The company went through several massive changes in my time there. In the beginning, Swarovski was much more serious— “We do not do any sales or discounts, we may not be as expensive as T & Co but they are our competition.”
Then, we had a new French president take over. Everything changed, some good and some bad. We had more floor coverage, since you can’t sell without people to do the selling. However, his main push was to sell watches. Watches, watches, watches. Forget what people cared about with the brand (gifts for a reasonable price point and the figurines), we are now a watch brand where you can also buy other crap. We had to count how many people we SHOWED a watch to in a day, with a goal to sell at least 5 a day. It was insanity. Who wears a dress watch anymore?
Then with time, the quality of the jewelry degraded even more. Swarovski jewelry was always costume jewelry at heart; it’s plated metal and glued crystal. The new pieces would break or chip within weeks, but the new president had removed the lifetime warranty we would boast about. No one was grandfathered in— you were out of luck. You just bought a $200 piece of junk and need to pay to have it fixed.
The new designer I think, in a way, is a breath of fresh air for the company. I appreciate that they’re trying something new, but it’s too much too late. Doing a complete rebrand to things that really aren’t on trend at all isn’t going to help the CGB. Huge chunky jewelry hasn’t been in for like 12 years. Something is going on behind the scenes for the company to now be out of family control for the first time since 1895.
