About Pandora Jewellery

By Anita Hale


The name Pandora is synonymous with a widely known jewellery designer that started in Denmark. They have risen to fame thanks to their charms and accompanying charm bracelets. Pandora are arguably the leading charm manufacturer to date largely thanks to the sheer number of charm designs they have produced. To date they have over 800 unique charms under their belt and have traded in over 50 countries. In addition to charms, Pandora have also produced a range of other jewellery. This range includes earrings, pendants, rings and watches.

Even though Pandora is now a hugely popular global brand, the company comes from somewhat humble beginnings. One of the founders of Pandora is Per Enevoldsen, who originally worked as a goldsmith. It was Per and his wife Winnie that set the ball rolling when they opened up their own jewellery shop in Copenhagen. The couple were constantly on the lookout for interesting jewellery to sell in their shop. Their hunt took them as far as Thailand, which they found to be a good place to search for bargains.

It was Thailand that was the inspiration behind Per and Winnie's decision to shift their focus towards manufacturing jewellery and not just selling it. And so in 1984 they opened up an overseas factory called Pandora Productions to do just this. But they were still without a range of jewellery to make. This is where Lone Frandsen came in. Lone was given the prestigious yet daunting task of designing the first range of jewellery to be made by Pandora Productions.

By 1987 the company name had been shortened to just "Pandora". And clearly change was in the air as all manufacturing duties were relocated to Denmark. Per and Winnie also decided to set up Pandora's headquarters in Copenhagen. This subsequently lead to the closing of Pandora's retail operations. Pandora was now strictly operating as a jewellery designer and wholesale provider.

The focus was now firmly on making great jewellery as opposed to selling it for other jewellery makers. Therefore, a decision was made in 1996 to hire another jewellery designer to work alongside Lone. Enter Lisbeth En Larsen. Lisbeth and Lone would be responsible for creating a line of jewellery that would look unlike anything else on the market.

By the year 2000 Pandora had struck gold. This was when the public caught their first glimpse of Pandora's range of charms and charm bracelets. Charms had been coming back into fashion and suddenly Pandora had caught the zeitgeist of the fashion world. Charms would no longer be considered quaint or old-fashioned. Instead, Pandora sleekly marketed them with a tagline of "one charm for every unforgettable moment in your life." The charms themselves were machined from fine quality materials. These included sterling silver, 14 carat gold and handmade Murano glass. The jewellery market had not yet seen such a vast array of different charms for sale, particularly ones that were made so well. Pandora added attractive pricing to their charms and this also helped draw in the customers.

But even though Pandora offered hundreds of different high quality charms, there were still rival companies out there. So how did they manage to corner the market so effectively? The answer may lie with a simple yet effective piece of machining. You will have seen them on any number of nuts, bolts and screws in any hardware store across the world. The secret for Pandora charms lay in their threads. These threads meant that each charm had to be screwed onto a Pandora bracelet. This appealed to customers as it ensured that the charm could not simply fall off the bracelet should it become undone. However, this also prevented Pandora charms from fitting onto any other type of bracelet. In short, once you became a Pandora customer, it made financial sense to stay a Pandora customer.




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