OUR HISTORY
Romualdo's bet. On a Vespa across Italy.
The founding of the company, family unity, an entrepreneur’s courage.
1951 – The war ended just a few years ago.
It is a time of crisis, but also of opportunity. Romualdo Neri has worked as a blacksmith, painted the pylons of railway power lines, driven trucks and coaches.
He celebrates his 23rd birthday and becomes a goldsmith working for third parties. He finds not only work, but also the help of his mother and sister.
As demand grows, he looks around and begins hiring friends as well. The business is a family affair, the workshop is the home itself. First one room, then the garage, and finally a new floor built for the purpose. He is talented and the business thrives: a second workshop is added in a nearby space.
In 1956 comes the great leap: his own work and his own hallmark, 26AR. Romualdo’s is the 26th of the more than a thousand businesses that would go on to define the Arezzo economy in the years that followed.
A positive experience with a partner who, unfortunately, decides after a few years to move to Venezuela. The small company no longer has the strength it needs and Romualdo decides to try other paths.
Into his suitcase go experience, courage and a desire for change. It will be a suitcase that travels with him for many years, crossing Italy. On the Vespa, with his family.
From his suitcase he draws out the experience of the small workshop and exports this model to the Veneto: a central hub surrounded by a constellation of small family workshops.
He creates work and relationships. Each morning he loads the gold onto the Vespa, makes the rounds of his collaborators, returns to his role as company manager, and then, in the evening, gets back on the Vespa to collect the day’s production.
When this experience reaches its peak and full maturity, Romualdo does not wait for the decline to begin. His instinct and his desire for change continue to guide him.
This time all the way to Calabria, where he can find the manual skill required for the company’s core business: the hand-made chain.
His destination is Torretta di Crucoli, in the province of Crotone, where girls from a young age weave alongside their mothers and grandmothers to prepare their trousseau – a manual dexterity that can be channelled into chain-making.
It is 1971. Work is scarce, women stay at home, regular employment contracts are a distant dream.
Romualdo hires and regularises several dozen young women. He ends up challenging entrenched power structures and illegal practices. The threats multiply.
In the end, the painful but inevitable decision: leave Calabria and return to where it all began.
To relocate production quickly, he needs a facility that is already operational – and he finds one in Caprese Michelangelo, in the province of Arezzo.
It is 1972. Romualdo continues to focus on his classic product, the hand-made rope chain, and decides to expand production.
Silver joins gold, reflecting both the early signs of economic crisis and the spirit of diversification that would become a hallmark of the Neri brand.
It is during the Seventies that the fire-enamelled fish pendant emerges – a kind of signature piece in the family’s history.
Rings, chains, crosses.
Romualdo is joined in a stable, committed way by his children Danilo, Carlo and Luana. Growth seems unstoppable.
The company reopens in 1988 – no longer in Caprese Michelangelo, but in Arezzo.
Alongside the Neri family is a group of collaborators: not merely employees, but people called upon to be active protagonists in the company’s development. And they too do not give up in the most difficult moments.
A new start, with one condition that becomes non-negotiable: work will be done, and will always be done, only under the family hallmark. It proves to be the winning strategy.
The company specialises in the production of hollow chains, the backbone that will make it a sector leader, allowing it to grow despite the global economic crisis, the upheaval of the goldsmithing industry, and the transformation of demand and markets.
Neri bets on innovation: patents and new products. On design and quality.
On internationalisation, and therefore on customising products for every foreign market.
What works in London may not work in Dubai, and Neri develops and produces a dedicated catalogue for each area of the world in which it operates.
The formula is a winning one. Romualdo’s Vespa has been in the garage for many years now. First his children, and today his grandchildren, fly from Europe to Asia to the Arab countries.
The third generation is preparing not only to join the company, but to bring with them the value of new and modern professional skills.
Everything has changed, but not the name, and not the values of the Neri family.