After so many of you seemed to enjoy my little daydream about what might happen if Richemont bought De Beers, let’s go for another. This time, lets dream up a scenario in which Gucci’s parent company Kering falls head over heels for diamonds.
Picture it: Kering’s next investor day. The lights dim, the music swells, and the first slide isn’t a Gucci handbag, it’s a Boucheron ring. Somewhere in the audience an analyst drops his croissant.
It won’t happen, probably. But humour me for a few minutes as I imagine the potential play should Kering start to believe capitalising on the fact its jewellery maisons are currently outstripping its fashion houses (in growth, if not in volume) could be a good idea.
It starts with a cheque. Kering has agreed to sell its beauty business to L’Oréal for €4 billion, and the grown-up thing to do is pay down debt. In our dream, however, nobody is feeling grown-up. Instead, a large share of the money gets handed to Kering Jewelry CEO Jean-Marc Duplaix with a note: build us a jewellery group. Try not to spend it all in Ginza.
He spends quite a lot of it in Ginza.
