IN THE SPOTLIGHT: 35 years of Coeur de Lion
Let’s start with an overview of the company, its history, and how it has evolved over the years.
We are celebrating 35 years of Coeur de Lion this year. The company has been founded by a talented German designer in Stuttgart, in the middle of Germany’s high-tech hub. She was joined by her husband to advance the business into a renowned brand.
Jewellery design at Coeur de Lion has evolved over the years from haute couture fashion to the distinctive design language that is typical of the brand today. In 1999, Coeur de Lion presented the cube necklace for the first time, which became an iconic design classic, winning international acclaim as GEOCUBE®. The iconic cube necklace that takes its inspiration from Bauhaus design is our most famous creation. Since its first appearance, we have surprised our GEOCUBE® fans with stunning new interpretations with every collection.
The production of our jewellery items takes place entirely in our Stuttgart studio, from the initial design to the final quality control. Jewellery from Coeur de Lion is brought to life by the unique beauty of natural materials. Alongside a growing number of natural stones, we have added another precious product of nature to our collection in the form of genuine freshwater pearls.
`We love colour, which we use to represent individuality and the joy of life.´We want to inspire and embolden women all over the world to express their natural beauty in a confident and unique way. Always with a touch of extravagance.
Today, we are proud of putting an emphasis on sustainability in everything we do. It starts with the selection of material, manufacturing in Germany, timeless designs, and a lasting quality with a long repair service. We have introduced an increasing assortment of innovative designs that combine several wearing options for various occasions. This year we joined the Responsible Jewellery Council and received the German Brand Award in the category Excellent Brands—Luxury 2022 as well as the Inhorgenta Jewellery Award 2022.
What kind of family and neighbourhood did you grow up in?
I grew up in Innsbruck, a vital small university city in the middle of the alps. Born into an entrepreneurial family, I consider myself lucky to have grown up in a wonderful family with two brothers and caring parents. From early on, I was helping in the family business and learned about the different facets of running a business with all its ups and downs, as well as what it means to accept responsibility.
What were you like at school?
While having been a good student from a performance perspective, I was more interested in exploring chemistry and physics with all kinds of practical and fun experiments, and when the first personal computers like the C64 hit the market in 1982, I was one of the first to get one and dive into programming as a kid. I studied next to a full-time job in business administration at Swarovski, which demanded some good organization, but helped me with applying theory on the job and, in turn, advance faster. I kept my keen interest in learning more after my master’s degree, continuing programs in the US at universities from New York to Stanford.
Tell us about how you got your start in your industry and how it led to the work you do today.
My first job was at Swarovski, where I helped develop strategies for smaller business units, identifying opportunities for growth, e.g., the acquisition of a US based Cubic Zirconia technology in the early days of its application in jewellery. I then ran a US jewellery company in Rhode Island while building our design platform in New York. Over the years, I’ve led some exciting initiatives involving new concepts in eCommerce and new retail approaches, reaching consumer sectors from apparel to jewellery. I spent a lot of time in Asia when it started to evolve as one of the key consumer markets for luxury products. Gathering experience with private equity players in my group CEO role at Baccarat helped me evolve into the merger and acquisition direction. This is when I started consulting start-up companies from Stanford to Singapore and eventually got in contact with the family office, which had a majority stake in Coeur de Lion in Germany. That’s when we started building Aeternum as a platform of jewellery companies and to develop them strategically with the local CEOs and management teams. Coeur de Lion is our first portfolio company, which is why I am also its operational CEO.
Who do you look up to or admire?
Entrepreneurs, who pursue an innovative idea and show social responsibility. There have been quite a few examples in different industries that I have been following. As a member of YPO, I had the pleasure of meeting many on a personal level.
What is your leadership philosophy?
First of all, it is about having the right people on board. Even if someone does not have all the skills yet, they can develop them with our support. It is important to me to develop talents, trust them, and give them enough freedom to develop their strategies to achieve our common goals. I am very ambitious for the company and myself too. We develop 3-5 year strategic ambition plans, which start with a vision for the brand and have all key players involved in developing the best strategies to work towards them. You could describe it as a mix of strategic and democratic leadership styles. I like to empower people, as I strongly believe in the motivation and ability of our team members to find superior solutions.
Is there a success story or career milestone that you are most proud of?
Very early on in my career, I worked towards the opportunity to lead one of the international companies of the Swarovski group. I moved to the US at age 28 and ran a 250-person jewellery company, which needed some serious reorganization at the time. We faced all kinds of challenges, but we succeeded in turning it into a high-growth, profitable business within 2–3 years after setting up the first creative cooperation center in NYC in 1996. It demanded truly hard work, with 60 to 70 hours of work a week. Despite having had university degrees and quite some work experience, it made me humble to realize, how much there is still to learn. That was the first time I felt a true sense of achievement, and I was proud of my team, which I pulled together with a high level of motivation, a sense of urgency, and an eagerness to change.
There have been three such career milestones along the way:
1. Running this US jewellery company at such a young age. As a result, I was offered a global executive role with responsibility for the international product, brand, and marketing development and working with the most exciting designers, creatives, and luxury brands in the 2000s, quadrupling the size of the business over the following 8 years.
2. Moving to Paris in 2010 to head-up one of the most prestigious lighting and decorative companies with the most outstanding craftsmanship, as the Group CEO of Baccarat was another highlight. I worked with a talented team and some new hires to develop new product lines together with star designers, an entirely new flagship store in NYC and Paris, the first branded hotel in NYC and projects lined up for Asia and the Middle East.
3. And finally, having had the opportunity to build a group of European jewellery companies that we carefully develop into the future with know-how and means that are typically not accessible to individual jewellery companies. Today I am heading the Aeternum Holding Group (part of a Hamburg based family office) with soon 7 brands in its portfolio and serving as general manager of Coeur de Lion in Stuttgart, as its largest and most established brand.
What is your approach to developing talent in the company?
Reminding myself of the trust I received to take on responsibility, which each time represented a huge challenge I had to grow into, I try to extend this to my team(s) as well. In my group role, I work with the CEOs of the different portfolio companies and their senior management teams. We are strict about having the right talents in place, challenging them with ambitious growth goals, and offering them support within their organisation as well as with their peers in other portfolio brands and on a group level. This allows for very dynamic development and great opportunities for team members to grow with that.
How did the pandemic impact the company? And where are you now in that process?
Fortunately, we navigated through the crisis well. With retailers forced to close doors and online retail not being a short-term alternative for so many traditional jewellery retailers worldwide, our business suffered hugely and instantly in mid 2020.
It was important to me, to hold on to our loyal team of craftswomen in Germany and certainly our administration and support functions as well, despite an incredible cost pressure. We were also keen on supporting all our trade partners as much as we could.
We utilised the time to build on our digital presence substantially, expanding our reach in social media, worldwide brand presence with digital marketing and PR to prepare for a swift and sustainable recovery.
Now in our first year returning to relatively normal retail environments, we are proud to say that we held on to our team members, which in turn allowed us to achieve the most successful year in the company’s 35-year history. We are expecting to maintain and advance our growth trajectory into the next 10 years with our great team and partners in the markets.
What challenges do CEOs and managing directors face in our industry?
The jewellery industry is highly fragmented, with lots of smaller players, some of them with great ideas. Today, it is more important than ever to focus on a resolute improvement on the environmental impacts of our businesses, social responsibility, and a clear governance framework that includes the whole supply chain. I believe that those CEOs who take these responsibilities seriously, as opposed to just paying lip service to a marketing exercise, will make the right choice and outperform others. We at Coeur de Lion take this very seriously.
To listen to your consumer—more and more via digital channels—and cherish these relationships with customers and business partners in order to support them in a mutual success story remains key.
What are some of the challenges you face? What keeps you up at night?
The impacts of several crises occurring at the same time (the brutal war against Ukraine, a looming recession in major markets, skyrocketing inflation, and resulting uncertainty and reduced buying power for most consumers) lead to high degrees of uncertainty for businesses as well. Retailers in city centers are suffering from slowing traffic if they cannot provide convincing reasons for consumers to return to their stores. Innovative ways to engage with consumers in multiple/omni channels and outstanding service experiences will be the differentiators. We strive to make our services more seamless across channels, come up with interesting and differentiated product lines, and support our partners along the way.
What are your outside interests? How do you like to relax?
I love to travel the world, experience new cultures, and visit art fairs whenever time allows with my wife. Sport is my other escape: mountain biking, skiing, climbing, sailing, and surfing are my favourite sports. We enjoy meeting with friends for brunch or dinner in the places we live or visit and exploring new places.
What was the best advice anyone ever gave you, and did you follow it?
Keeping an entrepreneurial spirit—I guess that’s what I learned from my father. I have a great deal of respect for founders who are willing to sometimes risk it all to pursue their dreams and create their own legacy businesses and brands.
From an educational perspective, the best advice I learned at Stanford D-School: Evolve your business ideas with a design thinking process in a non-linear, iterative process with a versatile team to understand consumers, challenge assumptions, redefine, create, prototype, and test. In particular, low fidelity prototyping with a minimum viable product—fail fast, fail often—is necessary to achieve superior consumer-centric outcomes. That’s something I still try to apply in our businesses.
At what point did you feel you’ve met true success?
I am not really sure, as it has been such an evolution, and I always looked ahead to the next goal we are working towards, so it never felt like a true moment of success. I guess moving to Paris and being nominated Group CEO of a highly renowned luxury brand was the first moment that made me reflect on the success story that brought me there.
What would your childhood friends and siblings think if they saw you in the role you enjoy today, and why?
Most would not be surprised to see me in my various roles along my career trajectory. I had the reputation of pursuing my goals with lots of energy and being the strategic guy. My brothers have been successful in their careers as well, and we enjoy discussing some challenging business topics together; for example, one of my brothers runs his own digital marketing agency.
What are some other luxury brands that inspire you, and why?
I admire brands with an iconic design language and a consistent standard of excellence, like Chanel or Hermès.
Discover more: www.coeur-de-lion.org