Les risques de la crise sur la qualité (Billet)

[Boogie]

gregorypons a écrit:

Boogie a écrit:

Auparavant, il fallait PRODUIRE et LIVRER. Aujourd’hui, on a le temps de soigner la qualité

Très grave illusion !

En ce moment, il faut livrer à tout prix, pour pouvoir facturer en urgence…
C’est pas une impression : c’est de la chose vue à Genève (Meyrin) : il y a si peu de clients qui commandent qu’on les sert en priorité. C’est tout juste si on n’envoie pas un horloger terminer de visser le fond dans l’avion…
Normal : quand il s’agit d’une facture de 100 000 ou 200 000 CHF ou euros, il y a urgence à encaisser le chèque du détaillant ou du client final si c’est une commande spéciale…

Moralité : c’est le client qui fait le contrôle qualité final – et la pièce reviendra au SAV une fois ou deux pour que tout soit parfait… Tant pis pour lui. En attendant, la marque aura encaissé la monnaie.

Conclusion : 2 grands perdants dans cette crise
– le Swiss Made (Zen a raison, c’est même pire que prévu avec le rapatriement en Chine de composants, par des marques insoupçonnables).
– la qualité.

Pour info, relisez l’interview du président de Bulgari qui racontait comment il avait arrêté de polir les maillons intérieurs de ses bracelets pour gagner trois sous en production…

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Je suis d’accord que c’est une situation qui peut arriver, MAIS, si je prends le cas de ma marque leader ( Breitling ) , elle n’avait rien à livrer jusqu’à l’automne dernier, et aujourd’hui, je téléphone, c’est dispo, je passe commande, et deux jours plus tard, je reçois la livraison…

Le cas du client pressé, qui veut la ou les montres pour hier, ça arrivait, ça arrive, et ça arrivera toujours, mais on ne livre que si on a des commandes et pour avoir des commandes, il faut un client, et si ce client est trop pressé, c’est effectivement lui qui fera le contrôle final

[gregorypons]

.
Pour ceux qui lisent l’anglais (voir aussi les outils linguistiques de Google pour le charabia franglais), l’interview du patron de Bulgari sur ses économies de bouts de maillons :

Citation :

When the Lavish Cut Back
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ

ROME — With a world-weary sigh, Francesco Trapani slips off his $10,000 steel and white-gold Bulgari watch, revealing the band’s dull underside. Bulgari once polished it to a fine gleam to match the shiny exterior.

The change is a subtle one, but it captures the cost-consciousness that the first recession in luxury-goods sales in nearly 20 years has forced on companies like Bulgari, Burberry, Cartier, Montblanc and other top designers, a modification of their traditional focus on glamour and glitter.

The challenge is as delicate as polishing one of Bulgari’s hallmark gems. In Bulgari’s case, if Mr. Trapani, the company’s chief executive, cuts too deeply, he risks harming the brand’s image of opulence and exclusivity, carefully honed over decades and reinforced by stars like Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Scarlett Johansson, wearing Bulgari on red carpets at Cannes or the Oscars.

“Instead of talking about stars and spending, you think about cutting costs,” Mr. Trapani said during an interview in his office overlooking the Tiber. “Luxury is not immune.”

Economizing does not come naturally to Mr. Trapani, 51. He is a skilled yachtsman whose wife is a princess from Liechtenstein. Until now, his claim to fame was transforming Bulgari from a handful of boutiques founded by his great-grandfather into a worldwide luxury powerhouse.

But with the company’s profit plunging 44 percent in the most recent quarter, and its stock suddenly tarnished, he has no choice. Shares closed Thursday at 4.76 euros, less than half what they were a year ago.

Since the 1990s, sales of luxury goods have exploded, along with the growth of a well-heeled new global elite, turning once little-known European brands into giants and transforming chic addresses like Fifth Avenue, Bond Street and the Champs-Élysées into veritable open-air malls for the upper middle class.

Few brands epitomized this trend better than Bulgari, which has grown to 259 stores from just 5 when Mr. Trapani took over as chief executive in 1984. Demand for Bulgari’s bold combinations of sapphires, diamonds and emeralds seemed insatiable as sales boomed worldwide, lifting the company’s revenue to more than 1.1 billion euros, or $1.41 billion.

Even as Wall Street collapsed this fall, Mr. Trapani presided over the star-studded opening of the flagship Bulgari store in Paris, and the debut of its first company-owned boutique in the Middle East, with separate parties for men and women in Qatar.

Now, reality has caught up with Bulgari and the rest of the industry. Sales at the 125-year-old jeweler rose an anemic 2 percent in the third quarter. Analysts are pessimistic about a recovery in its current fourth quarter, a period that is responsible for an outsize portion of the company’s annual results. And demand for luxury goods is expected to drop by 3 to 7 percent next year, according to a recent study by Bain & Company, the first time the sector has recorded an annual sales decrease since Bain began tracking it in the early 1990s.

There is no sign of a pre-Christmas rush at Bulgari’s boutique on the Via Condotti, where Richard Burton once bought diamonds for Elizabeth Taylor, and where unique pieces start at 70,000 euros, or $88,900.

“It’s not politically correct to show off in this environment,” said Claudia D’Arpizio, a partner at Bain who specializes in luxury goods. “Even if they’re not affected in terms of purchasing power, consumers feel it’s ethical to spend less. They don’t want the additional piece of jewelry.”

In response to the times, Mr. Trapani has embarked on broad cost-cutting that includes shelving plans for new stores, except in locations where leases have already been signed.

Burberry has announced a similar initiative, while Richemont, the owner of Cartier and Montblanc, is limiting openings to a few fast-growing markets in the Middle East and Asia.

“Past slowdowns were more regional in nature and people could perceive the end game,” Angela Ahrendts, Burberry’s chief executive, said in an interview. “This is global. We were with an investor last week who has had to rerun his worst-case scenario five times in the last five months, and we’re still not there yet.”

Bulgari is also renegotiating existing leases with landlords to save on rent, Mr. Trapani said, and even pressing suppliers for better deals on diamonds, sapphires and other precious stones that are the raw material of its most expensive creations.

Then there are slight adjustments — like the unpolished watch band — that may save only a few euros an item but add up at a company that sells thousands of timepieces annually, most priced from $4,000 to $32,000. Or introducing lower-cost boxes and bottles for Bulgari’s perfume line, which Mr. Trapani said customers will not notice.

“We want the best solution for both the eye and the cost,” Mr. Trapani said. “The challenge is to cut costs and diminish expenses, without negatively affecting the image of the brand or the quality.”

Of the watchband, he said, “It’s more wearable and costs less.”

But Mr. Trapani is resisting a shift to lower-price offerings, even though margins tend to be higher on less expensive items.

“This isn’t a business where you reduce prices to sell more,” he said. “This is totally wrong.”

With price cuts and more drastic style changes off the table, even Bulgari’s most basic internal operations are changing, like the workshop where its most expensive jewelry is made by hand.

Here, where loose rubies, emeralds and sapphires sit like pens and paper clips at a bank, goldsmiths do double-duty and shine up their creations when polishers are out sick.

Overtime expenses, which are typical this time of year as the 21 goldsmiths rush to get one-of-a-kind necklaces and earrings to stores in time for the holidays, have been nearly eliminated.

Of course, demand for the most expensive ornaments has not disappeared entirely. During a recent visit, three of the craftsmen were busy finishing custom-ordered pieces, including cufflinks featuring Greek coins from the fifth century B.C. and a pair of pendant earrings heavy with diamonds and sapphires.

“We won’t change the game of life, thank God,” said Nicola Bulgari, Mr. Trapani’s uncle and a vice chairman of the company.

“It’s part of the joy of life to wear jewelry, for the man and his ego. It is a world of fantasy and folly. Men will always be in love with women and want to make them happy,” he said.

Perhaps, but even Mr. Bulgari, who at 67 remains active in designing the highest-end collections, is having to adapt to new economic realities: he has stopped making additions to his collection of vintage American automobiles.

“If I need to sell them, I will,” he said. He added that he was still buying shares in the company, which is publicly traded. The family holds a controlling stake.

“It’s a test for everybody,” he said of the tight times. “I know what they’re selling at Bergdorf and Saks; they’re cutting numbers with an ax.”

He noted that Bulgari’s perfume business was a bright spot. “People are buying perfume like no tomorrow,” he said. “It’s a great consolation, it’s not expensive, so you don’t feel guilty.”

Giovanna Gambarelli would certainly agree.

A few yards from the workshop where the goldsmiths create custom pieces behind thick glass and tight security, Ms. Gambarelli was recently shopping for bargains at Bulgari’s little-known factory outlet in an industrial area on the edge of Rome.

Sporting a Rolex watch and a Tiffany bracelet, Ms. Gambarelli, 39, recalled how she had shopped three years ago at the Via Condotti store. This year, eyeing watches marked with a little green label that signified the deepest markdowns, she said, “If you don’t want the new collection, you can choose anything here and get a 40 percent discount.”

Extrait du "New York Times" :
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/08luxury.html

…

[dual]

Je partage l’inquiétude de Zen.
De plus, je craint que la tendance ne soit grande de vouloir mettre sur le marché, des montres produites à la hâte, coute que coute, lorsque nous verrons poindre la sortie de crise.
La surchauffe dans le SAV, qui n’est déjà pas une priorité pour certaines marques, risque d’être encore un peu plus criant.

[swiss]

ça me fais rire ce que je lis…

étant dans la branche et travaillant pour une grande marque je sais très bien comment cela se passe…

Les contrôles qualités se sont resserés drastiquement certaines pièces qui passait il y a 1 an ne passent plus maintenant…

Après c’est clair qu’il faut toujours livré à la date que le client l’a demandé, mais c’est pas pour autant que l’on s’en fou de la qualité…

quand je lis que l’horloge vis presque le fond dans l’avion je suis mort de rire…

c’est clair qu’il faut livrer au détaillant au plus vite dès qu’il a commandé mais de la a dire ça…

[sekijoju]

c’est sur que les années d’euphories sont terminées , et pour les fabriquants il va devenir difficile de rentrer de l’argent , la vague de chomage a rabaissé la classe moyenne ce qui est une perte enorme de clients .
rogner la qualité et les couts de productions est une strategie mais ca va devenir difficile de vendre un unitas made in china a 3500€ ( sans vouloir faire alusion a une societe neuchatelloise ) .
a mon taf je recois des comerciaux qui me supplient presque de leur faire une comande , la crise je ne la vois pas qu’a la tv , ca va faire mal , on va tous en patir et quand nos elus disent que ca repartira l’année prochaine , c’est pour nous donner de l’espoir , mais ils ne controlent plus rien.

[Auteur]

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