rethink sustainability
The CLIC® Chronicles: Meet Chopard, the jeweller on a ‘Journey to Sustainable Luxury’
Founded in 1860, Chopard is a Swiss company renowned across the globe for its 163-year history of creating fine watches and jewellery. As part of their stewardship of the brand and its heritage, the Scheufele family – owners since 1963 – has embarked on a mission to make Chopard’s products sustainable. We spoke to Caroline Scheufele, co-President of Chopard, to find out how the company is blazing a trail for a more sustainable luxury jewellery industry.
Tell us about Chopard’s history, expertise, and core values.
Chopard was founded in 1860 by Louis-Ulysse Chopard, whose vertical, fully integrated approach to production ensured a rich legacy of artisanal skills. Chopard has remained a family-owned and -run business to this day, a rarity in the modern luxury jewellery sector. And our jewellers continue to practice 50 traditional crafts across three manufacturing sites, with a strong emphasis on in-house training and apprenticeship.
For us, watches and jewellery are a perpetual extension of the philosophy of joie de vivre: we find joy in creativity and craftsmanship, as well as ethics. From an early age, my parents instilled the values of honesty, respect for our teams, and transparency into me and my brother Karl-Friedrich, with whom I’ve shared the role of co-President of Chopard since 2001.
Chopard’s expertise in fine watchmaking is evident throughout the L.U.C collection, a line of exceptional mechanical timepieces crafted for contemporary gentlemen; as well as the iconic Happy Diamonds, Happy Sport, and Mille Miglia collections. We’re also known for our haute joaillerie1 creations such as our Red Carpet Collection, which has been featured at the Cannes Film Festival since we became the event’s official partner in 1998.
Today, these values continue to define our Maison. And, as a direct result of our emphasis on ethics, sustainability has itself become one of Chopard’s core values – one that we believe will significantly shape the future of our industry. Because true luxury comes only when you understand the footprint of your supply chain. This, together with the creative daring of our Artisans, has enabled Chopard to pave the way for a new vision of ethical luxury.
Caroline Scheufele, Co-President & artistic director of Chopard
It’s been a decade since Chopard embarked upon what it calls a ‘Journey to Sustainable Luxury’. What inspired you to launch this programme?
In 2012, I was shocked to learn that millions of men, women, and children work to mine gold in often dangerous conditions and without the possibility of earning a fair salary. At that point, I became determined to change not only Chopard, but also the entire industry for the better.
This resolution led to the 2013 launch of our multi-year in-house programme, ‘The Journey to Sustainable Luxury’, which commits us to ensuring responsible sourcing and helping those people in our supply chain who are all too often overlooked. While there’s still a lot of difficult work ahead, I’m very proud to have committed Chopard to showing it’s possible to produce luxury jewellery in a responsible way.
Read also: The CLIC® Chronicles: Sustainable eyewear company VIU on the environmental cost of clear sight
Like Lombard Odier, Chopard is an old brand with a rich heritage steeped in tradition. Has the weight of this heritage introduced any challenges to your journey towards sustainability?
Chopard is over 160 years old, and changing processes – many of which have been in place for years – as well as entrenched ways of thinking and working doesn’t happen overnight. This is especially true in our Ateliers [studios], where our Artisans are rightly concerned with preserving the traditional expertise required to create the finest watches and jewellery.
We’ve been working with some of our partners and suppliers for many years, and it takes time to convince them to source materials more responsibly and transition to more sustainable processes. Even so, we’ve already seen a real change since we embarked on this journey.
Moreover, being an independent, family-owned and -run maison enables us to make our own business decisions. And this independence is what has, and will continue to, enable us to meet the challenge of balancing tradition and heritage with sustainability and transparency, both for Chopard and as an example to the rest of our industry.
Read also: The CLIC® Chronicles: Meet Gemmyo: the luxury jeweller marrying recycled metals with the rarest gems
What has your ‘Journey to Sustainable Luxury’ achieved so far?
We began by forging a philanthropic relationship with The Alliance for Responsible Mining, which enables us to provide direct help to gold-mining communities in obtaining the ‘Fairmined’ certification as well as training, social welfare, and environmental support. This work soon enabled us to create several watch and jewellery lines crafted from responsibly sourced materials, starting with the High Jewellery Green Carpet Collection which we unveiled at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival.
We have also pledged to uphold best practices in the responsible acquisition of precious stones, such as opals, emeralds, and tourmalines, all of which we now source from mines that our consultants have audited to ensure responsible mining practices. This has helped us raise awareness, internally and externally, about the importance of responsible sourcing, which requires us to know every link in our supply chain all the way back to the source while being able to identify and manage potential risks along the way. It also means working closely with suppliers to improve sustainability practices and supporting local communities to ensure they benefit fairly from activities, such as mining, which have a direct impact on their environment.
Diamonds have long been associated with conflicts. For the past 20 years, tools like the Kimberley Process certification scheme have gone a long way towards preventing conflict diamonds from finding their way into the international diamond trade. But we need to do more, which is why our work around traceability and transparency for all our key materials is so important. We’re careful to follow the OECD’s [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] guidelines on responsible supply chains, and we undergo regular audits based on these standards to ensure that we have strong internal due diligence procedures.
In 2018, we reached a special milestone when we became the first watch and jewellery maison to pledge to using 100% ethical gold in all our watches and jewellery. The following year, we also partnered with the Swiss Better Gold Association to source gold from the barequeros, a Colombian artisanal gold-panning community and one of the most environmentally conscious gold-mining operations in the world.
Earlier this year, we announced that all our steel watches – including bracelets and cases – will be made from Lucent Steel™, which will contain at least 80% recycled steel by the end of 2023. We’re working hard to increase that number to at least 90% by 2025, an initiative that will enable Chopard to significantly reduce its steel-related CO2 emissions.
Lucent Steel™ - Happy Sport case, Manufacturing process
Lombard Odier has been a Certified B Corporation® since 2019, and we were re-certified in 2023. We use this certification as a framework for much of our work around sustainability. Does Chopard take a similar approach?
In 2010, we took the first step in our Journey to Sustainable Luxury by becoming a member of the Responsible Jewellery Council. This decision gave us external accountability, reinforcing our commitment to sharing and engaging with the wider industry as we seek to reinvent key points in the value chain. It has also enabled us to build more trusting relationships with our stakeholders – particularly our clients – when it comes to sustainability.
Read also: Lombard Odier recertifies as B Corp™ with improved score
What’s next on the road to sustainability for Chopard and the wider luxury jewellery industry?
I think climate change, decarbonisation, biodiversity, traceability, and transparency will all be major issues in the luxury jewellery industry in the coming years, which is why we at Chopard are already actively working to address them.
Meanwhile, although the wider industry has already made some significant improvements, there’s still a lot of work to be done. But the good news is that the industry is increasingly collaborating to find large-scale solutions to these consequential sustainability challenges.
1 The term haute joaillerie (high jewellery) refers to the most high-end pieces of luxury jewellery, which are often completely unique, one-off items.
Important information
This document is issued by Bank Lombard Odier & Co Ltd or an entity of the Group (hereinafter “Lombard Odier”). It is not intended for distribution, publication, or use in any jurisdiction where such distribution, publication, or use would be unlawful, nor is it aimed at any person or entity to whom it would be unlawful to address such a document. This document was not prepared by the Financial Research Department of Lombard Odier.
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