Paris Fashion Week Jewellery Showrooms
A jewellery designers’ guide to the Paris Jewellery Showrooms
Paris Fashion Week is now the European hub of the jewellery buying season, with hundreds of established and up and coming jewellery brands gathering at the various showrooms to meet potential buyers and stockists face to face.
But what’s it really like to show there as an independent jewellery brand looking for retailers?
Firstly we need to understand how it all works - it’s not quite the same as for all the Fashion brands that show in Paris, with catwalks and fashion shows, as the jewellery brands show their collections within a showroom.
WHEN IS PARIS FASHION WEEK?
Paris Fashion Week runs twice a year, right at the beginning of March or late February for the Autumn Winter Collections, and then in late September for the SS Collections for the following year.
This means that buyers are looking for pieces that they can sell the FOLLOWING SEASON - so jewellers I just saw in Paris were showing their Spring and Summer collections that will be sold by retailers NEXT Spring and Summer.
WHY IS PARIS THE BEST for EUROPE?
The BEST chance you have now to get in front of TOP buyers is by showing at Paris Fashion Week in one of these 5 or 6 MAIN, established jewellery showrooms.
There is a lot going on in Paris during Fashion Week, and obviously there are a lot of showrooms clamouring to get the attention of the most prestigious buyers - this means it makes sense to try and show with one of the more established showrooms as they have the best contacts and most reliable footfall, but even then this is an expensive thing to do, and there’s also no guarantee that you would sell anything at all.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN SHOWROOMS?
The main showrooms for jewellery designers in Paris are:
1. Nouvelle Box
2. Goldrush
3. Melee
4. Rainbowwave
5. Emma Jones Consultancy
6. Premiere Classe
It is run by Darren Hildrow, and located in a lovely French building with a simple modern decor. All the jewellers are given cabinets and lighting, and there were around 27 designers showing. Some of the designers were present in person, others had sales representatives or agencies there on their behalf.
The reasons why I liked this show were:
Bustling, fun, relaxed atmosphere
Bright, open space
Central location
Calibre of designers
As the designers all have the same set up, the same cabinets etc, it is up to them to ‘dress’ them and lay out their jewellery as nicely as possible.
This is hosted and run by industry veteran Valery Demure and located in the pretty Marais district of Paris, which is convenient and easy to get to.
Goldrush was also very busy, and lasts a whole 6 days. The atmosphere is probably less formal than Nouvelle Box; jewellers were all in one room rather than spread over two floors. It was a really fun, easy going atmosphere and I really enjoyed it.
There were also some brilliant designers from all over the world there I was excited to see in person.
This showroom was a little smaller than Nouvelle Box, but still energetic and busy.
Melee is a relatively new jewellery showroom, run by US jewellers Rebecca Overmann and Lauren Wolf, who were also both showing their work here. The NYC counterpart is extremely successful and popular.
The Paris edition of Melee is hosted in a BEAUTIFUL building near the Eiffel Tower, which is actually not very central in Paris and quite far west, which made the location slightly less convenient than the others.
There were fewer designers showing here, around 10 or 11, mainly from the US. I arrived first thing in the morning so it was relatively quiet, the space was beautiful and some of the designers were great, but they are still establishing themselves as a showroom, and their New York showroom is much busier.
Rainbowwave is a multi brand, multi discipline showroom that primarily shows fashion brands. It has an excellent reputation with fantastic brands, and is generally very well visited by buyers.
This is a fashion management consultancy that hosts a mix of fashion and jewellery brands at Paris Fashion Week. It has a great reputation and has shown jewellery brands such as Missoma, Roxanne First and V by Laura Vann in the past.
This is a huge and more traditional trade show for fashion and jewellery brands, and the jewellery brands are mainly fashion fine or non-precious. It is very big and very busy, more in the vein of an IJL experience if you’re from the UK!
So what did I think?
It’s a big investment. The cost of showcasing your work at a Paris Showroom is not cheap, amounting to thousands of pounds. Selling your work in a wholesale capacity is something that could be a future consideration for some independent jewellers, however it is not for everyone, particularly without investment or support, and can take years of showing to establish relationships with buyers.
Wholesaling is of course a great way to get your brand in front of new eyes, and for jewellery designers who have been on the GoldDust Collective Membership for a few months now will know that there are many pieces of the puzzle that make the growth happen.
Making connections, persistence, the constant learning and asking questions and meeting people, all of these serve to make you more memorable to the public and to the industry, but some of the elements cost more than others, and showing in a jewellery showroom is one of them. Picking shows wisely and making the most of them, can add to the growth as a business in this hugely competitive and saturated market, but make sure your cash flow can handle it.