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Monday, Oct. 12, 2009
Would You Buy This $320,000 Faberg BroochOnline?By William Lee
Adams
For Peter Carl Faberg, jeweler to the Russian Czars, diamonds
weren't forever. Following the 1917 Russian Revolution, the
Bolsheviks ransackedhis workshops and seized his iconic imperial
Easter eggs, forcing Faberg to flee to Switzerland where he died
three years later. Struggling
financially, his family sold the Faberg trademark to an American
perfumer for a meager $25,000 in 1951 and the name began to crop up
on
low-end cosmetics and toiletries. By the time Unilever purchased
the brand for $1.6 billion in 1989, consumers associated Faberg
once the
hallmark of imperial grandeur with cheap fragrances like
Brut.
Now Faberg is being reborn. Pallinghurst Resources, a South
African mining-investment firm, acquired the Faberg brand in 2007.
In a bid to
restore the brand's status, Pallinghurst sold nine of its 11
licenses (including the scented ones) and brought Faberg's
descendants into the
enterprise. On Sept. 9 the revived house of Faberg unveiled its
first jewelry collection in 92 years: 100 pieces ranging in price
from $40,000 to$7 million. Rather than showcasing that lavish
collection in a network of luxury boutiques de rigueur in the world
of high-end jewelry
Faberg is courting the ultra-rich with an online flagship store,
staffed 24 hours a day and in 12 languages, and will open just one
"salon" in
Geneva this November. "Our customers won't need to appear
outside of a store between 10 in the morning and six in the
evening," says Mark
Dunhill, the company's chief executive. "They can log on
anytime, while sitting in their yacht, their chalet or their
country home." (See pictures of
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engine optimization, Dunhill says Faberg can rely on its
compelling history and the buzz surrounding its relaunch to
stimulate traffic. The
curiosity is certainly there. Dozens of books have been written
about Faberg since 1917, and when Faberg's original works appear at
auction,
they routinely exceed estimates. In 2007, a pink,
pearl-encrusted Faberg egg with a clock fetched $18.5 million at
Christie's, making it the most
expensive Russian art object ever sold at auction. "Despite 90
years in the wilderness, and its recent association with products
for which it was
never intended, the name Faberg still evokes the world's most
famous jeweler," Dunhill says. And that's one luxury no amount of
money can
buy.
See pictures of a diamond's journey.
See pictures of movie costumes.
Find this article at:
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