Enigma Variations - Financial Times 19/02/08

Fine jewellery is so entrenched in its heritage, associations and conventions and so resistant to both marketing and the wider world of design, that any signs of a future world order are rarer than a red diamond. Generally, the centuries-old status quo remains a combination of extremely high-end designer jewellery and entry-level trinkets.

Except, that is, in a corner shop in Rome, where a new brand from a very old name is attempting to create a middle market for branded jewels - pretty much from scratch.

Enigma, conceived as a holistic brand for jewellery and watches priced between Pounds 2,000-Pounds 30,000, is the brainchild of Gianni Bulgari, the brother of Paolo and Nicola, who was the chief executive of Bulgari before leaving the family business in 1987.

To Bulgari it was always clear that there were serious inroads to be made by perfectly formed brands in the global luxury jewellery market - worth S7bn according to Bain & Company, the management consultancy - and luxury watch market (S22bn).

Designer names represent only 10 per cent of this market, but Richard Farrell of Ledbury Research believes that number will increase. "The jewellery market of the future will, over time, come to resemble the watch market more closely, with its broad range of meaningful and recognisable consumer brands," Farrell says.

Bulgari founded Enigma in 1989 originally to produce innovative watches of his own design, returning to jewellery in 2003 with theaim of launching a conceptual contemporary brand. Today, Enigma operates from a Genevabased corporate centre presiding over two branches: "Enigma Jewels", headquartered in Rome; and "Enigma Time," with headquarters in Geneva.

"I only wanted to go back to jewellery if I could do something different," he says. "I saw that jewellery had been banalised by marketing and was no longer creative. In luxury the brand has become the surrogate of the product. Even 25 years ago, when the brandisation of jewellery started, I saw that the design factor should be key to identifying the brand. The idea of added value fascinated me then and overtook my passion for stones." Thus, Enigma relies not on big stones or the dripdown from high jewellery, but on taste.

Designs influenced by architecture are built around archetypal motifs and symbols such as the golden sphere; the arrow; flexible gold and gemstone mosaics depicting a lion or a human face; the shell; and lips ("I wanted to interpret lips better than Dali," says Bulgari). Enigma's catalogue comprises about 1,600 products.

"I believe luxury is about discriminating by taste and not by price," says Bulgari. "Taste is the one thing today that cannot be bought, but it can be learnt. Preciousness is not enough." The global jewellery market was estimated to be worth Dollars 146bn by India's Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council in 2005 and set to rise to Dollars 230bn by 2015. The question for Bulgari now is: how many of those purchasers can he carve out? Decoratively, of course.