Alexis Nasard on transforming Swarovski into a modern ‘pop’ luxury brand 

Building on the past to forge the present

One important lesson Nasard highlights is the importance of building on what has been done, noting the need to understand the context in which previous decisions were made. “Learn from them and avoid reapplying them in a new environment if they are not re-applicable,” he said. “And if they are re-applicable, take it with humility. There is nothing wrong in piggybacking on intelligent people’s work.”

When Nasard first arrived at Swarovski, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, it had undergone a series of radical strategic shifts which left the company in a fragile position. “We had a lot of challenges when I took over,” noted Nasard. “For any business, it fragilizes a company, it fragilizes a brand, and sometimes it creates confusion within the organization.”

“None of the strategies were fundamentally wrong,” he continued. “The problem with them is that they were often imbalanced, a little bit extreme, and from one to the other, the shifts in themselves were damaging. So, when we came up with the LUXignite strategy in 2022, we proudly borrowed some of the themes that were in these previous strategies which made a lot of sense.”

“The challenge with LUXignite is to do it on our own terms. Because we’re not interested in aping anybody in the way we define luxury, or we execute luxury,” said Nasard. Nor is he against building on or borrowing from its previous strategies such as Created Diamonds, a new jewelry collection that uses lab-grown diamonds.

“I was not the one who invented it, it was already in one of the previous strategies,” he said of Created Diamonds. “What my administration has done is to organize it, codify it, and expand it. We added some new concepts, which is the focus on top cities. This is where culture is created and trends are made; you must be present there if you want to be culturally influential as a brand.”

Lessons in leadership

While every company that he worked for has been different, what Nasard has learned is how important it is for a CEO to define their business. “It sounds trivial, but you’d be amazed (at) how flawed definitions of businesses can lead to value destruction,” he said.

It is also important to be aware of the impact that a leader can have on those around them, and that the burden of every company decision is carried on their shoulders. “I still remember these (first) few months quite vividly,” he recalled of his first outing as a CEO at Bata. “You must be cognizant that everybody’s staring at you. Everybody’s staring at you, everybody’s hanging on your lips, and everybody’s interpreting everything you do. You need to live as if you have a camera attached to your shoulder all the time. The buck stops with you.

“What does that mean? It means everything good that happens, you take credit for, even if you are not even aware of some of them. And everything bad that happens is your fault. Anything. So, that’s a big burden for many people, and you must be aware of that.”

Communication is another key point for Nasard is ensuring that information is clearly conveyed multiple times. “Communication for a CEO is at least a quarter of the job,” he said. “Communicating with all stakeholders, customers, communities, shareholders, employees, and partners. You are the representative of the company, and you should keep all communication channels open.”

“The last thing I would say is, as the ancient Romans said, to repeat is virtuous. People are subjected to a lot of information every day from different quarters. It’s really important to always repeat the important things. Repeat, repeat, repeat, at the point of boredom, to make sure everybody understands what you stand for and what the direction forward is.”