Three decades after its products disappeared in the local market, the brand, through Rustan’s, is back in the country to captivate a new generation of women who go for chic bags and shoes with a touch of the exotic.
By ALEX Y. VERGARA
After a 30-year absence in the Philippines, luxury Italian accessories brand Rodo is back where it started—at Rustan’s. As Gianni Dori, the brand’s owner and CEO recalled during Rodo’s recent launch at the second level of Rustan’s Makati, Rodo’s line of ladies’ shoes and bags with its signature wicker material used to grace Rustan’s shelves in the late ’80s.
For some reason, Rustan’s discontinued carrying the brand sometime later, as Rodo consolidated the bulk of its sales in Milan. Established in 1956 by Dori’s father, the brand is headquartered in Ancona, on Italy’s Adriatic side, where its manufacturing facilities are also located. It has remained a family-owned company with Dori’s son who belong to the third generation now in charge of designing the shoes, while his niece takes care of designing the bags.
“We’re located 20 minutes from the sea and 30 minutes away from some of Italy’s skiing sites,” Dori shares. “To ensure the quality of our products, we have kept the manufacturing process within Italy.”
The brand is sold exclusively through Rodo’s partners the world over. Apart from Rustan’s, for instance, the brand is carried solely in Hong Kong by Lane Crawford.
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When Rodo started in 1956, it’s unique selling point among fashionable women of the time was its line of leather handbags and shoulder bags with the iconic woven wicker components. In 1965, the company added metal and leather bags, mostly for evening wear, to its product mix. Dori joined his father in 1973, and by 1975 he introduced Rodo’s first line of ladies’ shoes.
It was also during this time that Rodo beefed up its factory operations, buying a bigger facility to consolidate its manufacturing efforts. Dori insists that there’s nothing wrong to have one’s products manufactured, say, in China. Every country, he adds, is capable of producing the best products if the people behind these brands put their hearts and minds into it.
“Not that China doesn’t produce quality products. They do. It just works for us to keep our manufacturing within Italy because we don’t mass produced products in the tens of thousands. We never need to produce that many. We only need to produce in the hundreds.”
As is typical of not a few niche brands, what Rodo doesn’t have in terms of quantity, it more than makes up for in terms of quality. Quality that’s not only superior when it comes to craftsmanship and durability, but also when it comes to its products’ unique designs.
Speaking of designs, Dori says others may attempt to copy Rodo, but the brand will always be one step ahead because design, which comes from the head and the heart, is something you can’t second guess.
“There will always be copycats after a new line is launched,” he says. “It doesn’t concern us that much because we are confident with the quality of our products. Nothing comes close to the original.
“I always take comfort in what my father told me a long time ago. The time to be concerned is not when they copy you. It is when they stop doing so,” he concludes.
