On this week’s episode of The Jewelry District, JCK editor-in-chief Victoria Gomelsky and news director Rob Bates discuss the highlights of LVMH’s Watch Week in New York City—including Tiffany’s dazzling 13-foot Bird on a Rock sculpture, L’Epée’s cutting-edge clocks in the shape of cars and grenades, and the tiny mechanical Bulgari Serpenti watch. Next, Victoria and Rob offer some perspective on recent reports of trouble at LVMH-owned Tiffany and of downturns in the Swiss watch market. Finally, the pair pay tribute to the late Harvey Rovinsky, owner of Bernie Robbins, who made news worldwide when he gave his store to his longtime employees.
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Sponsored by IGI: igi.org
Episode Credits
Hosts: Rob Bates and Victoria Gomelsky
Producer and engineer: Natalie Chomet
Editor: Riley McCaskill
Plugs: @jckmagazine; igi.org
Show Notes
00:55 New York state of mind
04:12 On the clock
07:09 Trying times
09:20 Issues at Tiffany?
14:15 To the races
15:05 Come slither
16:56 Tiffany wrist candy
18:14 2025 watch predictions
20:20 Destination Tucson
21:44 Honoring the man who gave away the store
Show Recap
New York state of mind
Victoria shares highlights from LVMH’s annual Watch Week, which had to relocate to New York City from Los Angeles because of the wildfires. This gave Victoria a chance to visit the eighth floor of Tiffany’s flagship, the Landmark—it’s a spectacular exhibition space where you can gaze out on LVMH’s other Fifth Avenue gems, like the Bulgari store and the Louis Vuitton flagship (currently under renovation and disguised as a giant stack of the luxury brand’s famous suitcases). “You’re up there, and it does feel like it’s LVMH’s world and we’re all just living in it,” Vic says.
She also was struck by the 13-foot-tall animatronic Bird on a Rock sculpture—modeled on the iconic Jean Schlumberger jewelry design—that was perched on the eighth-floor terrace and covered with 60,000 LED lights.
On the clock
LVMH’s nine timepiece brands were in attendance at Watch Week, along with clockmaker L’Epée 1839, which the conglomerate acquired in 2024. L’Epée produces traditional carriage clocks as well as “funky” models, Victoria says, mentioning clocks that resemble a vintage Ferrari and a grenade. The latter is likely to stir up mixed emotions, she observes.
Rob wonders whether watch and clock collectors overlap. “A little bit,” says Victoria. “I don’t know the size of the clock market—it’s definitely a lot smaller than the wristwatch market. But there are some really storied names [making clocks]. Patek Philippe makes these very famous dome clocks that feature their rare handcrafts, and those are collector items. Jaeger-LeCoultre has, very famously, made a clock called the Atmos for many years…. Van Cleef makes these incredible planetarium clocks. So there is some overlap in the makers. But it is a different business.”
She credits MB&F—the avant-garde Swiss brand, which Chanel last year took a 25% stake in—for elevating L’Epée and giving it cachet when the two partnered on a limited collection of edgy clocks.
Trying times
Victoria reports that there’s “a lot of angst in the Swiss watch business” right now. She notes the reshuffling of leadership at LVMH’s watch brands in the past six months and a downturn in the Swiss watch market after last year’s record highs.
“[Swiss export figures] just came out,” she said. “They’re down about 5% globally. Even the U.S., the leading market, is down about 1%.”
Issues at Tiffany?
During one Watch Week event, Victoria sat across from Frédéric Arnault, the second son of LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault, and CEO of LVMH’s watch division. In Arnault’s public remarks at the dinner, “he made sure to tout Tiffany as being number one in sales for the group last year,” she says.
That would seem to be a response to last month’s Bloomberg story that said Tiffany—which LVMH acquired in 2021—is suffering from low morale and disappointing sales in the United States. On a recent conference call, LVMH executives painted a sunnier picture, claiming the negative reports are just griping by disgruntled former employees.
Rob felt the LVMH executives “were a little defensive. They wanted people to make sure people knew that this acquisition, which is the largest acquisition that they’ve ever done and is extremely high-profile and widely watched, [is] going well….
“They are investing a lot of money in things like the Landmark, and remodeling all their stores,” Rob adds. “You wonder, they’re laying out so much money for this brand…. I’m sure it’s helping sales to some extent, but how profitable is [it]? And these stories [that say] they’re driving their salespeople so hard, it gives you a little pause.”
Victoria found that at Watch Week “a lot of these [LVMH brand] CEOs spoke in way more platitudes than even I’m used to…. It ends up feeling you’re having a conversation with a lot of hot air. There’s nothing actually being said.”
To the races
Also during Watch Week, TAG Heuer promoted its new sponsorship of Formula 1 racing, previously held by Rolex. “LVMH came in and wrested it away,” Victoria says. “One of the reasons they were able to overcome Rolex—which is unusual; Rolex generally dominates this kind of thing—was that they offered a broader kind of package…. Obviously there’s more brands LVMH can use to help promote and amplify the Formula One message, and Rolex is just Rolex.”
Come slither
Vic notes that Bulgari has doubled down on its snake-themed Serpenti collection—apropos since it’s the Year of the Snake according to the Chinese zodiac. The luxury brand introduced its first Serpenti watch in 1948 and rebooted the entire collection in 2010. You can’t overstate the snake design’s importance to Bulgari, says Victoria. It’s everywhere, from watches to jewelry to bags. She says Bulgari CEO Jean-Christophe Babin recently told her that “Serpenti is Bulgari, and Bulari is Serpenti.”
At Watch Week, Bulgari introduced a very small mechanical movement designed to fit in the head of the snake that adorns all Serpenti pieces.
Tiffany wrist candy
Tiffany, too, is building its watch business, Victoria says. The collection includes “a lot of very high-end, very jeweled pieces,” she says. At Watch Week, the company showed off a lot of dramatic watches, many with Bird on a Rock themes. “That icon is appearing all over the place” at Tiffany, she says.
2025 watch predictions
What’s ahead for the watch world? “I think it’s a tougher year,” Victoria says. “We’re sort of way past that peak post-pandemic, when the watch business was on an extreme high and there was such waiting lists for products coming out from the big, big brands. That spilled over into the secondary market—meaning that people were offering to pay three, four, five times retail value for some models that were flipped.”
Now the waiting lists have shrunk, and the decline in the secondary market has repercussions for the primary market and vice versa, says Vic.
“I think people are nervous,” she says. “They talk about limiting their retail outlets and trying to starve the market, so you do get this buildup in demand, but ultimately they do need to sell, and they need to sell in some volume.”
Stay tuned for more insights from Victoria following her visit to the Watches and Wonders show in Geneva, Switzerland, in April.
Destination Tucson
Vic was heading to the gem shows in Tucson shortly after recording the podcast. She’s anticipating higher prices for colored stones, with demand for materials rising as finer stones have become harder to find—but she promises listeners a full report from Tucson in an upcoming episode of The Jewelry District.
Victoria mentions that on her trip last summer to a sapphire mine in Montana with Parlé Gems, sources told her gem prices had risen about 20%, especially on rarer and bigger material.
Her advice? “You have to budget,” she says, conceding that she’s grateful she’s not a buyer when she goes to Tucson.
Honoring the man who gave away the store
Victoria and Rob pay tribute to Harvey Rovinsky, former owner of premium jeweler Bernie Robbins, who died in late January. When Rovinsky started planning his retirement, he decided he didn’t want to close his stores and put his people out of work. So instead he transferred ownership of the New Jersey chain—free of charge, with no debt—to six longtime employees.
“That kind of generous gesture, it’s truly amazing,” says Rob. “It made the news all over the world…. He liked the idea of his employees taking over the company and bringing it to the next level.”
Sadly, Rovinsky died shortly after he announced his official retirement from the business on Jan. 1.
Vic remembers him “as the consummate jeweler…. What a wonderful legacy he’s left. It’s remarkable to hear about his generosity to his employees.”
Any views expressed in this podcast do not reflect the opinion of JCK, its management, or its advertisers.
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