Pandora: charm offensive - FT.com All professional athletes experience failure. The good ones bounce back. Björn Gulden, a former Norwegian footballer and the newly-announced chief executive of Pandora, will need to muster all his experience to fix the flagging fortunes of the Danish charm bracelet maker. So far investors appear confident. He does not take the reins until March but, in the two weeks since his appointment, Pandora's share price - which fell by 85 per cent last year - has shot up by 43 per cent. Pandora's investors have always had high expectations. In the five years before it listed in late 2010, volume growth was 70 per cent annually. But since then it has made two key mistakes. The first was aggressive expansion predicated on turning its niche novelty charm bracelets into a jewellery industry mainstay. They were the "must have" Christmas gift of 2010. Since then, sentiment has cooled. The second mistake was to assume that price increases would boost the company's image and mitigate the rising costs and volatility of gold and silver (just 40 per cent of its precious metal needs are hedged 12 months in advance). That strategy backfired badly. One year ago the company forecast 30 per cent revenue growth in 2011. It now expects zero. Interim CEO Marcello Bottoli has made a start on the turnround effort. Prices have been frozen or reduced. Mr Gulden, though, needs to sort out Pandora's bloated inventory and reposition its brand and pricing. The main threat to Pandora's future is that charm bracelets follow feathered hats and flared jeans into the fashion history books. It is heavily promoting its mainstream jewellery, such as earrings and rings, but sales from these items are shrinking and still comprise less than one-quarter of total revenues. Mr Gulden has plenty of silverware from his football days. He may find that turning Pandora around is a game of two halves.