The story
Founded by Daniel Swarovski in 1895.1
Daniel Swarovski was born in Jiřetín pod Bukovou, a village in northern Bohemia (now the Czech Republic), 20 km (12 miles) from the current border with Poland. His father was a glass cutter and owned a small glass factory. It was there that the young Swarovski served an apprenticeship, becoming skilled in the art of glass-cutting. In 1892 he and business partner Armand Kosmann patented an electric cutting machine that facilitated the production of crystal glass.
In 1895, Swarovski, Armand Kosmann, and Franz Weis founded the Swarovski company, originally known as A. Kosmann, D. Swarovski & Co. and shortened to KS & Co. The company established a crystal-cutting factory in Wattens, Tyrol (Austria), to take advantage of local hydroelectricity for the energy-intensive grinding processes Daniel Swarovski had patented. This factory was home to the first crystal-cutting machines that revolutionized the jewelry business by creating a method for the mass production of crystals. Swarovski's vision was to make "a diamond for everyone" by making crystals affordable.
In 1899, it first used the edelweiss flower in its logo and expanded to France, where it was known as 'Pierres Taillées du Tyrol' (lit. 'Cut stones from Tyrol'). In 1919, Swarovski founded Tyrolit, bringing the grinding and polishing tools from the crystal business into a different market.
In 1935, Swarovski's son Wilhelm created a customized pair of binoculars, which led to the launch of Swarovski Optik 14 years later. Swarovski Optik manufactures optical instruments such as binoculars, spotting scopes, rifle scopes and telescopes.
In 1977, Swarovski entered the United States' jewelry market.
Remaining a family-run business, Swarovski appointed Robert Buchbauer, the great-great-grandson of company founder Daniel Swarovski, as its new CEO in April 2020 with Mathias Margreiter serving as the company's CFO. Buchbauer had previously served as chairman of the company's executive board and as head of its consumer goods division, positions he retained after being appointed as CEO. Reported at the time as a major company shake-up, the change would see the founder's great-great-granddaughter, Nadja Swarovski, lose her roles managing the company's communications strategy along with its fine jewelry label Atelier Swarovski; she had previously become the first female member of the Swarovski executive board in 2012, a role she retained along with responsibility for the company's sustainability efforts and its charitable foundation. Alongside the executive changes, the company also closed 750 retail stores, laid off some 6,000 employees, and promoted its B2B creative director Giovanna Battaglia Engelbert to serve as the Global Creative Director of Swarovski Group, the first so-named person in the company's 125-year history.
Tasked with the full creative direction of Swarovski and with the responsibility to "re-imagine [its] product portfolio across all divisions", Engelbert released her first retail collection for the company in February 2021 with a second collection released in September of the same year; both drew on archival references to designs that founder Daniel Swarovski had created for the company. Expanding the company's retail offering, Engelbert also hired Swarovski-family member Marina Raphael to design and develop its first handbag line, to be released under the company's Atelier Swarovski marque.
Further shake-ups to the company's management would follow in late 2021; less than 18 months into their roles, Robert Buchbauer and Mathias Margreiter were announced to be stepping down from their CEO and CFO positions. Shareholder disputes over restructuring plans for the company were cited as the cause of the change. In October 2021, Michele Molon was appointed as the company's interim CEO with Frederik Westring announced as its CFO. The change would mark the first time that Swarovski would be led by a non-family member, with Italian-born Molon long having worked at the company but unrelated to founder Daniel Swarovski.
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Involvement with Nazism
Members of the Swarovski family were early, active and enthusiastic champions of Nazism, and at least six of its members maintained membership in the illegal party prior to Austria's annexation to Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. Three weeks earlier, 500 marchers in the Tyrolean town of Wattens held a torchlight procession that ended with chants of "Sieg Heil" and "Heil Hitler". The majority of the participants, police determined, were Swarovski plant employees, among them Swarovski family heirs Alfred, Wilhelm and Friedrich.
In its report to the state police on 14 February 1947, the Innsbruck district administrator called company head Alfred Swarovski "an enthusiastic member of the NSDAP". Alfred Swarovski praised Hitler at business gatherings and took actions as a regional business leader to ensure that "Tyrolean industry could be integrated as smoothly as possible into the enormous gears of the economy of Greater Germany and into the National Socialist economic order". He sent "grateful loyalty greetings" to Adolf Hitler on his 49th birthday and arranged a donation of 100,000 shillings for Hitler to establish a holiday home in Tyrol.
The company exploited its political connections and stewardship of the regional business association to emerge stronger from the Nazi era. During the war it diversified its production and expanded its business lines, adding abrasives, optical devices, telescopes, binoculars and other product lines and growing from 500 to almost 1,200 employees between the Anschluss and March 1944.
Meanwhile, Nazi records suggest that Kosmann, the company's Jewish co-founder, was deported and likely murdered.
"From my party affiliation, I only took advantage of the fact that it was possible for me as a party member to initiate the negotiations necessary for maintaining the company and to bring it to a successful conclusion with the responsible economic agencies of the Reich," Alfred Swarovski told the Innsbruck People's Court after the war.
In 1994, historian Horst Schreiber wrote about Swarovski's past but was not granted access to company archives.
The contemporary Swarovski company commissioned historian Dieter Stiefel as "a step towards dealing with our history in a serious and very pro-active manner", board spokesman Markus Langes-Swarovski said in 2018; however, the study was not published because, Langes-Swarovski said, "Swarovski is a company that generally tries to keep the owners' personal stories largely out of the public eye because it does nothing for the business."
From Wikipedia’s article on Swarovski, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5