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CORALS FROM TORRE DEL GRECO AND GOLD FROM NAPLES: AN ALLIANCE TO MAINTAIN ELITE STATUS
The 'house' of coral and cameos is and will continue to be Torre del Greco, in the province of Naples, where the fourth jewellery centre in Italy after Arezzo, Vicenza and Valenza Po is based. However, regional agreements reached in the past few years aiming to create a jewellery centre in Campania are pushing many local companies to outsource inland - with one objective: build a network and exploit synergies with other Neapolitan jewellers.
The coral sector in Torre del Greco, which includes approximately 400 companies, directly employs at least 1,000 people without counting the laboratory staff acting as subcontractors for the larger companies. Craftsmanship is a unifying element among the businesses, which do not usually employ more than 10 craftsmen and maintain a strong family component. The sector's annual production spans from smooth coral to incisions and sculptures, but there are also goldsmith's craft industries. The Torre del Greco 'school' also sets itself apart for gemstone cameos worked as bas-reliefs.
Despite the crisis period the sector went through in the past few years, demand remains stable. Thanks to a flexible working structure, both the medium to large enterprises and the numerous small and even very small labs have remained competitive. For the past few years, in order to better deal with the ever-changing market, companies are forming clusters and working together: thus were born a trade association (Assocoral) and a consortium (Arca). In January 2001, Assocoral reached an agreement with the Consorzio Tarì, the first goldsmith's craft pole of Central-Southern Italy - created in 1996 in Marcianise, in the province of Caserta - for the outsourcing of over 200 Torre del Greco businesses to the industrial area of Marcianise.
The synergies which had begun in the early 2000's have developed through the years, leading to the creation of the "Oromare" programme, which aims to rationalise the region's gold manufacturing activities. Oromare is not, however, a simple consortium (www.oromare.com), "but rather - as its President Gino Di Luca explains - a production centre for sector operators where unique businesses gather, businesses with two centuries worth of history and an incomparable wealth of knowledge in terms of materials and international markets". Besides classic jewellery, cameos and corals are the distinctive products of the industry: Oromare can boast the only district in the world which produces hand carved seashell cameos and where coral craftsmanship is of high artistic value.
The consortium, however, is not only about corals and cameos: in craft shops around the Marcianise area (75 million euros invested, up to 1,500 workers and a total of 150 thousand square meters) there will also be all of the region's goldsmiths. "The Torre del Greco gold craftsmanship - Mr Di Luca explains - is very light, with an apparently gaudy use of gold but which is in fact very light and matched with semiprecious stones, mainly coral, cameos, turquoise and pearls ".
The ability to bring together different operators in a supply chain system is one of the characteristics of Oromare which, thanks to its workmanship's traditional excellence, is able to constantly offer new, trendy and innovative products. "Some of our associates - says Mr Di Luca - are already innovating, and with great style. Oromare, as a matter of fact, is not only in charge of offering a space to all members of the consortium who relocate their activities here, but also of allowing local producers to share their experience and develop new solutions". The clustering, at only a few meters' distance, of craftsmen specialised in a single branch of gold craftsmanship thus ends up giving the supply chain a new strategic relevance.
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