Month: September 2023

In 2021 it celebrated 60 years in business. During these 60 years Marcolin, the Italian company from Longarone that designs, manufactures and distributes eyewear worldwide, has gone a very long way. The 15 million pairs of glasses sold on average every year are a testament to this. But so are other figures.

Since 1968, Marcolin started speaking many languages. As an addition to its first 8 distributor network in the United States, another location opened in France in 1976, and the company soon expanded its presence worldwide with 15 branches in the US, Brazil, Asia, Mexico, Europe, Africa and the Middle East.

It’s a young company: 69% of its approximately 2000 employees are aged under 50 years, and 57% of them are women. And they are all engaged with vocational education and training: just think that over the past year they had over 5600 hours of training.

Today Marcolin distributes eyewear for more than 20 licensed brands in over 125 countries and has 1 proprietary brand (Web Eyewear).

One of its keys to success is the “time factor”: the creation of every new frame takes 11 months of hard work in Longarone. It’s the time needed to go from an idea to its design to the creation of a prototype –requiring great artisanal skills and precision- up to the selection of materials and colors and then the manufacturing phase.

But eyewear manufacturing also takes time. The time needed to carry out over 60 steps including, just to mention a few, temple and front creation, assembling, tumbling, cutting, and lens insertion. And then refinement, the phase where the frames are personalized, and adjusting, when all the components of a frame are checked.

Choco-camel or “foliage” tones. These are just two of the endless color options (and lens-frame combos) that are available today. But, whatever color is selected, to verify lens compliance with existing regulations and before and after any frame hits the market, a great number of optical and mechanical tests are conducted. Testing is carried out in-house by our Product Quality and Compliance Department and by the Marcolin Certification Lab, as well as by qualified third-party laboratories.

It is in the extraordinary setting of the historic Olivetti showroom in Venice, under the loggia of the Procuratie Vecchie, the space skilfully designed by Carlo Scarpa in 1957 for Adriano Olivetti which has been reopened to the public thanks to FAI, that Marcolin wanted to set the new campaign for its Web Eyewear line autumn-winter collection. This was no accidental choice, given the affinity between the elegant intelligence of the great Venetian architect – also translated into extreme attention to detail – and the sophisticated taste coupled with knowledge of materials expressed by the Marcolin brand.

The Olivetti showroom, an authentic work of art arranged over two floors, welcomes visitors with the sculpture-fountain entitled Nudo al sole [Naked in the Sun] by Alberto Viani, a gilded bronze work from 1956 (and recently restored) that Scarpa had placed in a black Belgian stone basin filled with water to reflect its upside-down image. But the real stroke of genius is the staircase that dominates the central hall, with its steps made of Aurisina marble, widely used in Venice until the Middle Ages, which seem to be suspended in the void and lend a sense of lightness and airiness to the whole room. Above, in the small areas formed by the two long galleries, a number of historic Olivetti typewriters and calculating machines, themselves examples of Italian design excellence, are on display. Like the frames from the Web Eyewear collection, Marcolin’s house brand created in 2008 and now known the world over.

The themes of light and water therefore dominate the space of the Olivetti showroom, the forerunner of modern flagship stores. Two elements that are known to characterise Venetian topography and art, and which are evoked here by a skilful use of natural light. And of the materials, mixed in a continuous play on colour contrasts and transparencies: from the marble and Murano glass floor (Scarpa began his career in the Murano glassworks) to the African teak and rosewood of the balconies, through to the bevelled crystal glass display cases. Transparencies that are echoed in the acetate frames with titanium details from the new Web Eyewear season. The lightness of which, enhanced for this campaign by the lens of American fashion photographer Nicolas Kern, conveys the idea of simple, contemporary elegance. Minimalist design, natural colours, textured effects and transparencies: as in Scarpa’s architecture, the beauty of these glasses lies in each individual detail. And this, perhaps, is the key to successfully combining style and comfort, sophistication and functionality. In architecture as in product design.

Round, irregular, butterfly or cat-eye. And then metal or acetate, black or coloured: these are the infinite ways in which frames can surround our eyes, bringing the best out in them. Not everyone knows, however, which and how many special processes go into making a pair of glasses. Lara Marogna, Group Style & Product Development at Marcolin, explains one of the most important and delicate processes: tumbling. “Its name comes from the machine that is used, the tumbler. This is the name given to the cylindrical machine, also known as the ‘barrel’, which is divided into tanks inside which, once the shaping is complete, the frame fronts and temples that will later make up the glasses are inserted, together with pieces of beech and birch wood of different sizes and balls of abrasive paste. At this point, the machine is closed and started up: the tumbler starts to turn on itself at a speed that can vary depending on the material (metal or acetate), and with each rotation, by dropping and rubbing, pieces of wood and abrasive pastes do the job of roughing, polishing and final buffing of the frames.” A long job because, for each of the three stages, the tumbler runs continuously for 12 to 14 hours.

At each step, when the tumbler is unloaded, the workers check the frames one by one. And when it’s time to fill it back up, they must know how to perfectly dose the pieces of wood and paste that make up the polishing material mixture. And they can do this by checking by touch that it is neither too dry nor too oily; therefore, experience and knowledge of materials are required. It is precisely the right balance of these ingredients that gives an excellent result. A pair of glasses in which every detail of the frame is perfect for its function, therefore resistant but also aesthetically impeccable.” And Laura Marogna, who began her professional career in the world of jewellery, knows that it is from the care of these stages, which take place behind the scenes in a factory, that we can obtain a glamorous and elegant product, capable of making us dream and enhancing our personal style.

After this period, the tumbler is opened and the frames are checked one by one (for the uninitiated, it is surprising to see how at each step, the frames are more beautiful and shinier). Next, they are put into another tumbler, where the next stage runs for another 12-14 hours. In all, the process takes four days to achieve the result of a perfectly smooth and shiny frame. Ready to be finished and leave the factory.

It is not, however, a purely mechanical process, where the tumbler does everything: what makes the difference in tumbling is the human touch, thanks to the eyes and hands of the workers who manage and follow the whole process.