Pandora Jewelry: US pilot success sparks rapid international rollout

The North American ecommerce team at Pandora Jewelry, a top three global jewelry brand, approached SmartGift with an opportunity: it had identified that the gifting use case had lost it millions in demand in the $500B annual global jewelry market due to last minute shopping support (ship times were too long for today’s digital, on-demand shopper, especially the millennial audience), conversion loss due to optionality in product variants - shoppers can’t decide and so don’t buy at all (color, size, for example), and it couldn’t serve shoppers beyond “shipping cutoff” 5 - 7 days before major holiday events and evergreen life events like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Christmas, Hanukkah, Birthdays (#1 gifted occasion in the network), Just Because (#1 Millennial gifting occasion), and Anniversary.

Following a brief setup time of 2-3 weeks with a fully on-brand experience, Pandora US went live in late April in time for Mother’s Day.

““We obviously like to see people self-purchase Pandora jewelry, but at the end of the day, we are a gifting brand,” shares Sid Keswani, president of Pandora North America. “We launched SmartGift services right before Mother’s Day and it was a huge part of our business this year. I think it will be a service that will be important for next year’s Valentine’s Day, and most especially this holiday season.”

Keswani confirms that SmartGift was very easy to implement and integrate into its system. And it delivers enhanced capabilities so that the gift recipient gets exactly what she wants.

“We always start everything from a customer viewpoint. And literally you can pick and choose a gift and send it with SmartGift in under ten minutes. It keeps it simple,” he says and adds, “It lets someone like me, who may not know what size ring my mother wears or what charm she might like, to get exactly what she wants.” He goes on to say that while Pandora gift cards have always been an important offering for its retail stores, SmartGift is not cannibalizing its gift card business, but a great add on to it.”

Within two weeks from launch:

• Send with SmartGift had reached nearly 20% of Pandora’s annual revenue target for the service
• Gift purchase conversion doubled, and
• Revenue was booked, on average, in 17 minutes compared to 3-6 months for gift cards.

By early summer, Pandora North America started evangelizing SmartGift internally with other regional teams with a view on the holidays. Setup kicked off after the summer and by late October, Send with SmartGift was available to Pandora shoppers on their Canadian, UK, German and French sites complete with localized language, payments, privacy law, and customer support.

“Our partnership with Pandora Jewelry is fantastic”, says Bernd Strenitz, Chief Product Officer at SmartGift. Pandora’s leadership is visionary, data-driven and their execution team beyond talented. We are grateful for our partnership and that it affords us to serve so many customers and their recipients across the US and an increasing number of European countries. Thanks to our good collaboration, tens of thousands of people across the UK, Germany and France experienced this new and better way of gifting this year.

Find out more about Pandora SmartGift

Quoted from “How SmartGift Revolutionizes Online Gifting For Retailers Like 1-800-Flowers, Pandora And Others” by Pamela N. Danziger, Senior Contributor, published in Forbes.com, September 13, 2020