How Swarovski Evolved In The U.K.


Swarovski, the crystal glass company and family-run business, is marking its 125th anniversary in business and has come a long way since its inception in 1895. Based in Wattens, Austria the company was launched in 1895 by Daniel Swarovski, who developed a cutting technique for crystal and utilized hydroelectric power.

“For 125 years, Swarovski has been at the forefront of technical innovation,” said UK managing director Hayley Quinn. “It’s all been about driving the competitive advantage and putting the customer first. Now in that time, the company has to deal with everything from wars, global financial turmoil more than once or twice. And now these days it’s all about changing customer behaviors and habits. And yet the founding values of 125 years ago are just as relevant today as they were that. So 125 years later, we’re still a family-owned family run business that holds those values at the core of everything that it does. And that’s what sets Swarovski apart from the others.”

Quinn, who joined the company in 2008, leads the consumer goods side of the business for the UK, Ireland, and Nordics. She noted that the business in the UK is a little over 50 years old and it was originally founded to sell at the time Crystal Creations. to the wholesale market. “The very first Swarovski store anywhere in the world opened on Bond street in 1980 and it only sold Crystal Creations,” said Quinn.”By the Nineties, Swarovski was producing quite significant constitutes of jewelry. Even when I joined, Swarovski had a pretty good presence in all of the major UK shopping centers, both locally and globally. It’s still very much a wholesale business that just happens to be running retail stores.”

She said that for her sector, the focus of the business is very much been on repositioning ourselves as a modern on-trend fashion, jewelry brand and raising brand awareness and consideration. “We’ve only got something like 26 percent unaided awareness across the UK,” said Quinn. “So there’s still some way to go. But I think one of my proudest moments was when we were awarded the retail jewelry brand of the retail jeweler rewards. And we have won it now for three years in a row. But that very first year, that was a real affirmation of the fact that we positioned ourselves as a jewelry brand and we will no longer a figurine brand. So that’s certainly one of the big evolutions in the last ten years.”

Quinn said that one of the biggest changes that have been thrust upon them by consumers is the evolution of the omnichannel business. “When I joined the business, the online business of Swarovski was absolutely tiny,” said Quinn. “Now it’s more than twenty percent of our global business. And we are at the forefront of developing digital omnichannel tools and customer solutions. So I wouldn’t say that we were market-leading 10 years ago, but certainly, with some of the upgrades that we’ve got planned to do this year, we will be market-leading in our omnichannel services by the end of this year. And I would say those are the two really key areas where we’ve seen significant growth certainly in my time.”

Best selling pieces in the UK market tend to be the more classical or traditional styles, jewelry such as a tennis bracelet. There are also customers that will purchase Christmas decorations every year. While there aren’t any specific expansion plans for the UK and Ireland, there are significant expansion plans for some of the other markets including Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. This year the company will be refitting the flagship store on Oxford Street in the new global concept crystal studio, which is different from the white crystal forest concept.

Quinn said that two years ago the company announced its strategy for the next three to five years, which is based around putting the consumer at the heart of everything that they do. “We made a commitment that we would as a global business,” said Quinn. “That that is our number one priority. So we’ve got picked up, we’ve more than doubled the number of employees who now are in customer-facing roles. We’ve significantly invested in payroll in our stores and training for our store teams and increasing the number of people on the shop floor. So at Christmas for example, we actually had 200 more people on the shop floors.”

Quinn noted that this year the company is focused on celebrating its history and heritage. “We are very proud of our achievements as a business,” said Quinn. “We are a family business and we want to celebrate that. We very much look to use the story as a springboard to spot delight, not only in our current customers but in the next generation of our customers. So everything this year is very much around customer experiencing and introducing the concept of sparking that special moment in time. Everybody’s got a sparkling Swarovski story. We want to take all of those stories and bring them to life for our customers and our employees and anyone who’s associated with that wider Swarovski family.”

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