At the height of the coronavirus pandemic last year, while much of the world’s population was stuck at home clad in cosy loungewear or trying out skincare routines in their bathrooms, the world’s rich were buying fine jewellery. You would think that indulging in diamonds amid one of the worst economic slowdowns in recent history may seem incongruous, even for wealthy individuals who have continued to do well thanks to a booming stock market. But both in China and the US – the world’s top luxury markets – jewellery has been one of the most resilient categories. “Jewellery is always more resilient and always recovers faster than the rest of the luxury market,” says Jean-Christophe Babin, chief executive of Bulgari, the Italian jeweller founded in 1884 that since 2011 has been part of LVMH, the world’s largest luxury group. “If you think about it, jewellery is the oldest form of luxury; it started 15,000 years ago to celebrate the mating between a man and a woman in every civilisation and corner of the world. Fifteen thousand years later, the role of jewellery has remained the same: the celebration of things in life like mating, and today it can be a man and a woman or two men.” French-born Babin has been at the helm of Bulgari since 2013, after 12 years as the chief executive of LVMH watch brand Tag Heuer . Affable and talkative, Babin is one of the most dynamic CEOs in the industry and has turned Bulgari into one of the success stories of LVMH, a company known for taking over historic houses and transforming them into global brands. As Babin sees it, it was a confluence of factors – some predating the pandemic – that have helped Bulgari, and other jewellery brands, weather the crisis. Love, revenge and death: will Lady Gaga film help revive Gucci sales? “If you buy a piece from Bulgari now, it will still be worth a lot of money in one century, but if you buy a pair of shoes, it’s worth nothing,” he says. He also mentions an increase in working women’s purchasing power as a factor in propelling jewellery sales in the last two decades. “Traditionally, jewellery was a gift from a man to a woman, but with [more women now working worldwide], they like to reward themselves, so for all these reasons jewellery is the most resilient category in luxury.” This doesn’t mean, however, that Bulgari has not been affected by the pandemic. Temporary store closures, travel restrictions and the inability to hold physical events accelerated a shift to digital channels that Babin says was already happening before the crisis. In the US, for instance, e-commerce is the number-one retail channel for Bulgari, even for big-ticket items that luxury consumers are used to buying in physical stores. “Fifteen years ago when you started buying online, you would buy more affordable items because maybe you weren’t sure about things like shipping, but now people are very confident and buy expensive products online, like electronics, so it’s the same for jewellery,” Babin says. He believes that in five years the number-one store in all the countries where the brand offers online sales will be the digital one. Like many other luxury CEOs who have risen to prominence in the last decade, Babin has witnessed first-hand the growth of China as the top luxury market in the world. He says that Bulgari is one of the most desirable brands in China, which accounts for more than a third of its jewellery and accessory sales. The pandemic has not affected Bulgari’s busy schedule of customer events and marketing activations in China, where the coronavirus was first detected in December 2019 and where lockdowns were relatively short-lived compared to those in Europe or the US. “The Chinese never stopped buying and once things reopened [in March and April last year] they massively returned to stores,” Babin says. “They were saving on travel, hotels, entertainment and spent that money on luxury goods within China. This has boosted sales in a way that nobody expected, with triple-digit growth. The beauty of it is that it has continued and 11 months after the reopening of stores, the trend in mainland China is the same.” The repatriation of luxury spending within China has been a saving grace for luxury brands that have long relied on travellers from rising economies such as China and the Middle East for most of their sales in places like France, Italy, Singapore and Hong Kong. To make up for lost sales due to the collapse of travel retail in tourist-driven markets, Bulgari has shifted its focus onto local consumers, a demographic that Babin admits had been neglected for years, especially in places like Hong Kong. The special administrative region has long been a magnet for Chinese tourists, who have always taken advantage of favourable prices to go on shopping sprees in the city, but months of anti-government protests in 2019 , followed by travel bans imposed during the pandemic, have battered the city’s formerly thriving retail scene. “Just two years ago, Hong Kong was the number-one market for most brands, mainly because of tourism,” Babin says. “With [Covid-19], tourism has come to a total halt, so luxury brands had to rely on domestic clients, who had been neglected much more than in other countries because the number of tourists coming to Hong Kong was quite overwhelming.” I am confident that Hong Kong remains Hong Kong, like Paris and New York, a place you want to visit Jean-Christophe Babin Bulgari directly operates seven stores in the city – compare that to New York, where the brand only has one – and has had to adapt to these difficult times by reducing working hours for retail staff, negotiating better terms with landlords and pivoting to wealthy locals. Babin says that it’s likely that Bulgari will close “a couple of stores in the city”, those that were already underperforming even before the crisis, but he has confidence in Hong Kong as a regional and global retail hub for years to come. “It’s still the easiest destination for Chinese tourists to go, a short flight away,” Babin says. “They will come back and the Hong Kong government knows very well that the quicker the vaccination campaign goes the better, because this is a condition from the Chinese government to allow Chinese tourists to travel to Covid-free destinations. “We’ve seen this in Macau, which has partly reopened, and business has been good, so when I look at Macau next door already booming back I am confident that Hong Kong remains Hong Kong, like Paris and New York, a place you want to visit. Timing will be about the vaccination campaign and a peaceful climate.” Babin’s upbeat outlook on Hong Kong, and the luxury industry in general, reflects his can-do spirit and bold approach as a chief executive. Even during the pandemic, Bulgari, which partnered with Britain’s Oxford University to support antiviral research, has hosted large-scale events in Europe. While digital channels will remain important for the brand, Babin agrees that physical events are vital for high-touch segments like jewellery and watches, and says that the brand plans to hold high-profile events in Milan and Geneva this summer. Babin’s confidence in the strength of the jewellery segment reflects the importance of the category for LVMH, which until recently had lagged behind rival Richemont, the owner of brands such as Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, in the jewellery and watches sector. Earlier this year, LVMH acquired Tiffany, one of the most recognisable and beloved jewellery brands in the world, for US$16 billion, the luxury sector’s largest-ever deal. “The move towards Tiffany was obvious strategically speaking because jewellery has been so resilient and fast-growing,” Babin says. “So you want not only to grow organically, which we have been doing with Bulgari, but you also want to be the world leader because it’s an amazing market, so the Tiffany acquisition was strategic but also logical. “Bulgari and Tiffany are competitors like Dior and Louis Vuitton are, but we’re also very different. Tiffany is very American and is the bridal brand. Bulgari is more about precious jewellery and watches, which is a category that is still small at Tiffany. There is some overlap between us but we have our strategy and they have theirs, and at a certain point we will try to find some synergies.” Looking ahead, Babin sees the crisis as an opportunity for Bulgari – and the entire luxury industry – thanks in no small part to the growth of luxury sales within mainland China, which he thinks will continue even after the Chinese will start to travel again. “I’m very optimistic when I look at the future of Bulgari post-pandemic,” he says. “The pillar of mainland China, the Chinese travelling again and the focus on local customers – these three things will all continue. Covid has taken us to the next level of clientelling excellence. We had to be creative and proactive and eventually we will benefit from all this as an industry.”