Last week, Swiss luxury giant Richemont Group announced the promotion of Nicolas Bos, the current CEO of its French high jewelry brand Van Cleef & Arpels, to the position of CEO of Richemont Group, effective June 1. At that time, he will also join the Group’s Senior Executive Committee.
Richemont Group Chairman Johann Rupert revealed in an interview that discussions about the CEO candidate had been ongoing for several years. In the appointment announcement, he praised Nicolas Bos for “continuing Van Cleef & Arpels’ tradition of excellence and creativity with vision and capability, which is crucial to the brand’s significant growth.”
Under Richemont Group’s strategy of shifting towards a jewelry-centric model, Nicolas Bos, who successfully led Van Cleef & Arpels’ growth and accelerated the development of the recently acquired Buccellati brand, seems to be the ideal choice.
Nicolas Bos has been with Richemont Group for 32 years since 1992, serving Van Cleef & Arpels for the past 24 years and becoming its CEO in 2013. Luxeplace.com has conducted two in-depth interviews with Nicolas Bos: one during the “Van Cleef & Arpels: Time, Nature, Love” exhibition in Shanghai in August 2022, and another during the opening of L’ÉCOLE School of Jewelry Arts in Shanghai in November 2023.
Reflecting on these two exclusive interviews and his public speeches, this article aims to shed light on the achievements of this core figure at Richemont Group, and his unique insights into luxury, art, business, and creativity, exploring how he seeks “balance” in “contradictions”: balancing business and art, tradition and innovation, commerce and creativity.
Richemont Group had eliminated the CEO position in 2016 and appointed Jérôme Lambert as CEO in 2018 when he was the Group’s Chief Operating Officer (COO). However, according to the Financial Times, his actual authority was limited compared to Nicolas Bos’s, as the CEOs of the Group’s two top brands, Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, and the Group’s finance department did not report to him. With Nicolas Bos’s new appointment, Jérôme Lambert will resume the role of COO.
From the Cartier Foundation, Opening the Door Between Business and Art
Nicolas Bos’s career has been driven by culture and creativity, not from a sales or management background.
“I dreamed of working in a cultural or artistic environment when I was young.” Although he later went to ESSEC Business School in France for various reasons, Nicolas Bos never forgot his ideal, “dreaming of working in an environment that combines business, culture, and art.”
The Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art gave him a “tailor-made” opportunity. The establishment of the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in the 1980s marked a new path for luxury brands to engage in dialogue with culture and art.
In 1992, Nicolas Bos joined Richemont Group and initially served as an assistant to the Secretary-General at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art. The Foundation, integrating artworks from different periods and cultures, provided a unique perspective on art, allowing Nicolas Bos to explore various arts and cultures.
In addition to handling financial accounts and bookstore development for the Foundation, Nicolas Bos also participated in organizing exhibitions, learning about the entire process of exhibition planning and curation. He had opportunities to interact directly with artists, curators, and creative individuals, which significantly influenced his later promotion methods at Van Cleef & Arpels.
In subsequent interviews, Nicolas Bos recalled: “I felt I found a place that combined business to some extent.” The years working at the Foundation were a “period that almost determined my life’s direction.”
During his over 20 years at Van Cleef & Arpels, Nicolas Bos’s attention to art and culture not only became his personal hallmark but also facilitated exchanges between Van Cleef & Arpels and the art world. Collaborations with institutions like the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris encouraged deep dialogue between jewelry, mineralogy, and decorative arts, helping the brand find inspiration and shape its image.
Van Cleef & Arpels collaborated with the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 2012-2013 to host the “Van Cleef & Arpels: The Art of High Jewelry” exhibition
The “GEMS” exhibition where Van Cleef & Arpels partnered with the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in 2021, in Paris
Rebuilding the Van Cleef & Arpels Brand: Archival Sorting, Identifying Features, and Continuing the DNA
In 2000, Richemont Group acquired a 60% stake in Van Cleef & Arpels from its founding family, and Nicolas Bos joined the brand as the Director of Creative and Marketing for High Jewelry. As a member of the team dispatched by the Group to the brand, Nicolas Bos bore the heavy responsibility of transforming Van Cleef & Arpels from a century-old family business.
Regarding how to embrace new opportunities in the international luxury market while retaining the reasons for the brand’s past success, Nicolas Bos’s answer was: “Preserve the brand identity, maintain the craftsmanship, and focus on quality.”
He initiated research into the brand’s archives, communicating with family members, sales personnel, craftsmen, and designers to understand Van Cleef & Arpels’ brand DNA through their daily work. This included uncovering undocumented, non-standardized aspects from the past century, such as the quality of gemstones and workshop traditions. These insights revealed “some potentially unique dimensions” that could be further developed in the brand’s aesthetics and philosophy.
Nicolas Bos defined this work as “not creating a revolution, but ensuring the continuity of the brand while rebuilding.”
Sketch of Zip Necklace from Van Cleef & Arpels Archives (1960)
Nicolas Bos showcased the results of this “rebuilding” in the form of exhibitions. In August 2022, the brand’s highest-level retrospective exhibition, “Van Cleef & Arpels: Time, Nature, Love,” was held in China. Core exhibits like the Zip Necklace represent iconic designs from the brand’s history, “reflecting the brand’s consistent spirit of the times. The inheritance and unity of DNA do not lie in the unchanging design style but in integrating more contemporary perspectives.”
Nicolas Bos used this necklace to explain his views on tradition and innovation to Luxeplace.com: “If you ignore the brand’s history, the brand will lose its soul, so everything starts with the brand’s history. However, the rich history of the brand can also create an ‘overwhelming’ dilemma for its successors, as it seems all (creative) possibilities have been explored by predecessors. Those beautiful works can tempt successors to merely replicate classics or adhere strictly to tradition, but if you do that, you lose.”
“Turning Creativity into Reality”
In 2009, while continuing to serve as the Creative Director of Van Cleef & Arpels, Nicolas Bos also became the brand’s Vice President and was promoted to President of the Americas in 2010. In January 2013, he was appointed Global President and CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels.
Whether dealing directly with creativity for a decade or overseeing the brand comprehensively, from Paris to New York, Nicolas Bos has always been involved in the brand’s creative direction at Van Cleef & Arpels. Today, the brand’s design studio is near his Paris office, and designers report directly to him. He oversees each collection from the initial sketches.
For a “creative director” without a professional background, Nicolas Bos has always adhered to one principle: “A company can only succeed when creativity is at the core of the entire process.”
Discussing the unique aspects of Van Cleef & Arpels’ designs, Nicolas Bos believes it lies in the mix of various factors, including “sources of inspiration, how we interpret them, how we discuss color and balance, and how we handle symmetry and asymmetry.”
Whether in art, culture, or creativity, Nicolas Bos integrates business thinking, because “business turns these creative ideas into reality, not just remaining as concepts or beautiful designs but becoming actual products for production and sale.”
Richemont Group Chairman Johann Rupert affirmed Nicolas Bos’s contributions to Van Cleef & Arpels when promoting him to Group CEO: “Nicolas has proven himself in managing and building Van Cleef & Arpels into a strong brand.”
As of March 31, 2024, the jewelry brands department of Richemont Group, including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Buccellati, achieved total sales exceeding 14 billion euros, growing by 6%. Notably, Buccellati, acquired by the Group in 2019 and overseen by Nicolas Bos, has seen its sales increase by 4.5 times since the acquisition. Additionally, on May 7th, Richemont Group announced the addition of a fourth high jewelry brand to the department — Vhernier from Italy.
Exhibitions or Social Media? Nicolas Bos’s Thoughts on Marketing and Communication
Upon joining Van Cleef & Arpels, Nicolas Bos also took on the significant responsibility of marketing. For a jewelry brand with over a century of history, conveying this rich heritage to consumers posed a major challenge.
Today, we see Van Cleef & Arpels sharing its brand philosophy with the public through exhibitions such as “Van Cleef & Arpels: Time, Nature, Love” and “A Century of Beauty and Movement: Art of High Jewelry,” driven by Nicolas Bos.
This approach was influenced by his work at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art. He once recalled his involvement in the Foundation’s first exhibition, “one of the earliest visual-themed exhibitions in France,” which was “unusual at the time” and remains significant to his work even after 30 years.
Nicolas Bos explained his reason for heavily investing in exhibitions: “The idea behind exhibitions is that regardless of your cultural and knowledge level, you will still enjoy them. This is something I still strongly believe in, that there are no hierarchies between cultural forms.”
By using exhibitions, Nicolas Bos introduces Van Cleef & Arpels to a broader audience, even those unfamiliar with jewelry, breaking down communication barriers between the brand and its audience and promoting jewelry education.
Investing heavily in jewelry education has become a unique communication channel for Van Cleef & Arpels under Nicolas Bos’s leadership since he became the global CEO in 2013. He has focused on expanding the L’ÉCOLE School of Jewelry Arts globally.
When the L’ÉCOLE School of Jewelry Arts opened in Shanghai in November 2023, Nicolas Bos explained to Luxeplace.com his purpose: “To me, the primary goal of jewelry education is to foster curiosity—I think it’s very important. When people come to L’ÉCOLE to view exhibitions or attend classes and leave with a smile, we are very happy.”
Van Cleef & Arpels Shanghai L’ÉCOLE School of Jewelry Arts
Nicolas Bos seems intent on establishing L’ÉCOLE as a place for jewelry enlightenment, ensuring Van Cleef & Arpels leaves a lasting impression on visitors. This approach may not provide immediate sales feedback but reveals Nicolas Bos’s long-term strategy for the brand.
In contrast, Nicolas Bos has explicitly stated in interviews that the brand does not collaborate with celebrities or influencers. “There are many things we don’t do, even if they seem to be part of what brands should do today. If we feel they are irrelevant to our work, then we won’t do them.”
Particularly regarding the use of social media, Nicolas Bos maintains a cautious and rational stance: “If we chase social media trends, we will lose our soul. Therefore, our challenge is to maintain the right distance, using them as a tool we can benefit from but not becoming a slave to them for the sake of more exposure.”
Van Cleef & Arpels Shanghai L’ÉCOLE School of Jewelry Arts
| Image Credit: Van Cleef & Arpels official website, official Weibo, L’ÉCOLE official website, Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art official website
| Editor: Zhu Ruoyu
