NEW YORK — David Yurman has passed on the crown of chief executive officer of his namesake firm to Paul Blum, who stepped down from his role as president of Kenneth Cole on Tuesday.
The move is a momentous shift for the 25-year-old jewelry firm, which has been closely managed by its founders David and Sybil Yurman, and for Blum, who said he has no experience in the fine jewelry field. David will continue on as designer and chairman, while Sybil will remain president and chief marketing officer. Both will concentrate on design.
There have been a series of moves at Yurman over the last year. In June, Terri Eagle, executive vice president of sales, stepped down to join competing Bali-based jeweler John Hardy. Carol Pennelli was subsequently promoted to executive vice president of sales and marketing after Eagle’s departure and she will retain her title.
Hal Reiter, ceo of executive search firm Herbert Mines Associates, conducted the search for Blum’s role.
In an interview with WWD on Wednesday, David (via conference call from the company’s watch factory in Jura, Switzerland), Sybil and Blum discussed their new arrangement.
“This is a momentous day for us, washing the old and bringing in the new,” said Sybil Yurman. “With the growth of the company and the direction that is appropriate for the future, we hired Paul.”
The Yurmans described the changes as a lateral move and that they had always had the intention to hire a ceo and take more creative roles as opposed to corporate positions. Both began their careers as artists, Sybil as a trained painter and David a sculptor and architecture enthusiast.
“We are really a big mom and pop, and for me it’s very important that there is a change,” said David Yurman. “[It has to be] someone who is compassionate, but is a very natural leader. Being with [Blum] for the past month, not only is he a mentor, he makes sense of material and of quality. He had an element that I didn’t see in any other of the potential candidates.
“It’s a natural growth for me,” he continued. “As business gets bigger, the game changes. There’s more involvement in organization, in strategy. We were managing 100 people and now we’re managing 350 people [in the New York offices] and 500 worldwide in contracting and developing. The collection has more than doubled and there’s only one of me and one of Sybil….[This] is close to the perfect union.”
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Blum, whose focus at Kenneth Cole was primarily on handbags and shoes, said, “Accessories are driving the [fashion] business. Women and men are accessorizing themselves to express their personalities more than ever before. The clothing business is fractured, but accessories are a reflection of personal luxury to consumers. Europeans have been buying into accessories for years.”
Blum, who will officially start Feb. 6, said he has been keeping tabs on the Yurman business.
“The brand has incredible reach,” he said. “It’s an exciting thing for me to be working for such an incredible [company].”
As bohemians in love, David and Sybil started making jewelry in the late Seventies, based on sculpture. The couple eventually came up with the notion of an oxidized silver helix cable bracelet, topped off with gold, colored stones and diamonds, which would become their trademark. Since then, the company has launched a silver and diamond jewelry line called Silver Ice; an 18-karat gold collection; watches for men and women; a pearl collection; a children’s line called Cable Kids; a men’s jewelry collection, and most recently a bridal collection incorporating the cable motif into engagement rings, with big diamonds. Yurman was instrumental in bringing American jewelry to the forefront of the luxury sector, with logo branding and an advertising campaign featuring celebrities such as Riley Keogh, Naomi Watts, Ed Burns, Kate Moss and Amber Valetta, and produced by ad guru David Lipman and shot by Peter Lindbergh.
The company will have 10 freestanding stores by yearend in the U.S. A Dallas unit is slated to open next month and one in Beverly Hills is on tap for later this year. The brand is also in 350 independent jeweler stores in North America and is sold in Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue.
Blum said he would take the next six to eight months to “regroup” and strategize. Although neither party would comment on future plans, the next likely steps will be to increase the number of signature stores and expand into Europe and Asia, add a tabletop collection to complement the bridal business and launch a fragrance, which Eagle mentioned as a goal during her tenure.
In the end, David Yurman said of Blum’s hire, “It’s sweet. I still get to dream my dream and now I get to dance my dance with Sybil.”