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Langes-Swarovski explains that the Xilion is cut with 14 facets instead of the usual eight. "But it's not actually the number that's the most important; it's the angle of the facets," says Buchbauer, pointing out a pattern in which sizes and shapes alternate. "Several years back, we looked around the marketplace and saw our competitors getting stronger and advancing technically. There was market demand for a new, more brilliant stone. We had always claimed to be the innovation leader, so we knew it was time to bring out the next generation."
Competitors could certainly copy the Xilion, but building the machines to produce high volumes—Swarovski says its loose-stone production is in the double-digit billions—is the obstacle. "You could hire 200,000 people in China, and they would do the same quantity for probably a lower price," says Buchbauer. "But you could never, ever come out with the same quality. You could never achieve the same standardization."
Besides new cuts like the Xilion, the company innovates by developing coatings that produce various effects to make the beads more pearl-like or more metallic looking, for example. New colors or even variations in coloration make the stones milkier or more opaque in appearance. Recently the company has experimented with new materials, applying crystal glazes to silicon or weaving the tiniest crystals into mesh.
Swarovski claims to offer the highest quality on the market and the most extensive range of sizes and colors—15,000 in its catalog. In July, Bruno Frisoni launched a couture shoe-and-bag collection for Roger Vivier starring clusters of colored Swarovski crystals. The same week, Dior, Chanel and Jean Paul Gaultier all sent gowns embroidered with Swarovski crystals down their runways.
None of the cousins have worked harder to make a place at the fashion table for Swarovski than Nadja Swarovski, 36, a London-based cousin of Buchbauer's and Langes-Swarovski's. In a previous job at a New York City p.r. firm, Nadja says, she realized Swarovski had not been effective at communicating its link with fashion. She launched several initiatives, including setting up a showroom in New York, where American designers are invited to paw through 200 drawers filled with crystals. There are event sponsorships and clever collaborations with fashion and interior designers, the most successful of which has been Crystal Palace, launched in 2002 for inventive lighting projects. Several of them, particularly Norwegian designer Tord Bontje's Blossom chandeliers in the shape of a branch (the small one is priced $15,500), have been widely copied. "We never just give money or just give product," she explains. "Instead, we say, Please go beyond the comfort zone with your creation. Make the crystals your own."
Langes-Swarovski argues that crystal should not be considered a mere pedestrian trim. "It's more of an expressive element than a zipper or a button. In all the various creative disciplines, whether it's fashion or interior design, crystal has a role of amplifying creative expression," he says. "With Liberace or in the late '90s, crystal was sometimes a metaphor for superficiality because of this bling-bling element." Today, however, company executives talk about the "poetry of precision" and how to take founder Daniel Swarovski's original ideas to new levels.