After years of encasing customers’ purchases in its iconic blue boxes, Tiffany & Co. is giving itself a present.
Today, the 169-year-old jewelry firm will unveil its renovated flagship at 727 Fifth Avenue at the corner of 57th Street in New York. This is the first renovation of the flagship, which opened in 1940. Work on the store, which was done floor by floor, began in 2000, and today marks its completion with the unveiling of the main floor.
The Art Deco-designed emporium now has 35,000 square feet of selling space, a 25 percent increase due to reorganizing and moving all nonretail essential functions to the retailer’s offices at 600 Madison Avenue. There is improved LED lighting to better view the jewelry, along with updated and new case fixtures. The store is set up for better traffic flow with modernized elevators and new doors alongside the famed revolving door to allow for wheelchairs and strollers, and the private selling areas have been refined with a new private room on the main floor.
The flagship represents 10 percent of Tiffany’s total revenue. In 2005, the store did $230 million in sales, with an average of $5,700 per square foot. The company projects the store to continue mid-single-digit annual growth, which it has been experiencing for the last decade.
Tiffany reported last week that despite strong sales, second-quarter earnings dropped due to a $6.6 million tax benefit in 2005, softer sales in Japan and higher product costs. The company said it is on track with its strategy to grow total global square footage by 7 percent in 2006. For the quarter ended July 31, net earnings fell to $41.1 million, or 29 cents a diluted share, from $50.5 million, or 35 cents, in the previous year, while sales climbed 9 percent to $574.9 million from $526.7 million.
Tifffany’s flagship is a New York landmark with an estimated 7,000 visitors a day, some of whom line up to wait for the store to open at 10 a.m., anticipating the joy of one of those blue boxes. In 1940, the company touted the store as the first centrally air-conditioned building in New York City, as the U.S. Navy wanted to try out its then state-of-the-art units on a large-scale structure.
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“We love our history and that we are benefactors of a building like this,” said Beth Owen Canavan, executive vice president of Tiffany, who spearheaded the renovation and will also have oversight of the building of the firm’s new store at 37 Wall Street, which will open in fall 2007. “It’s just so important that we remain relevant and that all the elements support the business of today.”
The store’s setup hasn’t changed drastically, with the exception of a new curving marble staircase that connects the third and fourth floors. The sixth floor has been newly designated as a repair and customer service area. The fourth floor offers the bridal registry, china, hollowware and flatware, among other items. The third floor houses silver jewelry and the new Frank Gehry Collection, a line designed by the famed architect that launched this spring. The mezzanine encases higher-priced items including engagement rings, colored diamonds and pearls. There are also two private selling rooms equipped with minibars.
The iconic main floor underwent the most dramatic changes with new, recessed LED lighting in the 24-foot coffered ceiling and streamlined macassar and ebonized sycamore cases. Wall treatments like black-and-green Italian marble window frames and teak wall panels have been refurbished, while heavy brown velvet drapes have been removed from the windows to provide more natural light to see the firm’s gold and diamond jewelry from Paloma Picasso and Elsa Peretti, a wide assortment of Jean Schlumberger designs, men’s accessories, watches and its proprietary collections like Etoile and Fringe. The private selling room on the ground floor has a full-length mirror, which adjusts in luminosity for consumers to see how the jewelry looks in any light.
“The corner of 57th and Fifth is the center of the fashion world,” said Andrew Jassin, managing director of the Jassin O’Rourke Group consulting firm here. “It has become the eyes and ears of the chain, and it’s representative of what the company would like it to look like for the rest of the world. It was really important to update the store in order to update their look.”
In honor of the restored flagship, Tiffany will display for the first time later this month its entire Blue Book collection, an annual line of very high-end pieces. The collection will sit alongside the Tiffany Diamond, a 128.54-carat fancy yellow diamond, which is a longtime main-floor draw.
Michael Kowalski, the jewelry firm’s chairman and chief executive officer, said its 62 U.S. and 96 international locations would be updated to mirror the new look of the flagship. “Many of our stores are currently undergoing renovation,” said Kowalski. “Their original design echoed many of the architectural elements of the Fifth Avenue store, and so naturally their continuing evolution will reflect elements of the New York flagship redesign, as well. The goal with the redesign of the New York store was to update and restore the splendor of the store, while not changing that it is still identifiably Tiffany.”
For the Wall Street unit, the company will work within the former bank’s Beaux Arts style, while adding a dynamic interior by Yabu Pushelberg — the first time Tiffany has gone outside for design input.