Andrea Buccellati | Prestige Hong Kong (Feb 19)

How is ANDREA BUCCELLATI working to future-proof his 100-year-old family brand? He reveals to ZANETA CHENG his plans to continue nurturing its heritage of artisanship into the next century

Luxury brands have for years been adjusting their strategies to lure gen Z and millennial consumers into their stores, and though it’s easy to see fashion labels and product adapting to the 21st century through regular and highly visible seasonal collections, it’s harder to identify the efforts of rarefied jewellery houses that have also been working to modernise their offerings for a younger generation of consumers. Hardest of all is to see it in family-run maisons such as Buccellati, a brand that this year marks 100 years of creating hand-engraved haute joaillerie.

As with all brands, no matter the category, the challenge is to come up with product that balances innovation, modernity and relevance, and all while remaining committed to the house’s signature codes.

The Buccellatis are vigilant about preserving the identity of the house and insist on keeping it a family affair. Andrea Buccellati is slowly passing the baton over to his daughter Lucrezia, who has designed a successful silver collection, while the family continues to look to the future and to expansion.

“I started working next to my father when I was 16 years old,” says Buccellati, recalling times from his youth. “I’d go to school and in the afternoon I’d go to the workshop and work next to him. It’s an old style, and I stayed next to my father for 30 years.

“My daughter is different,” he adds. “She, like me, knew she wanted to do this job from very early on. She loved art and design but I wanted to do something different for her. It’s not the same as when I trained.

“She went to art school in Italy and FIT in New York to gain a better, more global understanding. I thought it was important for her. I only see the Buccellati side. I live and breathe it, but the big task for her will be to bring Buccellati into the new century.”

At the same time, the family looked to investors to help grow the brand beyond its century-old operation and sold 85 percent of the firm to China’s Gansu Gangtai Group in 2017. “It was a big change,” Buccellati recalls. “We were really a family company and for a variety of different reasons – my father wanted to retire – my brothers, cousins and I thought it was better to look for investors.

“We thought fresh capital would help develop the brand, which was quite a change, but we thought it was a positive one. Today the most important thing for us is to create more awareness of the brand.”

The capital led to more visibility, a larger marketing budget, more store openings in China and greater production. The family opened a five-floor store on New York’s Madison Avenue in 2015 and the influx of fresh capital allowed for more stock. “Don’t forget that in our business, the cost of the stock is the most important one,” Buccellati says.

“Having investors gives us more opportunity. It’s not always easy for managers to work in a family business, especially an Italian family business. When you open up the capital, you work in a different way. More in terms of a business, which is better for an employed manager.”

When operating a family business, expansion is not necessarily entirely driven by the prosaic desire for profit. In this family especially, the drive is to create a business that can last the test of time.

“For family businesses, you can’t really do a simple budget because the family have the ultimate say in where the money will go, they can redirect the budget – not because the managers aren’t right, but you have to understand that a family views its business in the long term, not the short term.”

Today, Buccellati is looking to expand into Asia, China specifically. The numbers don’t lie – 50 percent of global luxury business is in Asia. “We have a different client in China – we have three or four shops in mainland China and we’re opening a few in the coming year,” says Buccellati. “In China, they’re very good at finding out and embracing the brand new. They don’t know the brand well yet, but firstly, the Chinese love quality and workmanship. You can see it in their art. Secondly, it’s information. Today with the Internet, you can get everything in a few minutes.

“Five years ago, this wasn’t possible, but I realised this at a dinner in Beijing once. There were three young couples sitting next to me and one man by himself with no wife or girlfriend. We started talking and he told me he loves Buccellati and jewellery, so I asked him why and he told me about our history – and I was so surprised.

“I know the history because it’s my history, but it’s very rare that other people know so much. I asked him when he discovered Buccellati and he told me it was the previous week, after he received our invitation. He said he did a lot of research, saw the pieces and was a collector of jewellery. All of which is to say that people’s tastes are becoming more and more sophisticated at lightning speed, thanks to technology.”

Despite Buccellati’s openness to embracing change and modernisation, the brand still holds its craftsmanship dear. “We’re inspired by the same things, the same concepts,” Buccellati explains. “We’ll keep interpreting Buccellati’s style, our worksmanship, the engraving, the way we set the stone.”

Take a look at a Buccellati creation and it’s true the pieces are different. Metals are engraved using a combination of techniques, among them rigatto, modellato and telato, which are just some that the house is famous for. There are obvious copies on the market, none of which come close to the real deal. 

Artisans, too, are taken by the Buccellati way and many have been with the brand for generations. “There are some young men who are starting to take interest in working as artisans again,” Buccellati says. “If you do this job, you have to have passion and want to express yourself and when you work for us, it’s quite difficult because of the quality we demand, the research, the detail. You can only learn that if you have a passion for it. If we make 100 pieces, each piece is different.

“People will work for us for 10 years and then go away,” Buccellati reveals. “Six months later, they come back. Our artisans aren’t machines, they’re artists. It’s rare that they leave but if they do, they always come back. Another thing is that they come from many generations. Some will have been with my grandfather, or my father, or started with me. That’s how history continues. That’s how the best artisans are made, because they learn from different generations.”

It’s the touch of the hand that makes Buccellati distinct from copies and other brands on the market, so the family has taken measures to preserve and nurture artisanal talent. The engraving on a bracelet that leaves the piece looking as though it were made of silk or velvet can take three to four months to complete. A small carving knife designed to etch eight lines at a time needs to be repeated three times on a piece that might contain hundreds if not thousands of finely engraved lines. 

“We’ve established our own school, which we’re enlarging. It keeps the tradition of the work alive,” Buccellati says. “It’s a big investment but no one else does this. Invest in people, preserve tradition and hope it will help us create a bigger future.”