How Will Signet’s New Strategy Work?

By Rob Bates | March 21, 2025

On Signet’s March 19 earnings call, CEO J.K. Symancyk unveiled the jewelry giant’s “Grow Brand Love” strategy, which calls for a renewed focus on its “big three” brands: Kay, Zales, and Jared.

For more details, JCK spoke to Signet’s chief financial and operating officer, Joan Hilson, about how Signet’s other brands fit into this new plan, the company’s new thinking about natural and lab-grown diamonds, and how it will operate going forward:

With Signet now focusing on its three main brands, where does that leave the other brands in your portfolio?

Our “Grow Brand Love” strategy is focused on four customer families. One is for “milestones and romantic gifting,” which is Kay and Peoples. “Style and trend” is Zales and Banter [formerly known as Piercing Pagoda]. “Inspired luxury” is Jared and Diamonds Direct, and we also have “digital pure play,” with Blue Nile, James Allen, and Rocksbox.

In that context, we’re focused on the larger brands to drive those customer families, and within that, we’re evaluating the potential contribution of the other brands within that family, with a sharp eye on where we can drive shareholder value.

The real focus of “Grow Brand Love” is to move from banners to brands and to leverage style and product innovation, experience, and storytelling through marketing and branding, and then leverage our central competencies, so we can move quickly with customer trends.

J.K. said Signet is evaluating the rest of its portfolio. What options are you considering? Is it possible that some brands might be divested?

We’re not saying anything on that at this point. The point is understanding how each of the brands can contribute to the growth of the business, taking the lead from the core brands of Kay, Zales, and Jared.

When you say the brands within those “customer families” will be working together, might they be consolidated in some way?

We’re looking at all possibilities.

During the call, J.K mentioned that Blue Nile and Jared had done a collection together. Do you expect to see more of those collaborations?

I’d say that is a great example of a collaboration between brands, where the Blue Nile trade name resonates with an “inspired luxury” customer. Because those brands are both part of the family, it only took 10 weeks for us to bring that new collaboration to market, and we were able to see it take hold over the holiday selling period.

I noticed J.K. didn’t say anything about Signet’s British chains Ernest Jones or H. Samuel in those groups. They’re still part of the family, right?

Yes, that’s our international segment. With this program we’re very focused on North America at this stage, and focused on driving positive same-store sales in [the three] core brands, because their size enables us to leverage operating efficiencies. So as we drive those brands to grow, it enables us to focus on driving some of the other opportunities in our business.

There was talk on the call of better situating lab-grown and natural diamonds. Will we perhaps see fewer lab-grown diamonds at Jared and fewer natural diamonds at Zales? And maybe Kay in the middle?

We are working through that assortment architecture, but yes, we will offer a balanced view across our portfolio. In our inspired luxury segment, Jared and Diamonds Direct, you’ll see a greater balance in natural, and in some of the other brands, you’ll see less. Zales will probably have a greater focus on lab-grown in its finished product.

One of Signet’s leading shareholders recently filed a comment with the Securities and Exchange Commission suggesting that Signet be sold. Did that have any bearing on the new strategy or the thinking?

We take input from our investors and have done so routinely, as we talk to them across the year. We’ve been developing our strategy for some time, and we’ve worked with our teams, we’ve worked with stakeholders in the industry, and we listen to our investors. So with all that together, we’ve been able to bring out the “Grow Brand Love” strategy on this earnings call, and we feel it reflects on our ability to build on a strong foundation and lean into the fastest-growing segment in the market, which is self-purchase and fashion.

According to J.K., merchandising of basics will be centralized but he also suggested there will be a different team for every brand. How will that work?

Here’s how to think about that: Fashion basic product—like small pendants, earrings, and tennis bracelets—will be more centralized. But each brand will have a separate go-to-market strategy, [what we call the] “four C’s.”

The first C is “coveted brands” that create loyalty and emotional connection through product, storytelling, and experience. “Creative design and product assortment” is the second C. The third C is “credible expertise in style and innovation,” and the fourth C is “captivating experience.” So those four C’s will be specific to each brand and what they execute against.

You’re also looking for a new chief marketing officer. How will that help you differentiate?

That person will centralize [marketing] spend of all the brands so that we can get spend optimization and an effective marketing and media mix for each of the brands. Because the brands are different, [the CMO] will work with the brand president to drive their business. So we’re not thinking about increasing marketing cost but [about] being more effective with the marketing costs we have.

When do you think we’ll start to see noticeable changes in Signet’s operations?

We’re bringing fashion into each brand as we speak. We just made the organizational announcement, so it will take at least 30 days to get all the organizational changes done. And then we should expect to see progression throughout the year, which is why at the high end of our guidance we have [projected] a positive comp.

Anything else you want people to know?

We finished the quarter ahead of expectations. First-quarter comps to date are running positive. After the holiday, we added new product to fill in the assortment gap, and the customer responded, particularly at Valentine’s Day. We saw a nice comp in gifting. We are starting to see engagements picking up. January was the strongest month in the last year for engagements. So overall we’re feeling good.

Top: A Zales store, part of Signet’s “big three” chains (photo courtesy of Signet)