Although the best friends of the girl, as you know, are diamonds, however, the Swarovski crystals make them worthy of competition. As a family business, Swarovski managed not only to earn millions over a century, but also to gain a solid reputation for his products, which are valued around the world as much as real jewelry.
People have been fascinated with brilliance for a long time. Sunshine on the surface of the water. Multicolored patches of snow. A crystal that refracts light. A ground bead. It is this love of mankind for brilliant things, that our secret thirst for a bright life was caught in due time by the Austrian Swarovski family.
The rhinestones that they produce shine on the clothes of Hollywood stars and ordinary schoolgirls. Their elegant crystal lamps and curtains flicker in the dizzying interiors of luxurious rooms. Meet: a company that built a billion-dollar business for such seemingly small things as a shiny piece of faceted glass.
First there was know - how.
There are companies that make money from the air. There are those who, due to their success, are obliged to successful marketing moves. Swarovski from the very beginning relied on technology, which was not one of them, except them.
It all started in 1892, when the 30-year-old Austrian Daniel Swarovski patented his invention: an electric machine capable of cutting crystal with extremely high precision. Swarovski was not accidental in the glass industry. He was born in Bohemia, a region of modern Czechia (then the Austro-Hungarian Empire), which has long been famous for its glass, crystal and porcelain. Swarovski were hereditary glaziers - respected and prosperous masters. From his father, who owned a small factory, Daniel and took over the secrets of working with crystal - true, traditionally manual. But in history this man came in thanks to the fact that he could see new perspectives. In 1883, Daniel visited the International Electrical Exhibition in Vienna, where he was struck by various cars Edison and Siemens. And I got the idea to automate the conservative sphere of my ancestors.
Having developed equipment that allowed the processing of crystal on the conveyor, he finds financial partners, and with their support in 1895, opens a plant in a small Tyrolean village of Wattens (Austria). The reason for choosing this place is the river: Swarovski built a hydroelectric power station on it, which provided its production with cheap energy.
Business immediately went well - thanks to machine processing Swarovski crystal was much better polished and cheaper than its competitors. Already for five years, the entrepreneur was able to expand production and buy out from partners their share. Since then, Swarovski has been and remains a purely family business.
Ideal.
It would seem that this can calm down. But Daniel Swarovski was an incorrigible perfectionist. Together with his three sons, he worked tirelessly to produce the perfect crystal, and in 1911 experiments with the chemical composition of raw materials and the methods of cutting were crowned with triumph. As you know, crystal is a glass with a high content of lead, which provides it with transparency, shine and play of light. Simple glass contains 6% lead oxide, in ordinary crystal - 24%, and in Swarovski crystal was up to 32%. Technological secret of Grandfather Swarovski his great - great - great - grandson still keep as the apple of his eye. "The tireless pursuit of perfection" is still the motto of the company.
The extremely high quality of the obtained crystals allowed the company to enter the jewelery market confidently. Those who did not have the opportunity to buy real jewelry, with their hands tearing off pieces of impeccable crystal, which was easy to accept for diamonds. However, Daniel Swarovski himself, a respectable and in love with his craft, never tried to sell his products for something else, unlike his predecessor, the jeweler and adventurer Georg Strasset, whose name was the word "rhinestone". He also knew how to make transparent crystal, but his stones melted under the guise of jewelry. But Swarovski set an ambitious goal - to make society appreciate crystal as much as jewelry.