In the vault at Lugano Diamonds’ headquarters in Newport Beach, California, CEO Moti Ferder unlocks one of dozens of drawers holding millions of dollars of jewelry to reveal a stunning necklace featuring 168 carats of diamonds cut to resemble snakeskin. “You need the light to break exactly the same from every direction, creating something that’s comfortable to wear, doesn’t catch on your hair,” he says. “All that needs to be planned.”
No one custom-ordered this $1.3 million necklace, which Lugano jewelers spent some 400 hours creating. It’s one of those pieces that the 55-year-old Ferder refers to as a “yellow Lamborghini,” meaning it’s never the first vehicle a person buys. He knows that finding the right buyer may take years of nurturing, which is why Lugano’s approach is low-key, in which “crafting exceptional experiences” is the secret to success.
Those experiences often begin at Privé, Lugano’s private club where members (a.k.a. customers) lounge and dine. The elegant 8,500-square-foot Newport Beach club features black walnut floors, ornate ceilings, furniture by Ceccotti Collezioni and Poltrana Frau and paintings by noted contemporary artists, including Barbara
Kasten and Jorge Pardo. For the wealthy Orange County families who drop by for a quiet dinner made by Privé’s private chef or a bottle of wine from its vast collection, “it’s meant to feel like an extension of your home,” says Lugano president Josh Gaynor, who spent years as the head of high jewelry at Bulgari North America.
Lugano’s eight “salons”—in spots such as Aspen, Palm Beach and Houston—feel more like an intimate living room than a jewelry boutique, and are the heart of Ferder’s ingenious marketing network. There is also a traveling equestrian show to lure new customers. With revenue up 53% to $471 million in the past year, Lugano is surging thanks in large part to Ferder’s unique magic trick of convincing his ultrarich clientele that he’s not just in it for the money.
To become a Privé member, it’s not enough just to be a well-heeled jewelry buyer; you must also be a generous supporter of charities. “We believe in philanthropy,” says Ferder, who charges tens of thousands of dollars to belong to Privé, Forbes estimates. “We believe in community, and we believe that people do business with people they want to do business with.”
Over the past three years, Lugano has donated more than $30 million to dozens of nonprofits, including Palm Beach’s Kravis Center for the Performing Arts and the Aspen Art Museum. In 2021, Lugano pledged $2.5 million to the
Orange County Art Museum to make admission free for ten years. That gift helped boost annual visitors from 20,000 to 250,000 and endeared Lugano to major art collectors including philanthropist Jane Holzer, who was one of Andy Warhol’s many muses in the 1960s.
Other Lugano members include Sheila Johnson, the billionaire cofounder of BET, who backs the Aspen Institute and Trust for the National Mall; and Georgina Bloomberg (daughter of former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg), a professional equestrian.
Born in Israel, Ferder grew up immersed in Tel Aviv’s diamond business, in which his father dealt in rough diamonds. Following his mandatory Israeli army service, Ferder apprenticed under master cutters while going to school at night for business and gemology.
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, he spent several years sourcing diamonds from Russia and even had a factory there. Though he sold in many countries, his biggest clients were in New York, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles. To survive increasing competition from cutters and wholesalers, he needed to cut out the middlemen, so he decided to immigrate to the United States. By then, Ferder and his wife, Idit, had settled on the Lugano name, inspired by the Swiss lake town renowned for its understated luxury.
When the Ferders drove into Newport Beach in 2005, they knew they had found a home for their family and Lugano, which they had founded the previous year. “It has great schools, little crime, no traffic inside the bubble,” he says. Little wonder: Newport Beach is one of the most expensive Zip codes in the country, with a median home price of nearly $3.5 million.
Lugano thrived in Newport, but Ferder knew that if he really wanted to build the business, he needed outside capital. In 2021, he sold 60% of the company to Compass Diversified, a Connecticut-based publicly traded holding company, for $200 million. At the time Lugano was generating $30 million a year of operating income (Ebitda) with an average sale price of $79,000. Since then, Lugano has grown to $192 million in Ebitda with an average sale of $450,000. Some pieces surpass $10 million. If Lugano continues to grow at this pace, it will soon unbalance Compass’ balance sheet, and the diversified holding company will look either to spin it off or sell to a luxury giant such as LVMH.
Over the past four years, with funding from Compass, Ferder has opened five more salons and expanded Lugano’s workforce, with jewelers in L.A., New York and Italy. Three more salons are set to open in 2025, beginning with one in Chicago. Lugano has also grown an inventory of gemstones and finished jewelry worth hundreds of millions so Ferder can meet expected demand growth over the next few years.
The posh equestrian world has also proven to be a fertile ground for finding new Lugano clientele. Ferder’s family had a horse farm in Israel, and his brother competed internationally in show jumping. Lugano is now among the biggest sponsors of international horse shows, with its brand more prominent in equine arenas than perennial timekeeping sponsor Longines. In tandem with the opening of its London salon in April 2024, Lugano is a new sponsor of the Royal Windsor Horse Show.
Georgina Bloomberg’s equestrian team, New York Empire, is also sponsored by Lugano, and she frequently attends its private dinners, “mixing us riders with others who might not normally come to a horse show,” says Bloomberg, 42, who supports a pediatric hospital in Ghana. Bloomberg says she doesn’t like to wear showy baubles, but she was recently featured bejeweled in a Lugano advertisement wearing a 2.63-carat cushion-cut vivid blue diamond ring with more than three carats of diamonds, set in 18-karat white gold. “They make you feel like it’s not just about selling jewelry,” she says.
