Cartier's second coming in India

The company is looking to expand its distribution network in the country’s growing luxury market.

Cartier has been a relative latecomer to India — luxury labels like Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Christian Dior and Chanel, to name a few, have long preceded it. But it is counting on its high brand recall with maharajas of yesterday to seduce the billionaires of today.

Having set up its first store, in October 2008 at the Emporio Mall in New Delhi, in partnership with Navratna Bharat Retail, Cartier is offering India’s well-heeled its “Inde Mysterieuse” jewellery collection that has been engraved, ribbed and cut in the Jaipur style. The collection starts at Rs 63,000 for a ring. More recently, it created a unique Santos 100 watch, part of the Santos series of Cartier watches, with the Taj Mahal motif to mark the opening of its first boutique in India. These individually-numbered and limited edition of 10 timepieces are priced at Rs 34,70,000.

Cartier’s 21st century entry to India, however, almost marks a little over a century of the 163-year-old brand name’s debut in India. It began with Jacques Cartier, a member of the Cartier family, visiting India in 1911 in pursuit of fine pearls and persuading a number of royal families to reset their jewels using Cartier designs. The most memorable of such creations is perhaps the majestic ceremonial necklace created for Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala in 1928. The necklace had five rows of diamond encrusted platinum chains with the world’s seventh largest DeBeers diamond as the centrepiece. It weighed almost a thousand carats with 2,930 diamonds .

“Cartier sees India as a very important region and its culture is very influential in art and jewellery,” says Bernard Fornas, president and chief executive officer of Cartier International.

The company is looking to grow its distribution network in India. While select jewellery and accessories are available off the shelf, Cartier also custom-designs products like vanity cases, hair pins, desk clocks and perfume bottles for its clients, again a spin-off from earlier royal commissions.

From the range on offer, it’s clear that Cartier hopes to leverage its heritage in India’s fast-growing luxury market — expected to grow almost 12 times by 2015 to a $30 billion market. “Cartier has positioned itself as a pioneer, and sees this as an artistic advantage rather than a trend it needs to adapt in order to stay ahead,” says Fornas.

Of course, the India presence lags significantly behind China, where Cartier opened its first boutique in 1992 in Shanghai. Since then it has grown to a network of 32 boutiques in over 20 cities. “We plan to have 55 boutiques within four years and expect China to be our biggest market in 10 years,” says Fornas.

Though the company had anticipated the development of a major luxury market in China, “the pace at which it’s groing is nonetheless surprising,” he adds.

Fornas agrees that India’s nascent luxury market can also grow exponentially. “This is quite evident from the response we have seen from a sizeable number of Indians travelling around the globe and visiting our boutiques in Dubai, Paris, London, New York, Tokyo and Los Angeles,” he says.

The challenge perhaps is to convince such Indians to buy from the Indian boutique.