Swarovski | bpesearch

Working with the team at bpesearch was an excellent experience. They take an extremely hands on approach to placing candidates – in my case they not only found me a great role and prepared me thoroughly throughout the selection procedure, but gave me real honesty and clarity around every aspect of the job and team I would be joining. That warts-and-all approach was essential in letting me make the right decision – and it gave me real confidence in making that leap. bpesearch is now the first call I make when I want to find a new challenge – and also when I need to strengthen my own senior leadership team.

Our brief

Swarovski is a family-run, independent company, which was founded more than 120 years ago in Austria. Now run by the fifth generation of family members, Swarovski has become a leading group of global companies specialising in jewellery, crystals and gemstones, optical instruments, lighting and architecture, entertainment and industrial solutions.

The Group had been seeking a Head of Business Development for their B2B division that specialise in the creation and supply of gemstones to collaborative partnerships in the fashion, automotive and hospitality sectors. After a 12 month search process, they had failed to identify the right candidate and briefed bpesearch to assist.

The Head of Business Development would work with a variety of brands from Alexander McQueen and Bentley Motors to Hilton Hotels on a range of projects including capsule fashion collections, interior design, homeware and lighting. They would be responsible for creating relationships, project management, product development, building regional marketing plans and overseeing business

Our approach

We had to understand what the challenges were around the search for Swarovski and look beyond the obvious avenues to deliver a fresh selection of talent. Swarovski is a multi-billion euro organisation employing 32,000 people, but their culture is very creative and entrepreneurial. The candidate who would appeal to Swarovski would have worked in both large and small businesses across different sectors, and have experience in B2B sales, business development, product development and marketing.

Our immediate focus was to identify candidates who had spent time working in different sectors such as FMCG, Fashion and Automotives. The second objective was to identify ‘experience’ and ‘skill’, which included strategic commercial sales, marketing, operations, P&L management and digital, and combine this with an educated, dynamic, entrepreneurial thinker who would challenge the management style of Swarovski, motivate a team of like-minded creative individuals and think outside the box to push the boundaries of where they could develop business.

The outcome

The search was broad and covered a number of sectors. This was reflected in the candidates we introduced; no two were similar.

One candidate stood out – Marie-Anne Ragot; a highly accomplished, commercial and strategic business woman who had lived in London, Paris and Hong Kong working within the beauty, fragrance, luxury goods, eyewear and accessories industry. Swarovski liked Marie-Anne’s entrepreneurial and creative style, and her ability to manage internal and external cross-functional relationships. Marie-Anne also had extensive experience in commercial strategies, sales and marketing.

Marie-Anne was motivated and excited by the challenge and accepted Swarovski’s offer. Her first week saw her travelling to various European countries to meet stakeholders, board members and long-standing clients of Swarovski.