Pandora’s new marketing plan for the coming years or what’s new to expect from the company

Just the oth­er day, I talked about the rebrand­ing that the Dan­ish jew­el­ry brand Pan­do­ra is cur­rent­ly under­go­ing, and today I want to talk about the rea­sons for such glob­al changes in the com­pa­ny.

The last years, name­ly 2016–2018, were not the best finan­cial­ly. Of course, for us, as end users, this was com­plete­ly invis­i­ble, but if you study var­i­ous finan­cial reports or press releas­es of the com­pa­ny, then this infor­ma­tion is dis­played in full.

In 2018, the com­pa­ny’s shares fell in price by almost 50%, which could not be a good result and that is why Anders Cold­ing Fri­is left the post of CEO last year, although he adopt­ed a 5‑year brand devel­op­ment plan and some steps have already been tak­en, name­ly:

Prod­uct inno­va­tion

The slow­down in the com­pa­ny’s growth is the lack of new prod­ucts that they are able to offer the buy­er. The nov­el­ty should sur­prise and be unlike the pre­vi­ous prod­ucts of the com­pa­ny. To solve this prob­lem, it was decid­ed to increase the num­ber of sea­son­al col­lec­tions of the com­pa­ny from 7 to 10. Also in 2018, two new lines of Pan­do­ra shine and Pan­do­ra reflex­ions jew­el­ry were released. Now these lines have in their arse­nal sev­er­al mod­els of bracelets, quite a lot of charms, as well as ear­rings, pen­dants, chains and neck­laces.

Chang­ing the assort­ment struc­ture

The com­pa­ny is grad­u­al­ly increas­ing the range of ear­rings, rings, neck­laces and pen­dants.

By 2022, these cat­e­gories will make up approx­i­mate­ly 50% of Pan­do­ra’s prod­uct range, up from 25% today. Man­age­ment believes that this will not only pro­vide growth, but also reduce the com­pa­ny’s risk as it becomes more diver­si­fied.

Fran­chis­ing

The fran­chise mod­el that the com­pa­ny has been imple­ment­ing for many years has allowed Pan­do­ra to quick­ly expand its pres­ence in many cities and coun­tries. But in recent years, the com­pa­ny began to buy back fran­chis­es and plans to reduce their num­ber to 1/3 against 2/3 of the exist­ing ones. This plan should be imple­ment­ed by 2022.

Invest­ments in design and pro­duc­tion

Over the past two years, the com­pa­ny has invest­ed heav­i­ly in its design and man­u­fac­tur­ing capa­bil­i­ties. The com­pa­ny has grown from one devel­op­ment team to three dif­fer­ent teams: one based in the com­pa­ny’s Copen­hagen office, anoth­er based in Milan, and a third team focused on exper­i­men­ta­tion and longer-term ideas.

In terms of pro­duc­tion, the com­pa­ny built two new facil­i­ties in 2017, which not only expand­ed the range and vol­ume of prod­ucts, but also reduced deliv­ery times from eight weeks to four weeks in 2019. Short­er lead times will allow the com­pa­ny to more quick­ly adapt its prod­uct range to mar­ket needs. Man­u­fac­tur­ing has his­tor­i­cal­ly been Pan­do­ra’s forte, over five times the capa­bil­i­ty of its clos­est com­peti­tor. With these new facil­i­ties in Thai­land, which will also exper­i­ment with new tech­nolo­gies such as 3D print­ing, the com­pa­ny aims to fur­ther dis­tance itself from the com­pe­ti­tion.

The new man­age­ment of the com­pa­ny since 2018 con­sists of CFO Anders Boy­er / Anders Boy­er and CEO Jere­my Schwartz. The result of their team­work was a detailed two-year plan called “Pro­gram now” / “Pro­gram now”, which was pre­sent­ed in the first quar­ter of 2019. In April 2019, Jere­my Schwartz resigned and was replaced by Alexan­der Lacik, who con­tin­ued his under­tak­ings and undoubt­ed­ly added new things to the com­pa­ny’s strat­e­gy.

What did they pro­pose and what changes are they imple­ment­ing? Let’s ana­lyze.

Reduc­ing the open­ing of new stores

While Pan­do­ra is open­ing about 250 new stores this year, man­age­ment has announced that it will cut the num­ber from 750 to 400 by 2022, with a focus on under­served mar­kets such as Chi­na and India.

Lim­it­ing the growth of new store open­ings is being done because shop­pers pre­fer online shop­ping. In the lat­est quar­ter, Pan­do­ra’s online store rev­enue increased 52% year-over-year and now accounts for 8% of total rev­enue com­pared to 5% in the same quar­ter last year.

Reduc­ing pro­mo­tions

More impor­tant­ly for us, Pan­do­ra will reduce the num­ber of pro­mo­tions it runs. Of course, the com­pa­ny will hold pro­mo­tions and pro­mo­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the main hol­i­days of the year, but their num­ber or amount of dis­counts will be reviewed. Accord­ing to experts, this is exact­ly what is need­ed to main­tain the brand in its long-term val­ue.

Change the design

In Sep­tem­ber 2019, the com­pa­ny intro­duced a new redesigned logo and a new store design con­cept.

The first store in the new design opened in the UK this year. Fur­ther, updat­ed bou­tiques will be launched in Chi­na and Italy — coun­tries that are key mar­kets for the com­pa­ny. The changes also affect­ed online stores. They have become more func­tion­al and adapt­ed. Pan­do­ra will main­tain and update its pres­ence on part­ner sites such as Tmall.

Brand Revi­tal­iza­tion

Com­bined with the reduc­tion in pro­mo­tions, the com­pa­ny plans to review mar­ket­ing ini­tia­tives. The peak of activ­i­ty of this inno­va­tion is planned for the 4th quar­ter of 2019, just on the eve of all hol­i­days. The plan includes a new type of mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions strat­e­gy, the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of new cus­tomer reward sys­tems to encour­age col­lect­ing and reg­u­lar shop­ping.

Mar­ket­ing invest­ments

The com­pa­ny’s rebrand­ing entails the com­pa­ny’s largest mar­ket­ing invest­ment to date. Pan­do­ra plans to active­ly col­lab­o­rate with celebri­ties and influ­encers.

Pan­do­ra has cho­sen Stranger Things star Mil­lie Bob­by Brown as its brand ambas­sador. The first cam­paign with her par­tic­i­pa­tion will be released in Octo­ber. Also at the pre­sen­ta­tion of the new autumn col­lec­tion 2019 were the Mus­es of Pan­do­ra, which were Tasia van Ree, Mar­garet Zhang, Nathalie Emmanuel, Geor­gia May Jag­ger, Hal­i­ma Aden and Larsen Thomp­son.

In con­clu­sion, the main goal of relaunch­ing the Pan­do­ra brand as a whole and imple­ment­ing the “Pro­gram Now” plan is to update the entire cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and increase brand rel­e­vance at all lev­els of inter­ac­tion with con­sumers. All these and pos­si­bly oth­er steps will con­tin­ue until 2020. We will soon see how this will affect the prof­itabil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny and what the end con­sumer (you and I) will ulti­mate­ly receive.