Building Luxury In The Smartphone Market

Following a recent buyout and changes at the top, the new chief executive officer of Vertu tells Robert Anderson how the company plans to retain its share of the luxury smartphone market

- Robert Anderson

It has been a turbulent few months at luxury smartphone maker Vertu.

The United Kingdom-based maker of handcrafted devices from exotic materials was sold by Swedish private equity firm EQT in November to a group of investors, including Hong Kong-based fund Godin Holdings, for an undisclosed sum.

This was followed by the departure of chief executive Massimiliano Pogliani and the appointment of his replacement Bill Crotty, who lasted barely three months before passing the reins to the company’s vice president of sales and marketing, Gordon Watson.

“It’s fair to say we’ve been through a significant change,” the new CEO says.

“But the senior management team we have on-board today are all individuals that have been with the company for some years.

“We are the market leader in a category that we created and we want to recapture some of that pioneering spirit that I think has possibly been lost somewhat over the last three years.”

These structural changes coincided with a slump in global luxury spending at the start of the year in key markets including China and the Middle East and the UK’s vote to leave the European Union.

But, according to Watson, the firm has been able to weather the storm.

“The year has been somewhat difficult for some of the hard luxury brands – the Swiss watch brands in particular seem to be the ones most affected by the downturn,” he says.

“But here at Vertu we have weathered that very well indeed.

“Obviously there is the short term concern over the way the British pound is performing in the currency markets and we just have to be patient and see how things settle down and where they find their level before we start making any quick judgements on whether we should be increasing prices, decreasing prices in certain markets and so on. It’s very early days still.”