, a ton of product or a ton of stake and
quality for your USD 30-50, but, ultimately, for a consumer that is on a budget or a younger consumer that’s
just starting out in the workforce, you are able to accessories for under USD 50, which is something that would
be much harder to do at Swarovski or Pandora, particularly if you’re in a non-sale period. The Kendra Scott
jewellery tends to be skinnier, less precious metals, less fine stones or gemstones, more subtle, if only because
my assumption is (a) it caters to the consumer. The consumer maybe wants more subtle, but (b) if you’re going
to sell at USD 30-50, there’s only so much you can offer in terms of raw materials and still be profitable.
[00:10:38]
Q: Why do you think Kendra Scott plays in its strategic rationale, in a market where it seems the margins and
volume may be a bit high, but the price tag per item is incredibly low for an industry that’s built around
luxury? Is it just that there’s so much of a huge opportunity there to make your presence known and work with
an underserved customer, or is this a play to get into a bigger, much more premiumised market? How hard is
Private and confidential 4
it, when you start out in this tier, to jump into another tier?
TS: As an example, Kendra Scott, as I’ve read online, has 100-plus locations throughout the US. Swarovski, as
an example, also has 100-plus locations throughout the US and sometimes, in some malls, we see them down
the hall and so then they are a competitor for the same consumer in the same space, but a lot of Kendra Scott’s
locations are in smaller malls, B, C, D malls, whereas Pandora and Swarovski really want to focus on A- and B-
location malls. They’re also shooting for those locations because they’re looking at college towns with a high
demographic of that younger, maybe this is their first job, going-to-]work kind of consumer. Even though they
are obviously producing a lot of sales volume, I would say, from a Swarovski point of view, we generally don’t
see them as a competitor in the same retail malls. What that tells me is if you look at their footprints, their
footprints tend to be 1,000 square feet, 1,200 square feet, smaller footprints, which, for jewellery, can work.
You can fit a lot of inventory and a lot of SKUs in those smaller spaces. However, if their retails are lower and,
say, the average units per purchase is two or three and they’re doing these multiple sales with discounts, it just
means that the cost of rent is a huge factor in terms of whether the location can be profitable. It probably
means that Kendra Scott knows that unless they’re driving a lot of units per purchase or a lot of sales volume,
they can’t afford to be in A- and B-tiered malls to the same extent as other similar brands are penetrated.
However, because then they’re in these B-, C-, D-rated malls where, say, Swarovski and Pandora do not play,
they have strength of schedule. They tend to be one of the only jewellery stores in the mall, or, if they’re
competing with, say, a Claire’s, they’re the premium location for jewellery in the mall, unless you’re going to go
to a department store. Their consumer, since it tends to skew a little bit younger, particularly in this market, if
they’re going after the college consumer, she isn’t necessarily a department store shopper. The other thing I
would say about that is if you then don’t bring the consumer and establish loyalty at a younger age, yes, there
is a high likelihood that she will stick with you for a while, particularly as she gets more stable in her career,
starts to make a little bit more money, yet it’s very hard for a brand to upscale. I’ve been with a couple of
brands that have tried to do this, like Marc Jacobs or Hugo Boss, where they pivoted their strategies quite a bit
and tried to elevate quality and tried to elevate price point, and that did not go well. If your customer gets to
know you at a certain price point and a certain value for quality, it’s very hard, when that consumer starts to
make more money, to upsell them to a higher quality at a higher price, because that isn’t what the established
framework is for her in her mind.
At some point, that customer will likely transition over to Swarovski or Pandora because the majority of their
product offering offers a little bit more quality, but at a higher price, so the brand perception is different.
Beyond that, chances are she has moved out of her college town location and maybe into more urban or a
metro environment where Kendra Scott maybe isn’t a player in her local radius anymore. I’d say where Kendra
Scott plays very well, though, but maybe where Swarovski and Pandora don’t really play nearly as much at all,
is that they also have a lot of personalised pendants and charms that are very inexpensive, which she can layer
onto a bracelet or a necklace. For Swarovski in particular, there’s a way that we have catered our collections,
and not to say that we don’t want personalised pendants or charms as part of our collection, but that’s not
necessarily the way our consumer accessorises or it’s not necessarily considered the most elevated or elegant
way to accessorise. In some ways, the product segmentation is also happening, not just because of the price
points and locations of Kendra Scott’s reach, but it’s also based off of the customer that you’re targeting and
then self-selecting a totally different way of presenting themselves.
[00:18:10]
Q: Could you discuss your experience in apparel as it relates to strategy and segmentation, and how that
translates into jewellery? Why aren’t more apparel companies leveraging their brand to also offer fine
jewellery? If they have, are there any challenges with doing both because, like you said before, the consumer is
so used to one product or one price point or one perception, it’s hard for them to transition into another field?
It seems like there are lots of synergies between jewellery and luxury fashion. Could you speak to that
dynamic?
TS: Maybe one good example that I could give you is Marc Jacobs, which was much earlier in my career. Marc
Jacobs did have a larger jewellery collection than a lot of the other apparel brands that I’ve been with. What’s
Private and confidential 5
interesting about that is one of the things you have realise with jewellery is that you need to have a footprint
where there is space to present the jewellery, and jewellery is a high-shrink risk, so it means that you need to
have a space where it can be consistently monitored. Chances are that space is going to be behind glass, and
then you also need, then, if it’s going to be behind glass, a dedicated salesperson to show it to the customer and
to ring it up and to handle all of the touchpoints so that the jewellery doesn’t end up walking out the door. For
most apparel brands, when they’re talking about their own retail space, unless they can make either enough
sales volume from that portion of the collection to justify having a larger jewellery footprint away from the
register, because they can have a dedicated sales associate there helping the customer, that’s very hard to do
with most retail footprints. We’re talking about average store size or, say, a Hugo Boss or a Marc Jacobs is
1,500 square feet to maybe 3,000 square feet and you only have so much staff, that you’re going to have maybe
2-3 people per shift on as staff and one of those people has to be dedicated, also, to ringing up. It makes it hard
to dedicate the time and the energy for jewellery if it’s behind glass.
Apparel can be much more self-service, and yes, ideally, every premium to luxury retail brand would say, “Yes,
we want our associates catering to the customers and helping them with the try-ons and helping them select
outfits and having conversations with everybody,” but, in a busy retail environment, that can’t always work.
That can’t always make sense. For jewellery, it can be a drain. What you find then with apparel brands is that
jewellery ends up being something that’s either, be it, below counter or top of counter at the register. When
you have that sort of environment, yes, you have a salesperson there, dedicated to ensure that nothing is going
to walk out of the case because they’re standing right there and they can help a customer, but then, on the flip
side, the priority for the staff that’s there is also to ring customers that are in line and to wrap the purchase
and get them out the door. At that point, selling the jewellery becomes a bit of an afterthought. You want to try
to make sure that the check-out process is as short as possible in store, and then just slow down the entire
transaction and say, “Have you looked at the jewellery? Is there anything that would interest you?” It totally
derails the check-out process, and that’s part of the reason, then, why jewellery as a category, for an apparel
brand, doesn’t necessarily grow because, unless it’s already a big component of the pie, if you’re not staffed
and positioned to grow it, it’s not going to grow.
With Marc Jacobs, part of the reason why they had a significant jewellery business was not necessarily because
of the amount of volume that was being driven in their own retail stores or online. It was because they were
also able to sell it at Bloomingdale’s, at Nordstroms, and then you’re leveraging these jewellery departments
and the sales staff there that’s dedicated to selling your jewellery. When you have an apparel brand that’s
premium or aspiring to be luxury, and then you’re getting into, say, Bloomingdale’s and Nordstroms, that
becomes closer to their opening price points for jewellery, when they maybe do have other more luxurious
brands like David Yurman, etc, with fine gemstones and fine jewels and real gold and silver, that’s also zoned
in the same jewellery floor. As I understand for Kendra Scott specifically, being in Nordstroms and
Bloomingdale’s, maybe not all Nordstroms, maybe not all Bloomingdale’s, but, for instance, that is a big
component of their wholesale business, so, for them, at the price point at which they play, they become the
opening price point for that jewellery case in those department stores. To be in Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s
the expectation is to have a certain level of luxury, a certain level of premiumness, but Kendra Scott and the
price points that they play in easily make it the most affordable thing in the cases, aside from maybe any
private label that the department stores may be doing.
[00:24:38]
Q: How does the dynamic change when you have such a big push to online channels, e-commerce and even all
of these traditional luxury players, whether it’s Capri Holdings or others? Everyone has pushed online and
everyone is looking for growth outside of the US. Could you speak to how that dynamic has impacted
jewellery?
TS: Some bigger trends that are happening in store and online are virtual try-ons, and, for instance, Kendra
Scott is doing that through their Kendra Scott app on the Apple store, and they’re not the only competitor in
that space that’s doing that, so that’s good. If you’re going to do that in the jewellery space, it’s actually much
easier to do that in the jewellery space through a virtual try-on vs doing that in apparel because, with jewellery,
it’s really a matter of superimposing an image over your face or over your wrist. There’s a lot less complexity
Private and confidential 6
there vs trying to figure out how a dress will drape and fit over your entire body. The other thing that they’ve
done through COVID, that a lot of other retailers are doing and some of their competitors as well, is that they
leverage their store inventory, and once you make your stores your own mini distribution centres for your
online sales, what you can do is then also offer to the consumer the option to buy online, pick up in store.
That’s also a great opportunity then to capture a consumer and maybe get an incremental sale, because they
weren’t going to go to the store, but they went in the store just to pick something up. Hopefully. you can
convert the consumer to an additional accessory that is likely going to round out either the look that you are
going for that you saw online, or just round out the purchase, and be able to have the opportunity to maximise
a further discount.
Like I said earlier, Kendra Scott likes to do multiples in a purchase with an increased discount based on the
multiples, and then, perhaps other trends, we’ve heard a lot, I’m sure you’ve heard a lot, about stores closing
down. We’re over-malled in this country, so there are going to be a lot fewer malls that are being built in the
country. The only trend that I’m seeing in terms of new malls being built is specific to the outlet space. For
Kendra Scott, I’d like to think that they’re saturated in the malls where they want to be and, given their price
points, there shouldn’t be a lot of need for them to be in outlet locations. From a consumer perspective, this is
good and bad, because that means that in the regions where they are, in the cities where they are, there is a
consumer that already knows them and potentially is loyal to them. That’s why they’re in that region.
However, then, frequently, the reason for a brand to open new locations is to be able to capture a new
consumer in a new location. They’re walking down the mall, they’re in a new outlet environment. If the new
malls are in outlets, and Kendra Scott doesn’t need outlets because they trade at such a low price point and it
would be increasingly less profitable to move to an outlet and to trade down or to grow that business and trade
the customer perception down, then that means that they’re going to be highly focused on growing and
capturing new consumers through online activity.
One of the things that they’ve been doing, and again, this isn’t unique to Kendra Scott as a brand, though it’s a
smart thing for all brands to do, is that they’ve been having virtual try-on parties, virtual online parties, for
influencers and for the top customers. I think that this is a smart idea because then, even though being an e-
commerce shopper may feel like you’re just one of a million other shoppers that are on the website, nothing is
catered specifically to you and you have to hunt and peck and find the things that resonate for you and figure
out whether or not how you’ve tried it on, if you’ve done a try on, does that work for you? Will you buy it, or
will you buy it without even having the opportunity to virtually try on? These smaller ways of targeting either
your key consumers or influencers are a good way to localise outreach of your e-commerce platform and then,
again, hopefully drive the consumer to the nearest store.
[00:29:51]
Q: What is the global opportunity for fine jewellery, given the price points that Kendra Scott plays in? How
does that dynamic play out, given American products are already super expensive due to the dollar vs other
countries’ currencies? Do you think Kendra Scott low-or-mid-tier position gives the company an advantage on
a global scale to reach markets that Marc Jacobs or Pandora cannot attract consumers in?
TS: I could argue it both ways. Given the sorts of brands that I’ve been with, let’s say Marc Jacobs and Hugo
Boss where it’s either considered luxury or definitely elevated premium aspiring to be luxury, the consumers
that those brands are going after, those incomes or, let’s say, household incomes, are USD 100,000 a year,
plus. If you’re dealing with a Marc Jacobs consumer or a Hugo Boss consumer that’s spending USD 3,000-
4,000 on a bag, or USD 15 to USD 1,000 on a suit, we’re talking generally, then, white collar, very established
in their career, college-educated, own their own home, own a car, very stable and affluent consumers. As we’ve
seen in terms of what’s been going on with luxury and profitability of, say, LVMH or Gucci, what you’ll find is
luxury keeps growing. In part, it’s because that consumer is very stable, and yes, not to say that there aren’t or
haven’t been economic headwinds, but that consumer is more insulated from the headwinds of economic
instability than, say, the consumer that Kendra Scott is trading for. I see luxury continuing to grow, and for
jewellery, as especially more and more jewellery brands are trying to get into Asia or grow their Asia business,
that consumer is very status-conscious.
Private and confidential 7
If they are wearing a luxury brand, they want you to know it and they want it be clear that you know it because
the brand itself and the price points make it clear that they’ve invested, invested in having a status piece,
invested in something that has long-term value and won’t depreciate in value and investing in something that
is clearly identifiable. Kendra Scott, on the flip side, being at the lower price points, one could argue that if you
have, say, middle-class America or lower middle-class America, that would love to buy luxury and aspires to
luxury but has more economic instability or the headwinds of economic instability are going to affect them
more, then Kendra Scott is potentially a brand for them. They can represent that they accessorise. They can
represent that they are trying to demonstrate that they have a desire for luxury and that they’re putting
themselves together in an ever more professional kind of way, but, on the flip side, if every dollar is precious,
they’re not going to trade up to the luxury jewellery brands and, say, Pandora or Swarovski, Alex and Ani or
even higher than that, because they simply can’t afford it.
Trading down to Kendra Scott allows them that ability to be able to indulge a little bit and to demonstrate a
little bit to their peers. On the flip side, because Kendra Scott’s price points, when you get into Avon and other
lower-tier jewellery brands, they’re a unique niche, that girl, like I said before, in college, just looking for a
little bit of bling. If I think about it that way, I think it’s still potentially a very growing business because we
have a lot of economic instability that’s happening right now, but, on the flip side. I don’t necessarily see how
that translates well to Asia, where yes, you do have a thriving middle class, but that middle class is really
aspiring to luxury. You hear stories about the Asian consumer saving all year to buy one piece and it’s a status
piece. The American consumer, at that lower price point, she doesn’t think like that. She’s still more about
volume vs value and quality, so that’s where I see that there’s a disconnect in terms of how Kendra Scott could
grow its business and where it could grow its business, vs its more elevated peers.
[00:35:48]
Q: Why can’t Kendra Scott acquire a more premium brand or try to upsell to be more competitive? Could you
discuss how coronavirus has impacted jewellery? I know we talked about a category shift to necklaces, to
earrings and to things that are very much able to be shown on the camera screen. How has the category or
value been impacted? Have people scaled back some of these purchases, given that they are very secure
financially? What can’t Kendra Scott do to get a piece of this Asian market because it’s so important to so
many companies who are not able to really thrive in the US?
TS: How Kendra Scott can elevate as a brand or maybe buy an existing brand, you can see on Kendra Scott’s
website that they’re trying to branch out. They have I think it’s 14- or 18-carat gold that’s at a higher price
point, that’s a little tiny capsule on their site. I was actually very surprised to see it. It retails there USD 200-
300, some of those pieces. I think what they’re going to find when they test that, that maybe they do get some
demand, but it’s not going to grow because the consumer that wants fine-quality raw materials is maybe not
an existing customer, or a customer that’s shopping for 18-carat gold would never think to look at the Kendra
Scott website, so how are you going to find that customer? The other thing that they’re doing to branch out is
that they’ve introduced very unisex-looking men’s product, and that’s also available on site. I think what’s
interesting about that is I can’t imagine it’s going to be hugely profitable or grow the pie in a big way, if only
because men are not shopping Kendra Scott stores unless it’s Valentine’s Day and they have to buy a gift, or
Christmas, or men are not shopping online. Men hate, for the most part, buying jewellery, so the way that I see
it is they’re making a play for unisex. You could, as a salesperson, present it to the women as something that’s
a little bit not masculine, but has a little bit more heft, a little bit more monochromatic, and then, beyond that,
it’s a good gifting opportunity for the consumers that are walking in the door, which is likely young women
with a boyfriend.
I see that as an opportunity for them to maybe grow the pie a little bit, but not necessarily to capture a new
customer. To your question of how, then, or who would they acquire or should they acquire a brand to be able
to just grow their overall business, so if you look at the jewellery space, especially we’re not talking fine
jewellery, there aren’t a lot of players and there aren’t a lot of players that are for sale. Particularly if they’re
going to elevate to premium, I can’t really think of anybody. That’s when you’d have to get into a smaller
direct-to-consumer player that’s in this more premium market, and maybe that would be an opportunity for
Kendra Scott to pounce on somebody and then start taking them to store, but, for the life of me, I can’t think of
Private and confidential 8
anybody who that brand would be. If they did buy a premium player, would that premium player perform well
in Asia? I don’t think so, because going back to what I said before, that consumer is looking for status and
luxury and is willing to save to have it, but yes, if Kendra Scott did want to operate in a luxury or premium
space, it would behove them to do it under a different brand, because to attach Kendra Scott to anything
premium or luxury diminishes the brand. Ultimately, it creates confusion in their existing customer that
doesn’t perceive them as premium or luxury.
There’s also something called consumer intimidation where they may want luxury, they may love luxury, but
they maybe can’t afford it. If you get a perception with your existing customer base that suddenly you’ve
elevated your price points out of reach, even if it’s only a small segment of your assortment offer, you run the
risk of intimidating your existing customers, when, ultimately, you just wanted to offer them a wider
assortment and give your associates an opportunity to sell, yes, the USD 30 pair of earrings, but with, say, a
USD 400 or USD 500 necklace. If you change the assortment too quickly or offer too much of those high-
price-point items, you run the risk of alienating your existing consumer base that isn’t expecting to turn over a
sales tag and see those high price points, something they potentially start to get very nervous and feel
potentially alienated. They might have a fear of all the products in the store when, normally, any Kendra Scott
customer walking into the store would likely assume that almost everything in the store is under USD 100 and
there’s no reason to be afraid of any price points anywhere in the store.
[00:42:52]
Q: Could you speak to the promotional activity and jewellery in the different tiers? To the best of your
knowledge of Kendra Scott, how promotional are some of these items and the seasonal nature of it?
TS: Just so that anybody who’s listening would get a sense, in luxury, if you mark down, and almost all luxury
brands have markdowns with the exception of, say, a Louis Vuitton, where they would opt to rather take
everything back into their distribution centre or destroy product vs selling on sale, but, for the majority of
luxury brands, the markdown cadence is twice a year. In Europe, part of that cadence also, it’s prescribed in
law. You can’t write price for Christmas season early based on all the other competitors in your city or your
country, and, say, even in Mexico, that markdown cycle is prescribed by law and it can’t run beyond three
weeks or four weeks. From a luxury cycle, it’s very easy to manage promotion planning because if you have a
global brand, you know from the European perspective, when you’re allowed to break price, you wouldn’t
break price any earlier in the US or in Asia based on that prescriptive and, because you have a consumer that
can see websites all around the world, you don’t want to offer deeper discounts in one region vs another. The
luxury cadence is pretty clear in terms of the markdown schedule. For the premium cadence, and so now we’re
talking about, say, Michael Kors, Lacoste, Marc Jacobs maybe, it depends on which brands we’re talking about
and where, but we’re talking in the premium and aspiring-to-luxury cadence, you’ll have at least those two
markdowns per year. That’s generally a summer markdown and July markdown and December markdown,
but then you might have mid-season markdowns, because these premium brands are generally designing four
collections a year.
If you don’t turn that collection within 12 weeks, oftentimes you need to do some sort of promotional strategy
to be able to clear enough space on the floor so that your summer collection or your fall collection has space to
be able to occupy the same racks or the same shelves in the same store. From a, again, promotion-planning
perspective, and also these premium brands are also likely in department stores, because that tends to be
where, let’s say as an example, the majority of the US department stores, Nordstroms, Bloomingdale’s, Saks,
tend to play. They have floors specific to luxury but they have floors specific to premium. There is also then the
expectation that you break price four times a year. You have exceptions to this where you have lower-tier
department stores like Belk or Macy’s, where you’re always going to find for sale-racks, there’s always
something that’s being clearanced, but, for the more elevated national speciality stores, department stores,
you’re breaking price four times a year. Kendra Scott is operating more off of an outlet model, so, if you go to
the outlets, chances are wherever you go, whatever store you’re in in an outlet environment, there’s always a
portion of the floor that’s on sale, and that’s also prescriptive. For most outlet environments, at least in the
United States, you cannot be in the outlet environment unless 80% or more of the product that you are
presenting to the customer is discounted, because outlet locations want to be driving consumers to the stores
Private and confidential 9
and, often, because of radius restrictions, outlets need to be 40-45 minutes away from full-price venues.
As an example, if you’re going to be a premium or luxury brand in New York City, frequently there are radius
restrictions which means that you need to have a consumer then drive for 30-40 minutes to get to an outlet
environment and, surprise surprise, or no surprise, Woodbury Commons is about 45 minutes away. That’s
where you can find the premium and luxury players in that environment, but, if you’re in that environment,
again, more than 80% of your merchandise needs to be discounted all the time, and the outlet environments
will crack down and potentially eject you if you, as a brand, aren’t honouring that. What’s interesting is that
Kendra Scott isn’t in a ton of these outlet environments, but they’re in these lower-tiered, B-, C-, D-tiered
malls where, apparently, for a full-price environment, they’re more than permitted to have a large portion of
their product either on sale all the time or, through multiple-unit incentives, are able to discount 20%, 30%,
40% all the time for their consumers to incentivise multiple units per transaction. In some higher, more
elevated A and B malls, that sort of continual promotional pricing structure, some of them it’s frowned upon
and potentially against the rules, but I’m not an expert in real estate. I haven’t looked over all the lease
negotiations of many of the brands that I’ve been with, but I can tell you that there are prescriptions in many
of these leases that say that you can’t be on sale more than 2-3 weeks at a time, or over certain time periods,
and/or you need to get a dispensation in bad times from the mall to be consistently on sale.
[00:49:26]
Q: Could you discuss the growth in the luxury jewellery category or the industry? I know you said you think
luxury will continue to grow because of the strong consumer base, but how about other areas of the market?
How are you thinking about other tiers for H2 2021 and then beyond, especially given we’re experiencing such
a volatile environment?
TS: One of the things that I think COVID has done for us is it’s eliminated a lot of the weak players, and I’m
not speaking to jewellery, I’m also speaking to department stores and brands. If they couldn’t survive COVID,
then it means that the survivors have the best possible chance of gaining market share. The existing brands,
the ones that are doing well and particularly in jewellery, what they’re saying, then, is that they’re up to last
year, and now brands are starting to measure themselves as potentially up to 2019. As a planner, what I can
tell you is that that is in part because there’s a lot of pent-up demand, and also because the consumer is maybe
starting to feel, because of the eliminations of mass restrictions or lockdown restrictions or just simply because
they realise that they have a career in which they can either still maintain their jobs in the worst economic
times and/or now have a job where they don’t have to spend nearly as much on commuting or wardrobing
because they don’t need to be in the office quite nearly as much, I do see that high tide potentially raising all
boats, not just jewellery but all of retail. However, it’s hard to know whether or not that ultimately grows the
pie. Specific to jewellery, there are fewer players out there now. Direct-to-consumer is becoming more
important so there are probably hundreds of small players that I’m not aware of that are trying to chip into
that market share.
You never know who the next big one is going to be, but just because Kendra Scott is able to grow their volume
or Pandora is able to grow their volume because they’re still standing, I don’t know if that necessarily increases
the overall jewellery volume as an industry. The other thing that I think was very disruptive over this past
year-and-a-half is jewellery, particularly jewellery made at Kendra Scott’s price points, this is not made-in-
America product. For them to be profitable, and then meaning that they have their jewellery abroad, and
chances are in Asia because even the sorts of salaries that you’re getting from Central America, Central
America is better known for making apparel and having skilled labour in apparel vs jewellery, so it’s almost
certain that almost all of their product is coming from China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, that kind of thing. The
issue then also becomes supply chain shocks. McKinsey did a study that came out last year that said that
supply chain disruptions over the 5-10 years has equated to about four weeks of supply chain disruptions. This
is due to political unrest, climate change, just general turmoil, tariffs, trade wars, that kind of thing, and that
they anticipate that that number of weeks of supply chain disruptions is going to potentially double over the
next 10 years.
As somebody who is in planning and is trying to be able to plan, I cannot plan for a supply chain shock or
Private and confidential 10
disruption, because a lot of times these things just happen, but I can tell you to have product over the course of
the year that’s potentially delayed or absent or under-shipped or not shipped for 6-8 weeks out of the year,
that’s very disruptive to sales targets, very disruptive to overall sales volumes, because I can’t generate revenue
on product that I do not have. The other thing that I think needs to be considered, if Kendra Scott had
localised production, on-demand production, quick-turn production, could she weather some of the potential
for supply chain disruption and shocks? Yes, but I’m not seeing anything in her assortment that’s made in
America. Maybe I’m just missing it, but I think that that makes her business much more susceptible than, say,
jewellery, direct-to-consumer brands that are either at elevated price points, so you can still afford to fly
product even though it’s more expensive but you have less disruption on floor, or you have elevated product at
higher price points with US labour and raw materials. Therefore, you have a more consistent inflow of product
and a more stable seasonality curve.
[00:55:21]
Q: Could you discuss the proliferation of some of these smaller, newer players that are coming to the market
purely online and the implications that has to the broader market? How closely are some of these big players
blocking the small ones who are just being unique in their approach but are virtually D2C?
TS: I don’t spend a lot of time looking for jewellery online with these smaller direct-to-consumer brands, but
one thing I can tell you is that the interesting thing with jewellery and the proliferation of, say, eBay,
Poshmark, Amazon marketplace, is that now, as an influencer or as a small maker, you can have your own
brand. You can make your own product and you can reach a consumer and sell it directly, and who’s going to
become the big woolly mammoth out of all that and grow? It’s not necessarily for me to say, but one thing I
would say is the possibility for a direct-to-consumer brand to get that sort of traction and penetration has
increased exponentially with the proliferation of the internet and then all of these online marketplaces, which
their only ask is that they take a share of every sale. Who the next big guy is going to be, god, I wish I knew,
because maybe I could work there.
[00:57:16]
NH: That’s a great point. I think that’s a good place to end the Interview, so let me just close by saying thank
you, Tiffanie, for your input today. We were able to cover an extensive amount and I’m happy about that, and
thank you, clients, for joining Third Bridge Forum’s Interview. Clients, if you wish to speak with our specialist
in a private call or meeting then please let your relationship manager know. Have a good one.
TS: Thank you, Nyree. It was a pleasure.
Transcription ends at 00:57:37 of the recorded material
Private and confidential 11