Richemont remains cautious on raising jewellery prices despite high gold prices

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PARIS (Reuters) – Cartier owner Richemont plans to stick to its cautious approach to raising prices of jewellery despite the soaring price of gold in recent months, and has no plans yet for price increases in the upcoming months, executives said on Friday.

“We’ve been extremely cautious at maintaining the actual activity of our retail pricing on the price of gold,” Richemont chief executive officer Nicolas Bos told analysts on Friday.

As the luxury industry grapples with a downturn and shoppers become pickier about what they buy, high end brands have faced questions about whether price hikes since the pandemic were pushed too far.

Gold prices have had an impact on purchasing costs and margins of the group and the company, which also owns labels Van Cleef & Arpels and Buccellati has over the past 12 months implemented “a few, but very limited and very targeted” price increases in certain countries where there were exchange rate fluctuations.

“We will continue to be cautious,” said Bos.

The executive stressed the Richemont’s efforts to keep price differences between regions as low as possible in order to limit sales to resellers, who purchase goods in one region with the intention of selling them elsewhere.

Global geopolitical uncertainty, including tensions in the Middle East, has sent gold prices soaring.

(Reporting by Mimosa Spencer and John Revill; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)