Editor’s Note
This article details the opening of Bulgari’s expansive new jewelry manufacturing hub in Italy’s Piedmont region. Beyond its scale, the facility underscores a dual commitment to preserving artisanal craftsmanship and training future artisans, blending tradition with modern expansion.
In Piedmont, Bulgari has built one of the largest jewelry manufacturing facilities in the world. Because artisanal skills continue to play a central role in the production of luxurious jewelry, the company also aims to train a new generation of goldsmiths here.
Before the ribbon is cut to inaugurate Bulgari’s new jewelry manufacturing facility, the VIPs first have an espresso. The Bishop of Alessandria, a province in Piedmont, is present, as are several commanders and vice-commanders of the local Carabinieri and the Financial Police. Many uniformed personnel with green-white-red sashes are seen on this day when the jeweler inaugurates the expansion of its “Bulgari Manifattura” in the Piedmontese town of Valenza.
For Valenza, which has been considered a stronghold of Italian goldsmithing since the early 19th century and is home to over 1,500 companies in the jewelry industry, this is such a significant occasion that the national television channel Rai Uno has also traveled here. For Bulgari and its parent company LVMH, the production expansion involves high investments. The manufactory originally opened in 2017; now the working area has more than doubled from 14,000 to 33,000 square meters, creating the world’s largest jewelry production facility operated by a single company. The number of employees is expected to increase from the current 1,100 to over 1,600 by 2029. A new goldsmithing school, the “Scuola Bulgari,” will train craft artists of all ages starting in September, regardless of whether they intend to stay with the company or not.
The “Serpenti” collection with the famous snake motif dates back to a design from 1948.
Both the region and Bulgari benefit from this. Since the pandemic, the jewelry market has grown continuously; for Bulgari alone, annual revenue is estimated by Morgan Stanley to have increased from 1.5 billion euros in 2004 to 3.5 billion euros in 2024.
However, the future currently looks uncertain, thanks to the tariff conflict between the USA and the rest of the world, triggered by US President Donald Trump. His constantly changing tariff plans, as of the current situation, would not spare European luxury houses either. Since 2024, the previously booming luxury market has been suffering from a difficult geopolitical and economic environment. LVMH, which does not disclose revenue figures for individual companies in its portfolio, had to accept a five percent decline in revenue for its fashion and leather goods segment in the first quarter of the year.
The facade of the Bulgari Manifattura, which opened in 2017 and was expanded this year.
However, the group has also found that expensive jewelry best cushions the current setbacks. The division, while no longer showing the same growth enthusiasm, remains stable – and this despite dealing with products that can cost several hundred thousand euros depending on the category. At the top end of the price structure are so-called High Jewelry lines, consisting of unique pieces like opulent necklaces, bracelets, and earrings, whose production can require 3,000 hours of manual labor.
Bulgari produces its “Alta Gioielleria,” as the segment is called in Italian, in an atelier in Rome. In Valenza, the designs are created that can be purchased in boutiques at comparatively more affordable, yet still luxurious, prices: snake-shaped bracelets from the “Serpenti” line with diamond accents for 13,000 euros, wide gold rings inspired by the architecture of the Colosseum from the “B.zero1” collection for 3,000 euros. These, too, are almost entirely handmade, in a flat, angular building covered on the outside with panels in different gold tones, so that the facade somewhat resembles the play of light and shadow on a gold bar.
Inside, it is ensured that not a milligram of gold is lost: before entering each workroom, one steps onto a kind of integrated floor vacuum with brushes that collects the tiniest gold residues from shoe soles so they can be reused. The manufacturing process begins in the wax department, where a special melting process using 3D printing forms a small wax tree, on whose branches hang replicas of individual components for a piece of jewelry, for example, the snake heads for the “Serpenti” designs.
The model is enclosed in an empty steel cylinder, which is then filled with plaster and water. Once this is heated, the plaster hardens, and the wax melts, a plaster mold is created with a cavity in the shape of the tree with the components, into which the metal is then poured.