Earlier this month, our CEO Gina Drosos, presented strong first quarter results to our shareholders. Revenue was up, same store sales were up year-over-year, and we’re positioned to continue investing in differentiated capabilities to widen our competitive advantages. But a compelling story about Signet’s continued growth lives behind the numbers. In the midst of macro level uncertainties and rising prices, there’s something else on the rise – love and the need to be able to express it in all ways.
Here are five things Gina touched on during our earnings call that begin to tell the story of Signet’s success from the first quarter and how we are poised to fulfill our mission of enabling all people to Celebrate Life and Express Love.
1. How our focus on “winning in big businesses”, like bridal, position us to serve customers for this year’s boom in weddings:
Gina: “Weddings are revenue drivers for Signet and an opportunity to establish lifetime relationships, not only with brides and grooms but entire wedding parties. They are a critical point of entry which we're capitalizing on.
“We delivered more than $80 million more in total bridal sales than in Q1 last year. Growth included wedding and anniversary bands, reflecting this year's 40-year high watermark for weddings. Our scale and tailored bridal assortments enabled this growth and was effective alongside the expected year-over-year moderation and engagement ring sales as engagements are expected to return to pre-pandemic levels.”
2. Why Signet’s differentiated portfolio can effectively serve jewelry customers at all price points:
Gina: “We can see the advantages of our diversified banner portfolio in these results. For example, we're capturing consumer demand in bridal and accessible luxury. We've tiered up our accessible luxury assortment to capture demand from customers who want higher quality metals and larger carats, and who continue to drive growth at our highest price points.
“We leveraged our portfolio similarly last year, where in the value segment, Banter captured stimulus spending by leaning into self-purchase trends among value customers and outpaced the growth of our other banners as a result.
“We believe no other company in the jewelry industry has this same ability to adjust dynamically to market conditions across its banner portfolio and continued to grow even in the face of challenges to a particular part of the business.”
3. How our investments and innovations in connected commerce are meeting the expectations of today’s shopper:
Gina: “When we talk about connected commerce, we're referring to jewelry shoppers crossing channels seamlessly. We've been working to make this a desired shopping habit in jewelry and already two-thirds of our customers cross channels in their shopping journey. We continue to invest and innovate to make that journey delightful and seamless.
“Fifty-two percent of online orders are now leveraging our flexible fulfillment capabilities. For orders that we fulfilled through ship-from-store or buy online, pickup in store, the average order value grew more than 24 percent this quarter. Our ability to serve customers whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us is an increasingly important and differentiating strength.”
4. Leveraging our strength of having the most bench jewelers of any single company in North America, we’re growing our jewelry repair and services to forge lifelong relationships with customers:
Gina: “We grew repair revenues 20 percent this quarter compared to last year. Our turnaround time is now steadily below a week compared to an industry average of about two to three weeks.
“We just recently rolled out our virtual repair tracker, which allows customers to follow each step of a repair process online, by text or e-mail. Our ability to provide customers with quick turnaround and process transparency is driving satisfaction scores as well as our revenues.
“We're expanding our service offerings to deepen customer relationships quarter-over-quarter.”
5. Why Signet’s longstanding leadership in corporate citizenship and sustainability helps us connect with customers and motivate our team members:
Gina: “An example of being consumer-inspired is our commitment to lead the jewelry industry in corporate citizenship and sustainability, which we know is important to our customers and to our team members as well. We just released our fiscal 2022 Citizenship and Sustainability Report which details our progress. Our entire team has embraced our commitment to Citizenship and Sustainability, 90 percent of our team says they take great pride in what they do every day.
“It's this passion and pride that unlocks discretionary effort inside our company and our goals attract consumers who want to buy from a company like ours, one that is willing to take a stand and be the change we want to see in our world. The key point here is that we're inspired by customer's needs and expectations. And when we respond in ways that deeply matter to them, we grow our business and we grow share.”
Watch Gina’s interview with CNBC’s Squawk on the Street for more of her insight on the first quarter.
Read the full announcement regarding our first quarter results.