BEA NOVELLI was born in Geneva, under the sign of Aquarius with Leo
rising. Her mother is Italian, native of Mantova, and her father is Swiss,
from Zermatt.
Unusual journey for a designer who studied at a commercial school and has
a good experience in the juridical sector.
But for her everything began during a summer holiday in
Rimini, Italy, where the cousin of her husband, Piero, owns a small shoe
factory and when he asked her to assist him in the elaboration of the woman
shoes collection.
BEA offered her innate sense of esthetic, her sensibility
to associating colors, her delicacy for the lightness of the forms.
Slowly her interest for shoe designing is growing as she
was always found of shoes. During three consecutive summers, she spends the
morning at the beach and the afternoon until late, imagining, realizing,
correcting, trying the new models, with the help of Athos, the responsible
modelist.
In 1993, she takes a modeling course at the Ravenna
Academia of Fine Arts and finally decides to open her own store selling
coordinated BEA NOVELLI shoes and bags, in the heart of the Old City of
Geneva.
In the meantime, her cousin Piero has implemented a
significant production workshop and is realizing collections for others
designers, some of them being very well known in Italy. To finance her
project, Bea received a loan from her mother in law Caterina, and sells her
car to pay the first year’s rent.
The first months are very difficult. In 1994, the
economic crisis provoked a slump in consuming and there are 15000 unemployed
in Geneva.
BEA is offering accessories and a unique client-oriented
service, with custom-made models, but this is not well understood and
clients often ask only the same shoe in a different color. The store is
going down-stream and Caterina almost thinks she won’t be reimbursed.
However, six months later appeared new materials, new
colors, new models. The product is re-positioned, taking into account the
conservative Geneva mind and BEA proposes both classical and new look
models, quite a difficult task !
Customers are now coming as far as from central
Switzerland, from London, or from Monaco. The orders are coming in by
telephone and by fax. The address book contains 3000 names that Julien, her
son, has entered into a database program in order to personalize the mailing
sent twice a year to each customer.
In 1997, another turning-point: BEA begins to collaborate
with a designer of Vigevano near Milan to explore the possibilities of
microfiber, a strong and elegant new material. Thereafter, the sales of the
new models rise by 30%.
When a foreign financial group is willing to acquire the
majority in the business: "No thank you, I prefer to carry on alone"
is the answer she gives.
To protect herself, she registers the name BEA NOVELLI
both in Switzerland and at the international level, and the trademark BEA
NOVELLIÒ Geneve is officially born. Some bad gossips can be heard: "it
looks like DonnaKaran New-York". She replies: "No, not really,
because Mrs. Karan has an Asiatic financer backing her, and we are not
comparable".
Business continues to increase, so that she has to hire
two collaborators to free some time for creation and for travel in order to
be aware of the new ideas. New York is the best place to feel the trend, the
changing tendencies; that is why the Venitian brocart mule, her very first
creation selling uninterruptedly since 1995, is now available at Saks and
Bergdorf. As an agreement needs to be found, the negotiations are still
going on.
Other perspectives, other objectives. Enthusiasm is
always there. Maybe a store in London, also the 5th Avenue New
York dream with all the risks, but also the immediate opportunities that can
only be found in the United States.
