Giving Data a Voice at Swarovski

Business analyst Richard Bezuidenhout possesses skills that have made him a valuable asset to city governments and Fortune 500 businesses alike: He can turn messy datasets into fundamental truths that executives grasp easily.

For him, truth-telling begins with a map.

In a career that’s spanned stints in Cape Town, London, and Zürich, Bezuidenhout has used geographic information system (GIS) technology to visualize underground stormwater infrastructure, correct miscalculated property lines, and uncover crime trends.

In his most ambitious work to date, he’s helping to find the best business locations for Swarovski, the iconic Austrian jeweler with $2 billion in annual revenue and 1,400 stores in more than 150 countries.

As the company looks to expand its retail portfolio, Bezuidenhout is collaborating with colleagues and using GIS mapping and analytics to produce intelligence on where to site profitable stores, which wholesale partnerships will be most productive, and even how best to staff showrooms.

Data Storytelling Illuminates Retail Truths

As Swarovski’s global real estate distribution operations manager, Bezuidenhout builds GIS dashboards that enable company leaders to analyze markets around the world, from the gleaming new cities of China to the glamorous high streets of Europe.

Drawing on his experience in municipal government, Bezuidenhout understands the demands of data: how to clean it, manage it, and keep it updated and flowing to the right people in an organization. At Swarovski, he has honed an ability to craft that data into narratives that impact the bottom line.

Since today’s executives prefer haikus to Proust, Bezuidenhout has mastered short-form communication. He uses maps to clarify and distill data, revealing:

• Whether customers will travel longer distances to shop at outlet stores
• How much foot traffic can be forecasted on a particular street
• If a new store is likely to boost online sales in a market

For Lorenzo Calvo, a Swarovski wholesale distribution manager who often works with Bezuidenhout, location analysis reveals the “topology of the market”— capturing how local inflections in culture or economics impact site selection choices.

In meetings, Bezuidenhout shares market analyses with Swarovski senior leaders, toggling through data on demographics, spending levels, drive times, and competitive or complementary brands. Visualizing these overlaps helps decision-makers identify “white spots”—retail or wholesale opportunities likeliest to deliver substantial ROI.

“We use [GIS] to cut to the chase,” Bezuidenhout says.

Location analysis also speeds up site selection: Colleagues use Bezuidenhout’s analysis to quickly identify the three or four best choices among 30 potential locations.

“This is what I like about [Richard] and his storytelling—you can follow it,” says Dierk Schneider, director of global real estate for Swarovski. “The receptionist . . . would understand what he’s talking about.”

We are trying to use the data to reduce the investment and optimize ROI.

Lorenzo Calvo, Swarovski

Career Growth: GIS Technician to Business Influencer

As an analyst who likes to keep a finger on the pulse of retail, Bezuidenhout enjoys being in cities where he can observe the shopping dynamics on busy sidewalks and streets.

He grew up a long way from city lights, on an alfalfa farm outside Pretoria, South Africa, where ostriches and chickens roamed the property. A childhood passion for drawing led to college courses in urban planning, where Bezuidenhout got his first introduction to GIS technology.

Those software skills netted him his first job—as a GIS technician at an engineering consultancy, where he digitized maps of pipes and property lines. At first tedious, the tasks became more fulfilling as he helped advise clients like mining firms on how to support working communities in remote areas.

“That was the first time in my career I could see: This is something I really enjoy doing,” Bezuidenhout says. “It [involves] a lot of data capturing, but the end product is something really cool and interesting.”

His next job, as a GIS technician for the City of Cape Town, drove home the importance of creating accurate data and listening to the stories it tells. He used GIS mapping to fix errors in historical property records, helping correct property tax accuracy for the city.

Bezuidenhout drew on these lessons when he joined the Greater London Authority (GLA)—the office responsible for implementing mayoral policies in the UK capital. In a city of 9 million people, the GLA serves as a clearinghouse for huge volumes of data from the metropolitan police, the London Ambulance Service, the London Fire Brigade, the city’s transportation network, and other agencies.

Bezuidenhout’s job was to clean, update, and manage the data, then communicate insights to departmental leaders. With GIS maps, he gave shape to columns of statistical information, revealing patterns like hot spots for antisocial behavior in the city.

Even then, Bezuidenhout saw the importance of finding the story in the data—without twisting the underlying truth.

“In data, you have to be very careful because you can spin it in a certain way,” he says.

Defining Market Topology with GIS

Bezuidenhout joined Swarovski in 2019—just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and at the start of a brand overhaul aimed at infusing the 130-year-old jewelry juggernaut with a “pop luxury” sensibility blending artisan quality with vibrance and accessibility.

To fulfill the company’s growth plan, the real estate department needed better visibility into the markets where Swarovski operated, and a way to standardize retail performance across regions.

“There was a lot of information,” says Schneider, the director of global real estate. “It was about [figuring out], how do I channel this information, how do I filter the information, how do I get the information I really need?”

Facing that challenge, Bezuidenhout stood up a GIS program from scratch and created the first authoritative global view of the company’s retail footprint. He built a dashboard for each market showing sales numbers, population levels, and spending metrics. These views enabled deeper understanding of catchment areas, helping real estate and retail leaders assess dynamics like the “halo effect,” a physical store’s impact on online sales.

There’s no other tool where we have this kind of information… [GIS] has been fundamental in our distribution strategic decisions.

Dierk Schneider, Swarovski

Bezuidenhout works with regional decision-makers to weight data differently depending on local culture. In Latin American markets, for instance, credit card spending and disposable income tend to tell the story of market potential, whereas foot traffic carries more value in places like Germany and France.

Because he takes time to prepare the data, Bezuidenhout might arrive for a site selection meeting with real estate directors, open a map of a market, and watch the decision-making unfold quickly. “People just click and say, ‘It makes sense. We should try to get into this mall.’”

In depicting markets, Bezuidenhout combines a technician’s facility for data with a street artist’s talent for fast and accurate renderings. When he joined Swarovski, real estate teams were using a 50-slide deck to tell the story of a market’s potential. Bezuidenhout cut that by 80 percent, Schneider recalls.

“I was a big fan of it because the most important information was on 10 slides and not on 50,” Schneider says. “And it was more transparent and clear.”

That capability for direct communication—enabled by mapping and analytics—didn’t develop overnight. For Bezuidenhout, it’s been honed over a 15-year career, from the streets of Cape Town and the boroughs of London to the Swarovski stores adding a touch of radiance to the most desirable retail locations in the world.