The Swiss luxury group Richemont has appointed Karlheinz Baumann to the group’s Senior Executive Committee (SEC) as Group Director of Operations with immediate effect.
He will be responsible for the areas of production, research & innovation, customer service, logistics & supply chain, indirect procurement, responsible procurement and security. He continues to report to Jérôme Lambert, CEO of Richemont and member of the Board of Directors of Compagnie Financière Richemont SA.
Baumann has 27 years of experience, primarily in the areas of production, research and development and supply chain excellence in the luxury and automotive industries. He began his career at McKinsey in Germany before becoming managing director of the German automotive supplier Wilhelm Karmann in 2003. In 2008 he moved to Switzerland to the Richemont house IWC Schaffhausen, where he worked as COO. In 2016, Baumann was promoted to Group Director Industry & Services and in 2023 to Group Director of Operations.
Richemont operates in three divisions: jewelry (Buccellati, Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels), watches (Lange & Söhne, Baume & Mercier, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Panerai, Piaget, Roger Dubuis and Vacheron Constantin) and others. The latter includes fashion brands such as Alaïa and Chloé. Richemont also operates the online shops Net-A-Porter, Mr Porter, The Outnet and Yoox.