Rainer Goetze was far from imagining that his jewels would have such success in Mauritius. Passion Ltd was born from a combination of circumstances. The Goetze family has been manufacturing semi-finished jewels for three generations. ?When my wife and I came to Mauritius to set up our business, it was mainly for financial reasons.?

When Rainer and his wife Anna came to Mauritius, it was mainly to escape the 42% export duty in Germany, their homeland. ?Our firm, Aremo Ltd, mainly exported to the USA, which involved a lot of duty from Europe. As we knew there would be no duty from Mauritius, we came here.?

When they arrived in 1981, they were only dealing in jewels for export to the USA and Europe basically. ?So far we were only manufacturing semi-finished items but this kind of product was going out of fashion?. As a result, the Goetzes extended their activity and have made a name for finished jewels.

?The first Passion shop in Grand Bay created in 1997 was a test. It was aimed at showing the tourists what we were able to do but it was above all a way of analysing the design that each customer was buying. You know, every market has its own specificity.? Of course, Rainer Goetze was going to all exhibitions but this was not enough to target their customers.

The Goetzes quickly realised that their products attracted not only tourists but also Mauritians. This is how two other shops followed in Caudan and Curepipe. Of course, Aremo still exists but it only deals with exports. ?We do jewels for well-known brands such as Gucci. There are even world-famous textile designers who want to make jewels but they do not really know how to deal with it. So our designers in the workshop make the jewels under the textile designers? names.?

Passion was established for practical reasons. Aremo was an EPZ company and did not have the licence to sell on the local market. Hence, the Goetzes had to create a new company with its own administrative section and workshop. They are two different entities. Rainer is more involved in Aremo where he deals with the administration and marketing while Anna is in charge of Passion.

<B>A replica of Aremo</B>

They receive 99% of their raw materials from Germany ? 1% comes from Belgium. Actually, the company in Germany deals with marketing research. As soon as they inform the Mauritian branches of their conclusions, the latter order raw materials, spare parts and stones but also machinery from Germany.

?People believe that we only do silver jewels but this is not totally true. We can do gold items but it is a marketing choice. Silver and white gold have been fashionable since we started in the business here so we have to meet the demand. It is the white trend at the moment. But if yellow gold becomes fashionable, we won?t mind doing it.?

Both companies work in the same way though Aremo is much bigger in terms of production, staff and size. For instance, Passion sells some 400 items every month while Aremo exports thousands of them; to give an idea, it uses 500 kg of materials every month. Likewise, Aremo employs 160 people while Passion has a staff of only 20.

Although they are very different in size, both workshops work in the same way. The workers have all received training from the company even if they already have a diploma from the Industrial and Vocational Training Board. Everyone has his/her own task in the workshop: making the masterpiece, polishing (either by machine for semi-finished products or by hand for complete jewels), galvanising.

Both Passion and Aremo work with materials other than silver and gold. Their jewels also combine various materials such as plastic, wood or rubber. They can adapt to everyone?s taste since the workshop makes a great number of models: from the finest to the most impressive. Likewise they can set any stones on the jewel as long as they have beautiful colours.

The business is faring so well here in Mauritius that the Goetzes would not dream of leaving. They even plan to make some investment by the end of the year : prototyping. The masterpiece will no longer be hand-made but will soon be done automatically with data. This will mean doing the job more quickly and efficiently. For the same top quality product, of course?