FROM ITALY, BY WAY OF SANTA FE
Italian handbag designer aims to sell her unique products from New Mexico
It’s been a long road for an Italian handbag designer who is setting up business in Santa Fe and launching her first product to coincide with the opening of The Santa Fe Opera’s Lucia Di Lammermoor.
The initial handbag, the Lucia Clutch, set to be launched June 29 with the opening of the Italian opera, is an embossed leather pressed on a handcarved wooded mold with a coral color that matches the Santa Fe night sky in summer, said Vera Tucci, founder of the handbag fashion company, Italisan.
After the Santa Fe launch, Tucci has designed specialized bags for markets in Dallas, and then an overnight or weekend bag that will be sold in New Jersey. Tucci said she will focus on markets with large Italian-American populations that would value the uniqueness of her products. All the products will be manufactured in Italy.
Because there was only a limited supply of the leather, Italisan is offering just 42 of the Lucia Clutch bags at $500 before June 29 and $600 thereafter. The goal for other bags is to sell 200 to 400 of each product.
The business model might be counterintuitive to the concept of internet marketing, where manufacturers hope something can be produced in quantities sufficient enough for mass production, making less in individual sales but selling millions.
For Michelle Miller, a business consultant to Tucci and founder of the High Desert Discovery District, the path for Italisan is the only way to find a niche in today’s competitive world of fashion.
“The whole idea is to hold back supply and increase the value of the price point of the bag,” she said.
“We want people to follow us in a real way and wait for the next launch,” Tucci said. “It’s not about quantity.”
Tucci has a political science degree and was a social worker before starting an information security company in her hometown of Naples. She still works at the firm, T-Consulting, and is traveling back and forth as she builds her fashion company in Santa Fe.
After working in technology and internet security, Tucci wanted to launch her website based in the United States because service and reliability are better, especially shipping and transportation. She also wanted to be outside a major city.
“I would have been by myself with a billion other starter-uppers in New York,” she said.
She initially got in touch with a business mentor in Albuquerque, and that person recommended Santa Fe as a better fit. Her company will be located with other startup firms at Santa Fe Community College, and she expects to hire as many as 25 employees in Santa Fe for web and customer support.
The company is so far self-funded but is seeking $500,000 in seed money.
Miller is a consultant who specializes in helping startups that will grow and stay in New Mexico. She has worked with Tucci to refocus her company on a younger, individualized buyer who values authenticity.
She said this growing consumer group is more determined to spend its dollars on products with strict labor and manufacturing guidelines and that tell their own story.
The Italian-style handbag once did that, she said, but has been diminished by cheap labor and materials and mass production.
Italisan, Miller said, “puts value and meaning back into the Italian handbag, and plans to do it from Santa Fe.”