Unaoerre marks 100 years as a pillar of Italian gold jewelry

Unoaerre built its century on a rare formula in gold jewelry: it turned Arezzo’s artisan ateliers into an industrial engine without erasing the city’s identity. The company says it began on March 15, 1926, when Carlo Zucchi and Leopoldo Gori founded what became the first jewelry manufacturing company in Arezzo, and that the 1AR hallmark it received on April 2, 1934 later became the Uno A Erre name. A hundred years on, that history still reads less like nostalgia than a business model that helped define Italian gold at scale.

The numbers explain why the centenary matters beyond one house. Unoaerre says it distributes in more than 40 countries and has subsidiaries in France and Japan. It also says it produces more than 70% of the wedding rings sold in the Italian market, a share that makes it one of the country’s most consequential gold names, especially as buyers and brands weigh heft, craftsmanship and cost in a high-gold-price market. The company closed 2025 with about 280 million euros in revenue; a separate 2024 report put turnover at 282.6 million euros, with 68% of sales abroad, EBITDA of 30.2 million euros and profit of 14.9 million euros.

The anniversary has been staged as culture as much as commerce. Unoaerre commissioned Felice Limosani’s immersive work Polvere di stelle, on view at the Palazzo della Fraternità dei Laici in Arezzo from May 9 to June 8, 2026. The piece links gold to its cosmic origin, a reminder that the metal’s value is shaped as much by story as by purity and weight. Maria Cristina Squarcialupi has framed the centenary around innovation, a culture of making and openness to the world, which is precisely the balance luxury jewelry houses now chase when they try to scale without flattening their identity.

The state also marked the milestone. Poste Italiane and the Ministry of Enterprises and Made in Italy issued a commemorative Unoaerre stamp on April 9, 2026, placing the company in the official “Excellence of the Italian Productive System and Made in Italy” series. The celebration drew about 340 employees, with Maria Cristina Squarcialupi, Andrea Squarcialupi and CEO Luca Benvenuti thanking workers and centering the people behind the output. That is the larger lesson of Unoaerre’s 100 years: Arezzo remains a gold hub because companies like this proved that artisan precision and industrial volume do not have to cancel each other out.