Pandora Jewelry executive on retail traffic: There are ‘less browsers, much more buyers’

Pandora Jewelry President Luciano Rodembusch joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the increase in buyers despite relatively low foot traffic for retail mall spaces.

Video Transcript

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JARED BLIKRE: Welcome back. Well, if you're thinking about putting a ring on it, or maybe just a charm bracelet, guess what-- we got the Pandora Jewelry president of Pandora North America with us to break down not only your latest earnings, but also in general what's going on with the retail landscape. Looking at your stock, I believe it was down just a smidge. But you're up basically 50% for the year. So tell us a little bit about your results this last quarter.

LUCIANO RODEMBUSCH: Third quarter was fantastic, Jared. Thank you for having me here today. And especially in North America, Pandora is coming for third quarter in a row growing more than 50% above 2019. So, fantastic results for us so far this year.

- And Luciano, I know you have been in this space, not necessarily all with Pandora. But you've talked about these significant growth opportunities you see in the North American market. What do you see as the big drivers, and how are you looking at expanding your presence?

LUCIANO RODEMBUSCH: So Pandora has almost 500 stores-- what we call concept stores, exactly like the 42nd Avenue street that you see on the screen. But the market in the US is still very fragmented, right? So we see a huge opportunity to grow branded merchandise, branded jewelry, in US. And we believe that, more than ever, our experience in the stores, together with the quality of our products, it's unique. And that's what is driving our results so far. But I agree with you, there is a long runway ahead for us in the US, as well.

JARED BLIKRE: And can you just talk about the foot traffic that you've seen, and maybe some of-- we talked to a lot of business owners and CEOs about supply chain issues, labor shortages. How is all of this affecting you and your business?

LUCIANO RODEMBUSCH: So from a traffic point of view, we're still below 2019. For sure, I think all the retail now is experiencing much less browsers, much more buyers. So conversion rates are higher than they used to be before the pandemic.

You have people that usually when they go into the stores, they have something in mind much stronger than before. In our case, omnichannel is very important. So the online channel is also super connected with our retail brick and mortar store. So traffic is not as good, but conversion is much better, which gives us a higher result for us.

On the supply side, Pandora, I think, has the benefit of having our own-- control our own supply. So we have in Thailand a team of almost 12,000 people. Most of them they are artisans that are producing our products. One of the big surprises when they join Pandora is every single piece of our merchandise is handmade. So there is-- for every one of the charms you see, there is more than 25 people involved in the production of it.

And I'm very, very happy to share with you and our clients that we have plenty of inventory of our top sellers today. And we hope to stay like that the entire holiday season.

- And Luciano, as a former executive over at Tiffany, I know you're probably pretty familiar about rebranding trying to capture a younger generation, a younger audience. Certainly something we have seen with the Tiffany brand. How are you looking at that with Pandora, especially in the face of a lot of competition coming from these direct-to-consumer jewelry brands?

Maybe some are not on the luxury level that Pandora is. But what are you doing specifically to try and branch out to capture a younger demographic as you look to grow the business?

LUCIANO RODEMBUSCH: When you look especially from Gen Zs, we believe that the personalization is crucial. And to be able to really present a unique personalization for each one of them is what Pandora can offer. We recently launched Pandora ME. The global launch was made in New York a few weeks back with a fantastic success, right? Addison Rae is one of the spokespersons that we're using.

We had record numbers in TikTok. And the collection is very, very well received by our clients. It gives hundreds of thousands of more possibilities to personalize. So technically, at the limit, every client can have their own different set of Pandora ME.

So we believe that is important. We believe also the freshness of the merchandise is very important. Just as an example, for the holiday season, we launched more than 70 new items, some of the ones you see in the screen right now.

And the third one. We also believe that all the social responsibility, the environmental responsibility, is very, very important for the next generations. And Pandora is very committed with that with strong results so far.

JARED BLIKRE: But Luciano, I've got to talk about inflation here, and what you're facing not only in terms of prices on your input costs, but also of the finished product. Talk to us about how you're managing increased input costs. And then, are you passing them on to consumers? Do you have that pricing power?

LUCIANO RODEMBUSCH: I'm very happy to share that there was no price changes in our product line. So you can buy a Pandora charm, one of the launches we have for the holiday season, starting at $35. And if you go to the stores today, we started the Black Friday a little bit early. So we have the Black Friday offers starting today. You can get that $35 with 30% discount.

So Pandora has a strong work on our production to hedge and to avoid those big swings in input costs. And again, we are in Thailand. We have our own team of artisans so all of that helps us to soften the impact of this input costs and allow us to continue to offer something very, very affordable for our clients.

- Luciano Rodembusch, Pandora Jewelry's president for North America, it's great to have you on today. I appreciate you stopping by.