How does a company with 200 years of history remain relevant in a market that has profoundly changed its consumption patterns, such as jewelry? There may be several recipes. What Jorge Leitão, CEO of Leitão & Irmão Joalheiros da Coroa used was to combine tradition with modernity and never stop looking to the future. “It may seem strange, but Casa Leitão managed to reach the age of 203 because it was always modern, it managed to look to the future, seek out new talents and new trends”, he explains.
Jorge Leitão is the sixth generation at the helm of one of the oldest brands in national goldsmithing. Founded in 1822, in Porto, Leitão & Irmão served kings, queens and entire generations of Portuguese. Today, it is from the heart of Chiado, in Lisbon, that it conquers the world and faces the common challenges of any modern company. Such as hiring qualified professionals.
Jorge Leitão, CEO of Leitão & Irmão Joalheiros da Coroa, during the recording of the podcast “The CEO is the limit”
Matilde Fieschi
A good jeweler takes ten or more years to train and even after that “you need to practice a lot every day”. The CEO of Leitão & Irmão recognizes that “the new generations are more immediate inMany young people no longer have the patience for the profession”, even though it admits that “the scenario seems to be changing”. The company has a team of very senior and experienced employees in its workshops, but it has proven to be attractive to a new generation of professionals, attracting interns from various parts of Europe. The most recent ones have arrived from Lithuania.
Jorge Leitão grew up linked to the family business, among noble metals, precious stones and the sound of the workshops. It’s the workshop that holds his earliest memory at Leitão & Irmão: “I was eight or nine years old and a jeweler we had, Carlitos, picked me up and took me to the workshops and showed me how to flatten a coin in the laminator. The stores are beautiful, but the place that enchants me is the workshop.”
The company was born in the family, but it was not always with the family. When the current CEO was 19 years old, the company closed and it was Jorge Leitão who, at the age of 21, together with a cousin, recovered the business. “I remade the company, I don’t know exactly how, I was a 21-year-old kid on a beach course”, he explains. With a journey like a “high seas boss”, Jorge Leitão had “crossed the Atlantic sailing, in a time without GPS”. But that doesn’t mean that rebuilding the family business was a breeze. “I set the course with the awareness that I could change it in case of bad weather and I dedicated myself to this completely, as a cause”, he points out.
Cátia Mateus podcast The CEO is the limit
The CEO is the limit is Expresso’s leadership and career podcast. Every week, journalist Cátia Mateus shows you who the Portuguese managers who marked the past, those who direct today and those who promise to shape the future are, how they started and what they did to reach the top. Inspiring stories, told in the first person, by those who dare to make things happen. Listen to other episodes: