Yay!!! So glad you got what you wanted!!! The ring is absolutely gorgeous.. looks fabulous on your slender hand as well. Question.. is it as comfortable as a " regular" ring to wear?
Is this the 2022 holiday pendant?
Wonder why were you even surprised given your profile?
If you gave me a lineup of colours and asked me to pick for you - this icy greeney blue and a baby pink would be my first picks! Can’t wait to hear what you think!!
Seafoam green is a beautiful colour for your complexion @m-2-b
USA price hike of 5% across the board hits October 13.
I feel bad for SAs right now. Between holiday pendant drama, and now price increase drama, and without improvement in inventory - there are just a ton of unhappy customers… The SAs can’t be having a good time of it.
I’ve got a significant-to-me piece in the works that I put a 30% deposit on a several weeks ago. It’s not even made yet - ETA January-ish on production. My SA is verifying that my deposit holds the price… Which means there’s some chance it doesn’t. Not going to lie, I will be tremendously unhappy with the brand if I’m not grandfathered in.
Okay. Gotta be honest. I’ve spent the last few days not really knowing how I feel about VCA as a brand.
These holiday pendant antics… They’re just gross. Catty, tacky, and snobby. I mean, who didn’t get picked last in gym class at least once? I don’t object to limiting special order privileges to clients who’s spent a certain amount. I don’t object to saving rare materials for clients who’ve been loyal to the brand. But to make an entry-pricepoint piece that’s never been limited and that’s not even a real stone “invitation-only”, and to refuse to outline any sort of logical rubric for how people are chosen, it’s the Hermes game to a T.
And I don’t patronize Hermes, and I never well. I don’t patronize jewellers whose business practices I disagree with. I fly Southwest because they treated me well before I travelled for work.
Here’s what I can say about the holiday pendant, from my recent conversation with my SA (USA):
A) Paris did in fact #List eligible clients. Inconceivably enough, VCA’s HQ spent (wasted) time and effort curating an invitation #List for a $4000 piece. The SAs seem to able to recommend people not on that #List if the initially selected customers turn it down.
B) The initial #List did not demand that the client have expressed interest in blue or green stones.
C) The initial #List did not demand that the client favour white gold.
D) The initial #List did not demand that the client collect Alhambra.
E) The initial #List did not demand that the client collect holiday pendants.
F) The initial #List did not demand that the client have purchased any necklaces or pendants previously.
G) The initial #List did not demand that the client have express interest in the brand via event and workshop attendance.
H) The initial #List did not demand that the client have a social media presence of any sort.
In fact, best I can tell, the initial #List evaluated exactly one thing: How wide potential candidates had recently opened their wallets. And y’know what? The SAs are stressed!! I’m in sales. I understand having to say “no” with no reasonable explanation. It’s not a good place to be. Richemont, wake up, that’s a really bad position to have put your employees in!!
My feelings on the brand aside, I really do appreciate my SA. She’s pragmatic, responsive, and disinclined to engage in manipulation gymnastics, and I trust (she’s proven) that she’s actively looking out for my sparkly interests. It appears that VCA has a nontrivial number of brand ambassadors who aren’t like her, unfortunately.
I really hope this crazy ends before “VCA fairy” and “VCA journey” becomes the lexicon... I can say for sure that I don’t have the stomach for that sort of sycophantic desperation
I wonder about this. I guess they’re doing it because it’s working so well for Hermes!! Many potential Hermes customers seem to be willing to overlook being treated quite poorly until they’ve racked up sufficient “prespend” to get an “offer”.
If that’s the case then I don’t really see it continuing. Millennials have the buying power right now and we’re the generation that inspired Mean Girls… I think the generations after us find the idea of propping themselves up by excluding others simply for the sake of doing so much less acceptable. I really don’t see them flocking to woo any big brands’ affections.
I guess we’ll see! At least for right now, people who are “invited” to buy this pendant and don’t want it aren’t allowed to “gift” their “invitations” to other people who aren’t on the #List
Unlike you, I'm afraid I did walk the it's-coveted-it'll-hold-value-really-well path for a moment. I'm annoyed with myself for even going there, mentally! But no, not for me. There are PSers on whom it will be stunning and I'm really looking forward to their pictures and thoughts!!I find the Hermes model baffling in the extreme and the thought that VCA is following in their footsteps is just
I don’t personally want to buy the HP so it doesn’t really affect me, but if this trickles down and affects other VCA pieces that I may want to buy in the future, I would be super annoyed. In general, the concept irritates me. I refuse to purchase Hermes bags simply on principle (even secondhand) because I find the idea that I have to buy other things and “woo” an SA to be allowed to spend yet more money in the store aggravating in the extreme and I neither love the design enough nor want to publicly support that model.
VCA already has pieces and lines that they restrict for VIPs, I don’t understand why this $5k pendant is one of the things they’re restricting. Producing limited quantities and making it first come first serve I totally get, but this is different.
But I don’t have a background for how these big brands normally work.This makes so much sense to me honestly!!
PS is a safe space. I called my SA to ask about the upcoming price increase, and I asked if the pendant drama was legit or kind of getting overblown on the internet. Nope, apparently the chaos is all real! And I was on this pendant list which is silly for all the reasons in #4096 - and my SA knows all those things too so that tells me that SAs didn’t submit names, that’s not how it worked! But the more I thought about it the less funny and more icky it got, precisely because this is an entry-level pricepoint. The chosen target audience is totally not the real-world consumer market and the disparity is just heightening the general angsting.
I’m new to branded pieces. I mean I guess technically I’m not - I think I bought my first piece from VCA in 2014? But for many years I didn’t have a dedicated SA. And my experiences with the brand were perfectly nice but nothing to write home about. A friend introduced me to her SA a few years ago and that’s the person I now call “mine”, and it’s just like you said, my SA has treated me well so that makes me want to buy from the brand. But I’ve not invested anything meaningful in any other big brand, of anything - clothes, shoes, purses, jewellery, watches, vehicles - which lets be honest is probably a good thing
With my favourite jewellery vendors, we all know I don’t keep personal and professional separate, I call most of them friends! And I absolutely *do* expect to be treated as a priority because (from my perspective anyway) there’s a valued personal relationship as well as money being handed over. I like and appreciate my VCA SA but it’s not the same sort of relationship. Any favours I might get are tied to how much money I spend and how long I keep spending money. So right this minute I’m spending enough that I’m getting some leeway with some things, which is a convenience and a relief but not exactly warm and fuzzy
Anyway. My ramble for the day.
I brought this topic here and I myself will keep patronising the brand unless some personal thresholds are crossed - which they haven’t, and I hope that doesn’t happen!
No! Please don’t let internet musings shape yours. If you’ve not experienced shopping at VCA yourself - definitely go try things on, especially if there are pieces you know you’d enjoy
A lot of these other brands, my understanding is that there’s very little a newcomer can purchase. It’s not that certain items are restricted, it’s that nearly everything is restricted! With VCA the only pieces that are by invitation are special orders, rare materials, regional exclusives, and limited editions - and I guess that last might include the HP moving forward. But one can still walk in and buy anything that’s on display or order basically anything that’s available to make as stock. And honestly, if only people who will love the HP buy it - if the only people buying it are those who will enjoy it themselves or give it to loved ones - then this experiment fades into the annals of we tried something whackadoo once
My father has exactly the same story. Rags to riches immigrant. Well, not exactly riches, but his situation growing up definitely checked all the “rags” boxes. I didn’t fully understand how he’d grown up until a trip to India as a teenager - it was shocking and humbling and if I’d started where he did I don’t believe I’d be able to tell his story of success. I have some very deep lines in the sand about things like vendor morality and social consciousness and it’s entirely thanks to where he came from. Same as you sounds like.
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