Following fashion, Waterford Crystal has now become its victim, writes Deirdre McQuillan.
Waterford Glass has always been proud of its reputation for optically perfect hand-blown crystal, with a ring as clear and sonorous as a bell that has resounded profitably down the generations. This week, however, much of the celebrated sparkle faded from its image with the announcement of declining sales, falling profits and the shedding of hundreds of highly skilled jobs.
There is irony in the fact that a company which hired fashion designers to revamp its image now has to face the vagaries of changing tastes while witnessing enviable successes elsewhere. At a time when the current vogue is for glamour and decoration, an old glass manufacturer, Swarovski, has made crystal the coolest and most desirable embellishment for clothes and accessories. Less than five years ago people didn't know how to pronounce let alone spell the name of this Austrian company and associated it solely with little glass mice and twinkling ornaments. Now, after its groundbreaking makeover, the whole world knows about Swarovski.
Tabletop crystal is another matter, however, and Waterford, celebrated internationally, has the benefit of being almost a generic term for quality crystal, a cliched wedding gift both here and in North America where five years ago 23,000 brides on the US bridal register chose the Lismore suite.
Designed by the Czech emigre Mirek Havel in l952, Lismore became the best-selling stemware pattern in the world. Half a century later, this market is on the wane as people demand more practical, dishwasher-proof stemware and less elaborate styling in keeping with prevailing trends and preferences.
Waterford has made enormous efforts over the years to address some of the problems of outdated design and though John Rocha's heavily promoted modern range (inset) has been a success in Ireland and elsewhere, in the US, which represents half of Waterford's sales, his name is not familiar. And many argue that although the bowls and vases are beautiful, the stemware is too heavy, too high and, at €40 a wineglass, too expensive. The market is now flooded with cheap, well-made and well-designed glass that competes with more traditional patterns.
"Younger American tourists like the contemporary look of John Rocha and when we tell them who he is, they pick it up, but heavy cut crystal is not selling," concurs Marian O'Gorman, chief executive of the Kilkenny Group which allots some 700sq ft to Waterford glass in its Nassau Street store. "Price is an issue. It's €80 for a pair of crystal glasses when you can buy plain crystal glass for €4.95 in Habitat. Sales have dropped with the tourists and the dollar rate is not helping. Americans who were buying traditional glass are not buying any more. Our sales have grown in Dublin, but not in tourist shops and we are way down on last year. The old patterns are dying with the older customers."
Simon Pearce, the Irish-born, Vermont-based glassmaker now head of his hugely successful US company, thinks that Waterford's big mistake was to try to be all things to all people.
"Their design has not changed much over the years. Older people bought it and younger people don't want what their parents' want and even their parents don't want it now. When you go to their showrooms here there is no strong conviction, but a bit of everything. It has been sold in Costco, a cheap chain division of Wal-Mart and that sends out an incredibly mixed message. It had a reputation for being top end, best quality crystal, but if you start messing with that, then you have difficulties with price. If you go high end, you have to stay high end, otherwise it doesn't work over here.
"It takes a lot to damage a great name and a great brand and they have been picking away at it. They must decide whether they are high or low end. Tiffany's, for example, have taken the reins again, gone higher and higher, increased design quality dramatically and business is doing phenomenally well."
One industry insider and glassmaker defends Waterford's lower priced, in-house designed W range as streamlined, elegant and very beautiful, but thinks that "the company is not addressing what they do best which is cutting and trying to evolve that side of the business. Their cutting is far superior to anything that is being done abroad. The taste today is for less ornate decoration and they need to think about what the Irish and international market needs. Does it need more ring holders and glass napkin rings? If you sit down with John Rocha glasses, they are too heavy and too tall and even though his design aesthetic is very elegant, they are more about style than about drinking wine - the whole dining experience needs to be something really enjoyable."
Mary Dowey, wine critic of The Irish Times, agrees. "Cut crystal from a wine point of view is too heavy. Swirling becomes unbearable on the wrist. Facets distort the eye from the colour of the wine and make it harder to judge its clarity. The glasses don't trap the aromas adequately either which is half the pleasure of wine. That was a missed opportunity [ for Waterford], though it did use Anthony Dias Blue, an influential name in food and wine worldwide, as a consultant for their Marquis range which is made in Austria."
The extraordinary success of the Austrian Riedel glasses, endorsed by the powerful US wine guru Robert Parker, was stiff competition for Waterford in the US. Echoing Dowey's view, a recent issue of Departures magazine voted "the moderately priced but stylish" Waterford's Marquis eighth out of nine of the best top-of-the-range stemware in the world, claiming that "it makes a much better case for serious wine drinking than Waterford's classic cut-crystal patterns".Turning around flagging profits, getting the slosh and the swish factor back into crystal are the Herculean tasks now facing Waterford Wedgwood and no one has easy answers. One woman with big ideas is engineer and glass collector Una Parsons who believes that a big international glass centre should be built along the quays in Waterford which would encompass glass art, research and development, architectural, microscopic and other applications of glass generally.
"Waterford Glass needs to be looking at all the other possibilities of glass - crystal glass blocks, for instance," suggests Parsons. "Architectural glass is a huge market and links in with architects. The potential could be shown in new and imaginative ways.
"Ultimately Waterford is a marketing company taking direction from market research. It should be more design based," she argues. "They need new ideas. They have to be bold and do something different and make that imaginative leap."