Between Fine and Fashion Jewellery, Monica Vinader is Poised for Expansion

Fast-growing Monica Vinader has successfully tapped a gap between fine and fashion jewellery. Now, the company is moving ahead with its long-held plans for global expansion.

LONDON, United Kingdom — Accessible jewellery brand Monica Vinader has had a transformative eighteen months. Turnover for 2014 is projected to hit £14 million (about $22 million) — up 85 percent year-on-year — and the company, which operates from the rural English county of Norfolk, has opened several new points of sale as part of its plan to become a “global brand with a £50 million turnover by 2019.”

In London, Monica Vinader has added two shiny new retail stores to its existing South Molton Street presence, including a two-storey, 2,500-square-foot flagship in the city's Chelsea district. Meanwhile, just one week ago, the company opened a boutique in Hong Kong's IFC mall. And, in the coming weeks, a space at Boutique1 in Dubai is set to debut. The brand is also available at Harrods,Selfridges and Liberty, as well as online at Net-a-Porter and via its own e-commerce site.

For Monica Vinader, who founded the eponymous company in 2007 with her sister Gabriela Vinader, their recent achievements represent not so much an inflection point, as a few more steps along a road they say they mapped out from the very inception of the brand.

“When I read our business plan from 2007, it really hasn’t changed much. Gaby and I were quite focused and we’ve always known where we wanted to go,” Monica Vinader explains. “From day one the plan was to build a brand and for it to be a global luxury brand; we knew that we wanted to be in the accessible luxury arena and that there was a gap between fine and costume jewellery that we would bridge.”

Art school-educated, with three years experience working for UK-based jewellers Tateossian and a cosmopolitan lifestyle that has exposed her to inspiration from around the world, Vinader has always been the creative force behind the company. In 2002, while still working for a high-end, Buenos Aires-based travel company, Vinader started to “dabble,” as she puts it, in the world of jewellery. Even as she describes that early “bespoke experiment,” it is evident that this was no mere hobby and Vinader was already thinking about how she could build a successful commercial enterprise around what she saw as a gap in the market.