This week, an in-depth look at John Hardy’s Reed Krakoff-driven revival.
Two years into his role as creative chair at John Hardy, Reed Krakoff is proving he still has the magic touch.
After transformative runs at Coach and Tiffany & Co. — where he greatly expanded the category mix and introduced a less stuffy side, respectively — Krakoff is breathing new life into 50-year-old John Hardy, the fine jewelry brand majority-owned by L Catterton since 2014. Five of Krakoff’s first John Hardy collections have already become the brand’s best-ever sellers, winning over existing and new customers alike. And the semi-disruptive zhoosh he’s given the brand’s marketing and retail presence has opened the door to new possibilities. “Casual,” “sexy,” “cool” and “confident” are words he’s using to describe John Hardy’s new direction.
“We’re not trying to follow the bigger brands or the traditional luxury path, because it’s just too expensive and too difficult,” Krakoff told Glossy. “Other jewelers are more formal, covered-up and status-y, but we’re taking a more laidback approach.”
It’s a departure from where John Hardy had been for decades before Krakoff came on board in 2022. As described by Krakoff, the brand’s overly literal approach to paying homage to its Bali roots and craftsmanship restricted its creativity. Meanwhile, in terms of products, its assortment was too broad for the minimal variety offered.
As such, Krakoff stressed, the brand has much room to grow. And based on his track record, he’s the right man for the job.
On Tuesday, John Hardy opened its third U.S. store, in the Miami Design District, just two months after opening store No. 2 in NYC’s Rockefeller Center. The brand also has a store in NYC’s SoHo neighborhood and a handful of locations in Southeast Asia. More are on the way, Krakoff said.
“This is just the beginning of a new, reinvented retail concept for John Hardy,” he said, referring to the new stores and their “exciting” retail locations. Both reference Bali through a “bright, expressive marigold orange” color scheme, which has also overtaken the brand’s website and packaging. And the in-store experience is an intentional departure from traditional retailers. “Our approach is much more ‘next generation jeweler,’” Krakoff said. Rather than see pieces one at a time while speaking with an associate at a desk, “people want to try things on to get a sense of how they feel,” he said.
Growing the brand’s awareness, through stores and beyond, is a priority for Krakoff, who asserted that “the brand is still not that well-known.” That’s especially compared to brands like Tiffany & Co. and Cartier with comparable price points and overlapping customer bases. For its part, John Hardy’s pieces sell for an average of $1,250. The company does not share its annual revenue, with Krakoff recently telling the New York Times that it’s “over $100 million and less than $1 billion.”
On top of taking existing market share from its competitors, Krakoff said men are a big opportunity for John Hardy. As newer jewelry consumers, they’ve been drawn to the brand’s more casual styles, compared to other jewelers, he said.
But Krakoff’s main order of business is building excitement around John Hardy’s products and design concepts. “[John Hardy] was always a great sustainable, artisanal brand, but it needed a refresh, in terms of design and [modern] relevancy,” he said. He noted that, compared to fashion items, jewelry pieces are more considered purchases because they’re worn more often and require larger investments. To win their wallet share, “you need to give people something they’ll fall in love with and can’t get anywhere else,” he said.
Krakoff is rising to the challenge. Six months into taking the creative reins at the brand, he rolled out nine collections. The new Spear, Surf, Love Knot, Naga and Essentials lines have already outsold every John Hardy collection to date. Overall, Krakoff said, the included pieces are cooler, sexier, bolder, more sculptural, more colorful and more elevated than the brand has sold before. The decidedly sexy Spear Choker is among its top five sellers, and a collection of body chains originally meant to be sold exclusively at a Miami pop-up has become part of its permanent collection based on demand.
“The edgier, sexier pieces are an emerging category for the brand,” Krakoff said. “It distinguishes us from other jewelers who don’t have permission to go there. People don’t look for that kind of jewelry from them.”
For the holidays, John Hardy introduced a higher-end, more limited-edition Artisan series with pieces selling for up to $50,000. It’s selling well, hinting at related opportunities. A proprietary white and black diamond treatment featured in a new Black Sand collection is being positioned to become a brand signature. Plus, the brand is newly exploring the use of single diamonds and solitaires — so far, it has restricted the use of diamonds to pieces featuring pavé, or accent, stones.
Other newness John Hardy fans can expect includes fresh iterations of best-selling collections, a more casual collection, new limited-edition designs timed to the brand’s 50th anniversary next year and several product collaborations. Krakoff called the home accessories category an obvious next step for the brand.
“The hardest thing is to reinvent,” he said. “You need to [maintain] the context of what people used to like about the brand, but move the brand far enough away that it’s something new and exciting. … You have to get people’s attention in a meaningful way to move the business forward.” It’s worth noting that John Hardy’s pieces are still handmade by 400 artisans.
For marketing, Krakoff has focused on doing more with less investment, he said. Rather than exclusively featuring models in Bali, brand imagery now broadly portrays beach culture, surf culture, and the ideas of freedom and travel. And, instead of showing models wearing matching pieces from the same jewelry collection, as is typical of a traditional jewelry ad, images feature jewelry styled in more modern ways.
In addition, John Hardy recently rolled out AR-generated social posts which have seen 10 times more engagement than its average post, Krakoff said. And it’s actively leveraging influencers and user-generated content — last week, it posted a social video of style icon Jenna Lyons shopping its Rockefeller Center store.
Moving forward, the brand will focus more communication on Krakoff’s expertise and vision for the brand. And its ethical production processes, which younger consumers value, will remain a marketing focus. Despite its new Miami Design District store location, John Hardy has no plans to participate in local art fairs like Art Basel where it’s hard for smaller brands to cut through the noise, Krakoff said.
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