(3 of 4)
In fact, the company was started with a secret. In 1895 Daniel, then 33, moved his family to Wattens from Bohemia, where it had been involved with traditional glassworking. He had developed one of the first machines to cut crystal. "He knew he had a breakthrough," says Buchbauer. "Like Bill Gates when he moved away from Silicon Valley and up to Seattle, he just wanted to get away from the competition." Wattens was a town of several hundred people with a shed for rent near the river, which Swarovski needed to produce his own electricity. The move also put him closer to his key market, Paris.
"Through Swarovski, people like Chanel and like Schiaparelli were able to create their costume jewelry," says Langes-Swarovski, noting that advances in technology make the crystals today superior to those his ancestor could produce. "But in his time his quality was superior compared with all his competitors because they were only capable of hand cutting the stones," says Buchbauer. "He had two advantages: he had very high and, even more important, standardized quality, and he was able to produce them in large quantities."
Early on, Swarovski chose to produce his own raw crystal rather than outsource it. At the factory, various sands and powdered ingredients—as many as 50 different kinds for colored crystal and 10 for transparent crystal—are mixed and then melted. "If you see it—which you can't," says Buchbauer, laughing, "it's the most important and also the most impressive part of the process, because this is really where sand and fire meet in order to melt all the ingredients and make them a new material."
It is a process that imitates the way nature forms natural rock crystal and is similar to the way the raw material for crystal glasses is produced. The so-called rough is either in small, preformed pieces or in large pans of liquid, depending on the product. One might imagine a giant pan of cherry Jell-O, but Nadja, who grew up tagging along with her dad Helmut, Swarovski's chairman and head of technical development, says it looks more like honey.
The next step is crucial: "You have to cool it very slowly in order to remove all the tension that is still within the material," Buchbauer explains. "If I cooled it down quickly and then put my finger on it, it would fall apart." The giant Xilion rock on the table, for example, took a month to cool. Next the material is polished, cut and coated.
After decades as the leading supplier to fashion companies, Swarovski created its own jewelry line in 1977 and later branched into accessories and home objects. Together those goods represent half of the 2005 annual sales of $2.7 billion, and the best sellers are the small animal sculptures in crystal prized by collectors. In an effort to capitalize on its newfound cool factor, the company has just launched a major advertising campaign and will overhaul the first of its 565 retail stores worldwide in early 2007 with a new concept slated to be created by the Japanese designer Tokujin to showcase products in a modern setting.