Editor’s Note
This excerpt traces the humble origins of the Spanish jewelry brand Tous, from a watchmaker’s apprentice in the 1920s to a family enterprise spanning three generations. It highlights how a small, back-room workshop evolved into an iconic global name.
The 1920s, Montblanc-Tarragona. Young Salvador begins his path as a watchmaker’s apprentice. Years later, he moves to Manresa, in Barcelona, where he opens his own business. His son, also named Salvador, learns the trade and takes over. In the 1970s, his wife, Rosa, transforms the back room into a small jewelry workshop. This marks the beginning of what is today one of Spain’s most recognized brands, Tous.
More than a century later, the brand of the iconic bear is led by the third generation of jewelers; it boasts over 600 stores in cities like Paris, Moscow, New York, Mexico City, or Shanghai, and thanks to e-commerce—accounting for 21% of its sales—its jewelry and accessories reach more than 40 countries. Those rings, bracelets, earrings, medals, or necklaces come from Sabadell, the company’s only factory.
Raúl López, the director of this 3,700-square-meter plant, which celebrated its tenth anniversary last year, tells El Confidencial.
There, a hundred people bring to life the jewelry previously designed at the R&D center in Manresa. “We start making the prototypes and first samples so they can see if they like them or not,” explains Raúl. They primarily use two techniques for this: lost-wax casting and electroforming.
The first, also called micro-casting, is a millennia-old technique that the Romans used 6,000 years ago for sculptural decorations and textile reliefs. In the director’s words, “it consists of transforming wax, first created in a silicone mold and then in a plaster one, into a piece cast at 1050 degrees from solid metals, gold or silver.” Tous produces about 100,000 units per month with this technique.
The second, the galvanic or electroforming technique, is a more modern method used in other industries such as automotive or textiles. It involves creating lightweight pieces—up to 250 microns thick in gold and 400 in silver—through an electrolysis process that deposits metal particles onto a base or core, which is later extracted to create a piece that has volume but weighs little because it is hollow.
clarifies the director.
Regardless of the chosen technique, after passing through various machines, the pieces are ready—once they have passed the relevant quality controls—for jewelers to polish, finish, and, if required by the design, set stones. “Here we do craftsmanship, although obviously coexistence with technology is fundamental, especially in the initial processes of creating raw materials.”
In the mold room, we can see staff working with 3D printers, vulcanizers, and injection machines; in the casting, emptying, and electroforming rooms, with ovens of different sizes, large casting machinery and centrifuges, tumblers, gold and silver tanks for electrolytic baths; all of them computerized, with the exact recipe to know how much metal to inject, how long to cool or heat… X-ray and ICP machines for metal analysis; powerful files and even a robot acquired two years ago to assist in the polishing process; and an almost endless list of other instruments and computers that help each person perform their task with the greatest possible precision and efficiency.
This efficiency is also transferred to the field of sustainability. “We are a factory where we work with chemicals, water, and energy consumption, so years ago we undertook a series of improvements. We have photovoltaic panels that provide 25% of the consumption and we send the surplus energy to the grid. We have also made the effort to renew the machinery to make it more efficient, replacing ovens, changing the compressor to reduce its consumption; all lighting is low-consumption…” Thanks to this, they possess ISO certificates that guarantee these sustainable practices.
Raúl López confesses that these ten years have been a constant innovation. Since they moved from Barcelona to these facilities for logistical and space reasons, they have experienced moments for all tastes, major milestones to celebrate and others they never thought they would live through, like a pandemic or a national blackout. “We have to keep evolving, going to fairs, meeting new suppliers, learning new techniques…”
On this path, the director points out that knowing how to apply artificial intelligence to this trade is one of the main challenges.
Looking to the future, Raúl López is optimistic:
Molds
Lost-Wax Casting
Electroforming
Polishing
Finishing and Stone Setting