Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic It\u2019s early May, less than two weeks before the Cannes Film Festival, and yet calm reigns at the Chopard headquarters in Geneva. Artisans in neat white coats work in silence, only interrupted by polite \u201cbonjours\u201d addressed to passers-by. The Swiss brand\u2019s Red Carpet collection, 77 haute joaillerie pieces, which will debut at the French festival \u2014 sponsored by Chopard since 1998 \u2014 has already been dispatched to the Riviera, but prototypes of the most complex pieces are still displayed on a desk. This year\u2019s collection, a whimsical display of flora, fauna and fantastical characters in a rainbow of coloured gemstones and diamonds, was inspired by fairy tales. It includes, for the first time, the brand\u2019s signature Happy Clown pendant, a smiling clown figurine with a see-through belly where precious stones float. It was designed in 1985 by Chopard\u2019s co-president Caroline Scheufele, when she was 24. The story goes that, her father, Karl Scheufele III, president of the company at the time, spotted Caroline\u2019s design and made it for her as a Christmas present, marking the company\u2019s move into jewellery.Family lore of this kind is important to the high jeweller and watchmaker. The company was founded in 1860 by Louis-Ulysse Chopard and has been controlled since 1963 by the Scheufeles \u2014 first by Karl Scheufele III and his wife Karin, who already owned a watch company, and today, by Caroline and her brother, Karl-Friedrich, who were named co-presidents in 2001.The company is among a handful of watch marques that are still family-owned among the top Swiss watch brands by sales, a list which, according to Morgan Stanley, is headed by Rolex, Cartier and Omega. In a branded jewellery world dominated by conglomerate-owned names such as Cartier, Tiffany & Co, Bulgari and Van Cleef & Arpels, and where other conglomerate-owned luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton and Dior are vying for market share, Chopard\u2019s status is even rarer.During my visit, I was told multiple times that Karl Scheufele III and his wife, now both in their mid-eighties, often still visit their office at the headquarters. Karl-Friedrich\u2019s daughter Caroline Marie is a manager of product development, and his son Karl Fritz is business development manager. Karl-Friedrich and Caroline themselves share an office.\u201cWe are a family company in the very sense of the word,\u201d says Karl-Friedrich, sitting on a brown leather couch in the company\u2019s caf\u00e9, a private area in the brand\u2019s internal museum, which includes a bracelet from the second millennium BC and a history of the brand. He believes that it\u2019s that family element and heritage that has allowed Chopard, which last year made SFr800mn ($885mn) in sales, to continue to hold its place among giants such as Rolex and Cartier, whose revenues both float at or above the $10bn mark.\u201cWe admit that it\u2019s a very competitive field, but what is important is the unique approach that we offer [compared] with some conglomerate that goes on a shopping tour and buys what they need to be part of the jewellery world because that\u2019s where the margin comes in,\u201d continues Karl-Friedrich. \u201cIt\u2019s an opportunistic approach [but] we have an approach that our clients appreciate \u2014 authenticity is really much appreciated.\u201d\u201cI was talking to the president of the [Cannes] festival and they were talking about our colleagues and [how]they are just trying to come from all sides,\u201d adds Caroline, sitting next to him and air quoting the word colleagues, which she uses to describe other luxury houses. \u201cBut we have been in Cannes, this year, for 27 years. It\u2019s like, is there nothing else they can do? Why don\u2019t they [partner] a music festival or whatever else.\u201d (Cartier and Bulgari launched partnerships with other film festivals, in 2021 and 2022 respectively).Despite the focus on heritage, many of the assets that allow Chopard to stand alongside the market\u2019s bigger players, if not by size at least by name, have been forged by Caroline and Karl-Friedrich since they joined the company more than 40 years ago. The partnership between Chopard and the Cannes Film Festival is one of them, giving the brand an outsized reach in publicity and opportunities to interact with VIP clients, as is the partnership, since 1988, with the 1000 Miglia antique car race, on the watch side. The Chopard Manufacture, founded in Fleurier in 1996 to produce high-precision Swiss watch movements, is another. The factory has consolidated the vertical integration of the company, initiated by Karl Scheufele III in 1978 with the opening of the brand\u2019s own gold foundry, and allowed Chopard to create complex watches in-house, such as the minute repeater LUC Full Strike. On the jewellery side, Caroline has designed many signature products, such as the Happy Clown and the Happy Diamond jewellery collection, which features small diamonds moving freely inside its pendants. Many discontinued pieces have become collectors\u2019 items. The co-presidents consider what they describe as Chopard\u2019s \u201cJourney to sustainable luxury\u201d as an asset, especially when it comes to a younger generation of consumers who, they say, are much more concerned with how pieces are made. Launched by Caroline in 2013, the initiative is a long-term commitment to improve the brand\u2019s sustainability footprint and sourcing practices. The company has made the most progress on gold, which is today sourced exclusively from the following: mines certified via schemes such as, Fairmined, for small-scale and artisanal mines; mines that participate in the Swiss Better Gold Association; and Chain of Custody Recycled Gold by the Responsible Jewellery Council (RJC). \u201cWe are a little ahead of other companies because we started way back. To be transparent is not an added value today, it\u2019s a must,\u201d explains Caroline. \u201cAnd we sleep better.\u201d Both say that there is still a long way to go, but Caroline sidesteps my question about the criticisms that human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch have aimed at some of the certification schemes Chopard (and other luxury brands) uses, including the Kimberley Process for diamonds and the RJC\u2019s Chain of Custody for metals. \u201cGreen people \u2014 they are never happy with anything,\u201d Caroline says, I suspect only half-jokingly. Her brother, more diplomatically, cuts in to say that \u201cit\u2019s important that they continuously challenge the organisations we work with. At the same time, let\u2019s remind ourselves that nobody is perfect\u201d. \u201cYou can\u2019t sit down and say \u2018let\u2019s wait until the others do it\u2019,\u201d adds Caroline. \u201cOr \u2018let\u2019s wait until it\u2019s mandatory\u2019,\u201d concludes her brother. Chopard\u2019s sales were back to pre-pandemic levels at the end of 2022 and 2023 was \u201ca good year\u201d for the company, according to Karl-Friederich, with sales growing in single digits on the year before. This year, however, is set to be more challenging as the luxury market faces a wider slowdown, increased polarisation between brands and waning demand in China, where Chopard\u2019s sales are currently 15 per cent below 2023\u2019s levels. Watch brands in particular, which operate in a crowded market driven by wholesale, have been affected. \u201cChopard has a structural advantage long-term linked to the fact that they are a really balanced brand between watches and jewellery,\u201d says Erwan Rambourg, global head of consumer and retail research at HSBC. \u201cIt\u2019s good that they have the manufacture, where they can do a lot of storytelling on the watch side, and they have great jewellery assets, including partnerships like the Cannes festival.\u201d But, he adds, in times of economic uncertainty, consumers are likely to favour \u201cthe big guys\u201d.\u201cYou will have a polarisation, because you want to make sure that what you are buying will hold its value,\u201d he continues. Karl-Friederich expects the downturn to hit predominantly Chopard\u2019s entry-level watches (which start at \u00a34,690), while high jewellery, haute horlogerie and even entry-level jewellery will continue to perform. \u201cWe suspect that this year [growth] would probably be about flat,\u201d he says, before celebrating their double strength in jewellery and watches. \u201cThe important thing is that we have two legs\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s good to have two legs,\u201d agrees Caroline. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to stand,\u201d concludes her brother.Photographed for the FT by Francesca Beltran; model, Maike at Miha Model Management; stylist, Misha Kratina; hair and make-up, Claudio Belizario via Call My Agent; flower stylist, Elisa Benchetrit; photographer\u2019s assistant, Tanguy Ginter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic It\u2019s early May, less than two weeks before the Cannes Film Festival, and yet calm reigns at the Chopard headquarters in Geneva. Artisans in neat white coats work in silence, only interrupted by polite \u201cbonjours\u201d addressed to passers-by. The Swiss brand\u2019s Red Carpet collection,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-128695","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128696,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128695\/revisions\/128696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}