Interview with Lavinia Lazar – Owner of Carlette Jewellery

Valahia News had an exclusive interview with Lavinia Lazar, the creator of the Carlette jewelry line, who revealed some details behind the business story of a Romanian entrepreneur in Switzerland.

Lavinia Lazar, the owner of Carlette, gave an exclusive interview in which she revealed surprising details behind the curtain of a jewellery brand. Here’s the full video interview with the Carlette Jewellery owner:

Interview with Lavinia Lazar

Hello, everyone! We are starting our interview series with an exceptional guest. Her name is Lavinia Lazar. She’s a Romanian businesswoman who created the jewellery line called Carlette.
In this video, we will discuss her journey in creating this line, her challenges, and her future plans. Hi Lavina! Thank you so much for accepting our invitation. How are you?

Lavinia Lazar: Thank you very much for inviting me today. It’s an honour and a pleasure to discuss about Carlette, which is actually quite a strong passion of mine. And I’m looking forward to revealing to you and your audience some of the secrets of the Carlette story.

Recently, we have included you in our top 10 Romanian jewellery designers. What inspired you to start Carlette as a new jewellery brand?

Lavinia Lazar: Thank you very much. The presence, our presence, and Carlette’s presence in this top 10 of Romanian Jewellery is an honour and recognition for the effort of my team and our partners working in the success of our brand. Carlette was born out of a passion of mine since I was a child, a passion that was following me through all my career and for my personality and development, and during the pandemic, where everybody was settling down and calming, I have found the time as well as the resources actually to dedicate it to my passion, and I have started to create, to scribble the brand Carlette as well as the entire concept. To be more precise, to answer your question, one day, I was coming back from one of my business trips in London, and during the trip, I was actually scribbling on the piece of the airline’s napkin the entire concept of Carlette as well as not only the design actually, with the pieces with the Carlettes to the basic system as well, but also the logo and the brand and the entire concept behind Carlette.

But why Carlette? What is the meaning behind this name and logo?

Lavinia Lazar: I think, like any entrepreneur, they are trying to find the right name or the right colour of the brand that resonates with the emotion and each customer. Carlette has a personal story because my daughter is called Carla. From here, the emotion, I would say the innocence, the beauty of a child combined with my longtime passion and strong ambition created a name that it’s resonating with the I would say sensuality of jewellery, and also with the power of double t into the brand, which describes the personality of each of us, but also with the femininity that Carlette is bringing just by pronouncing the world itself. All these words that I’ve just described the brand and how I actually based the name on these pillars, they were defined and can also be discovered by your customers in the collection that we are heading today in the market.

What sets Carlette apart from other jewellery brands? What’s the uniqueness?

Lavinia Lazar: Carlette differentiates itself from our competitors and other jewellery brands through the innovation we are trying to bring into a mature market. The patented design we have had in Switzerland, not only for the Swiss market but also internationally, allows each of our customers to be part of the design before the final product is sent into the market. In other words, we are introducing not only an innovation in the design but also innovation into a business model, meaning that I’m saying that we are inviting the final customers to define and align with their personality features as well because Carlette allows you to extend, retract, add and subtract the Carlette pieces which are the interchangeable charms that we have created for all our customers, to adapt to the event that we have in every day, the mood and also to be versatile for the personality that we have and also for the style. It’s very hard to believe that the big designers currently ruling the market today consider that we have a single style from the day we are born to the day we die. So this style is also versatile and changes according to the events or according to the people that are coming into our lives. And this is why Carlette is an answer for all of us, and in my opinion, Carlette could also be a trend-setting in the jewellery market in future.

What does modular jewellery mean, and how does Carlette innovate in this field?

Lavinia Lazar: I love this question all the time because modular jewellery is exactly what describes Carlette. It is adding or retracting the piece we have created for our customers to change and add beauty to our jewellery pieces. Modularity means that we can adapt. We can adapt to the colours that we are wearing today, and we can adapt to the environment in which we’re going. It can bring the modular thinking and the modular facets of our personality reflected into the pieces of jewelry. So modularity for Carlette means the different personalities we have in the different situations we are in. It can also mean the lady or the woman itself, and the beauty inside beauty of each other that can wear a piece of jewellery without thinking that she needs to protect her pieces of jewellery from creams and perfumes or prevent allergy to some of the materials. The majority of Carlette is allowing each of us as we are, to wear the pieces of jewelry and create the design the way we feel it matches us.

What were the challenges of patenting a jewellery mechanism in Switzerland?

Lavinia Lazar: Wow, it was a big journey with many challenges. I had a bit of naive craziness to start doing and patenting the design into a world of watches or designs and jewelry pieces. But I really believed in the idea and the innovation itself. Because many women like me need this type of piece of jewelry where we have a base system to which we can then add, allowing us to be optimized in the budget, having an excellent quality that can resist over time and external, internal factors and also allowing us to be versatile and express our inner mood through the jewelry.

Would you encourage foreign investors to invest in the Romania market or rather in Swiss or other markets?

Lavinia Lazar: The Swiss market is supporting startup companies very much. A variety of funds and investors are looking for new ideas to create a development not only for us as a customer but also for the environment. So opening the company and investing in a company in Switzerland was not as difficult as I thought. Once the language barrier is crossed, the country and the countries we’re living in support us a lot. But on the other side, the Romanian market is so close to our hearts. We cannot just by leaving or because destiny is bringing us to another country or career or any other path, forget Romania. I cannot advise an investor to invest more in Switzerland or Romania. I think the opportunities do business are done by the return of investment, but also, it’s driven by the people you’re working with. So that’s, in my opinion, the criteria that can define a decision to invest in Switzerland, Romania or any other countries in Europe and outside Europe.

What celebrity from Romania or abroad would you like to see wearing your jewellery line?

Lavinia Lazar: Uh, that’s a nice question, and I hope I’m not making any enemies today. So I would like everybody, every celebrity, and every single woman to wake up in the morning and think about what kind of Carlette they would like to wear today and how versatile they would like to be. I have my personal preferences in terms of celebrities. Still, the celebrities that I would like to wear Carlette and identify with the Carlette girl concept is the type of person that is very playful inside and outside. It’s also young in spirit, and it’s also very modern, fashionable and has the courage to express itself and define itself and redefine itself every time of the day. There are many celebrities and many people that can do that. Still, I would definitely like to be represented by some of the Hollywood celebrities today, as well as our VIPs in Romania, who I believe has huge potential not just inside our borders but outside.

Would you encourage women who want to start a career as an entrepreneur?

Lavinia Lazar: I encourage everybody to go or walk on this path of being an entrepreneur and being an entrepreneur it’s a hard job. Entrepreneur means, of course, and everybody is describing as a key of success following your dreams, achieving what you have always wanted, following your passion, hard work, and we have many successful startups that today they also have security, and financial security as well. In my experience, which I’m very much at the beginning of being an entrepreneur, an entrepreneur needs to fit your personality as well. I don’t believe that everybody can become an entrepreneur. Everybody can maybe speak and have opinions of what an entrepreneur means.
But it’s quite a difficult path, I have to say, and it requires a lot of determination, ambition, experience and always the right people around you. In my opinion, you cannot be an entrepreneur by yourself. The team defines your success as an entrepreneur.

What plans do you have for the future?

Lavinia Lazar: We have big dreams, and our vision, the Carlette vision, is actually to extend our patented design outside of the jewellery market. We want to find the right investor who is supporting us and believes in our idea to help us get into the gadgets accessories, bags accessories, sunglasses accessories, and shoe accessories. Because our patent, modularity and versatility that we are bringing with Carlette can apply to all the areas that define the accessories world. And why not? I mean, the world is full of options. Maybe there are opportunities that I’m not even thinking of right now. So, our vision is to become the first choice of every woman in Europe, outside Europe, internationally, and worldwide when they wake up in the morning and they have difficulties choosing the right accessory that defines their mood and precisely when they have an active lifestyle that brings together also the challenges of daily life as a mom, as a business person, as a friend, as a supporter in all the facets of our personalities, and that’s our vision to scale up and to become a choice of each of us.

Great. Thank you so much again for accepting our invitation. And good luck with your expansion in the international market. I hope we will see us soon.

Lavinia Lazar: Thank you very much! We are expanding now in other countries besides Romania, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, and France. We welcome all your audience and the participants today to check us where we are, follow us everywhere and join our journey. Thank you!