When Cyrille Vigneron was named CEO of Cartier International in 2016, he had accumulated 25 years of combined tenure within the maison and the Richemont conglomerate that owns it. At Richemont from 1988 to 2013, Vigneron was employed as Managing Director of Cartier Japan until 2002, then as President of Richemont Japan until 2005. Through 2013, he served as Managing Director of Cartier Europe, then parted ways with the Richemont group to become president of LVMH Japan.
When Vigneron left his beloved Japan to return to France, it was to take the top job at Cartier, where he determined that the maison had “a Cartier problem.” Its watch divi- sion suffered from a combination of over-supply of inventory and a depressed market in China. For the engineer by training, the problem was merely one awaiting a solution.
Vigneron set his sights on reducing overstock by balancing watch inventory levels globally and putting an end to stock buybacks. He redefined “the core” of the Cartier watch, and set out to revive the timeless “Cartier style.”
To restore Cartier’s status as the jewel in the crown of Richemont, Vigneron nurtured Cartier’s disruptive side, emphasising its masculine-feminine orientation in an age of gender fluidity. A believer in “value for money,” he has established a fresh connection with the Cartier client. He has reconfigured Cartier’s retail space into a destination where, he says, people will come to find an experience and “what they are not looking for.”
Above and beyond products, Vigneron’s mission is to make Cartier relevant “across generations and geographies.” For that, he has taken a stance in favour of social equality, a cause that Cartier has supported since 2006 through a variety of visible measures, namely its Women’s Initiative Awards, an annual international business plan competition that rewards women entrepreneurs.
For Vigneron, “luxury brands are global citizens” and must say “who they are and what they do,” words describing a powerful social engagement that may well transform the luxury industry well beyond the culture of Cartier.
*On the occasion of GMT Magazine and WorldTempus' 20th anniversary, we have embarked on the ambitious project of summarising the last 20 years in watchmaking in The Millennium Watch Book, a big, beautifully laid out coffee table book. This article is an extract. The Millennium Watch Book is available on www.the-watch-book.com, in French and English, with a 10% discount if you use the following code: WT2021.
