The owner of the Histoire d’Or stores, Marc Orian, Trésor, Stroili Oro and Oro Vivo, today unveils Smizze, a multi-brand and e-commerce concept for which it has strong ambitions: to reach a hundred stores in Europe with a turnover of 100 million euros within three years.
For the group, which claims to be one of the European leaders in the jewelry and watchmaking market, it is a question of stimulating or even shaking up this fragmented sector.
The idea is to mix the styles and different facets of a personality. “We are targeting 18-25 year olds with the idea of breaking the codes of jewelry buying, simplifying this act. Social walls broadcast selfies taken in shop, allowing to share the lived experience and create a live community. “
Smizze’s network of shops has had its first openings in recent days, on May 18 in Nantes, at the Atlantis shopping center, and on May 25 in Brussels in the City2 cluster, located on rue Neuve. The Aéroville shopping center (Roissy) and Lyon Part-Dieu are destinations where the brand will set up next September, while Lille and Milan are on the list for the end of 2019.
Smizze is therefore intended to expand in its own right and on surfaces of 50 to 70 square meters across the continent, with around thirty points of sale per country (France, Germany, Italy, Benelux to start). The majority of the settlements will be dry openings, but the group does not forbid to switch for example a store Histoire d’Or under this new concept, “because of the speed of deployment that allows”.
E-commerce is also a challenge for Thom Europe, which has propelled the Smizze merchant site with the ambition that it weighs as much in terms of sales as the physical network. “No brand has achieved the balance between online and offline, the customer today needs a true complementarity of channels,” says Romain Peninque.
The Thom Europe group, owned by the Apax and Bridgepoint funds, generated 648 million euros in sales in 2018, with just over 1,000 points of sale. “Above all, our operating profit was 19%, which makes us the leading profitability player in Europe in our market. This is how we were able to reinvest to give birth to Smizze, “concludes its leader, who anticipates a global turnover of 700 million euros for the year 2019.
