DIAMONDS and emeralds were everyday topics at home when Francesco Trapani was growing up in Naples in Italy.
After all, his mother, Lia Bulgari, comes from a family of Greek silversmiths who had migrated to Italy in the 1870s. The Bulgari business later expanded to precious stones and jewellery.
As a child, Mr Trapani would visit the Bulgari jewellery store in Rome which belonged to his grandfather.
But truth be told, he was not all that keen on the family business.
'The decision to join the company came only later,' said the dapper 50-year-old, whose late father was a surgeon.
He got an economics degree from the University of Naples and studied business administration at New York University.
In 1981, his uncles asked him to join Bulgari. He hesitated.
'I'd spent a few years in New York and was undecided because I had other opportunities working for big American multi-nationals,' he said.
But the lure of the business proved too great.
He joined the company and became its chief executive officer in 1984 when he was just 27. His mother's brothers, Paolo and Nicola Bulgari, are chairman and vice-chairman respectively.
Over two decades, Mr Trapani has helped Bulgari grow from a company with five stores and 80 employees to more than 240 stores around the world employing more than 3,000 people.
The company, which is 52 per cent owned by the Bulgari family, is listed on the Milan and London stock exchanges.
Net revenue last year was 1.01 billion euros (S$2.14 billion), a 12 per cent increase over 2005's revenue. Net profit last year was 134.3 million euros, a 15 per cent increase over the previous year.
The success was not by chance.
'When I started, I had in my mind a strategy of multi-products, multi-countries, multi-channels,' Mr Trapani told Life! last Tuesday in Tokyo.
More than just jewellery
BULGARI is famous for its intricate jewellery that can cost millions of dollars.
Since the 1970s, it has diversified into high-end watches, fragrances, leather goods, silk collections and eyewear.
In 2004, it opened Bulgari Hotel in Milan, and Bulgari Hotels & Resorts opened in Bali last year.
Today, jewels account for 40 per cent of revenue, with watches taking 29 per cent, perfumes 20 per cent and accessories and others the remainder.
Mr Trapani was in Japan last week to oversee his latest baby - a gleaming 10-storey building in Tokyo's ultra-trendy Ginza shopping district.
Bulgari Ginza Tower, which houses the company's largest store and has a total of 5,766 sq m of space, had its official opening last Wednesday.
The facade and interiors were designed by Bulgari's architects while the structure, inspired by a jewel box, was designed by Japan's Shimizu Corporation.
Jewellery and watches occupy the first floor, accessories take up the second while the third contains a bridal salon and private rooms for VIP clients. The fourth floor is for after-sales customer service while Bulgari Japan's corporate offices occupy the fifth, sixth and seventh floors.
The top three floors are home to Il Ristorante, an Italian-inspired restaurant-bar operated by Bulgari.
The opening in the morning was marked by a traditional Japanese drum and dance performance at the rooftop.
That evening, the Bulgari family, including Mr Trapani's beautiful wife, Lorenza, 34, mingled with more than 300 of Tokyo's who's who including model Ai Tominaga.
The Ginza Tower is not the only splash Bulgari is making in Tokyo.
On Nov 2, it opened a new store in the equally designer-conscious district of Omotesando.
The 1,012 sq m shop in the GYRE shopping complex comes with a cafe and gourmet chocolate shop.
Asians love labels
MR TRAPANI sees the two stores as not just outlets but 'a very effective tool of communicating and promoting the Bulgari brand'.
He did not want to reveal how much was spent on Ginza Tower except that it was 'an important figure'.
Then again, Japan is a very important market.
Any designer brand worth its It Bag has staked out a standalone store in Tokyo, each trying to outdo the other in not only its products but also its building's architectural oomph and cutting-edge buzz.
Across the street from Bulgari Ginza Tower is rival Cartier, while a few doors away is jeweller Tiffany & Co. Everywhere you turn, store fronts scream Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Salvatore Ferragamo and every other label that will make a tai tai's heart beat faster.
With the Ginza and Omotesando stores, Bulgari now has 34 stores across 13 Japanese cities. Last year, Japan contributed 25 per cent of the group's revenue, the same as the whole of Europe (excluding Italy). Italy brings in 13 per cent, the rest of Asia 15 per cent and the Middle East 6 per cent.
As Mr Trapani put it: 'Japan is the largest luxury market in the world and is important for branding and image.'
In fact, Asia as a whole is important for the luxury market, and when pressed to explain Asians' hunger for designer labels, he puts it down to culture.
'Asian people are very fond of prestige... they use luxury products more than the Western people to tell about their social status.'
Which is why China - where it has eight stores so far - is an important market for Bulgari. It is also looking for more locations in Singapore where it currently has three stores. They are in Ngee Ann City, Hilton Shopping Gallery and Paragon.
'Singapore used to be, until a couple of years ago, a bit of a sleepy market. Now all of a sudden, things are changing rapidly because with the big boom of China and India, Singapore is now benefitting and the economy is growing,' he said.
The global hunger for luxe labels can only be good news for brands like his.
As for succession plans, Mr Trapani, who is a fourth-generation Bulgari, said it is unlikely the company will be run by a fifth-generation Bulgari, who are in any case very young now. Besides his two uncles, no other relative is involved in the business.
'To be honest, we don't have someone from the family who will be the next CEO. Probably the next CEO is someone from outside,' said the father of two girls, aged 12 and three, and a son aged 10.
Then again, talk of succession is way too premature.
Said the man who once hesitated about joining the family business but who has since turned it into a mini empire: 'I have a personal passion for the brand.'
'Asian people are very fond of prestige... they use luxury products more than the Western people to tell about their social status' Mr Francesco Trapani, Bulgari CEO, on Asians' love of designer labels
