When I opened Herreira in August 2008, I had two options in front of me. The first was to follow the market: half-micron plating, two microns at most, a beautiful piece for thirty days and then the customer complaining it had darkened. The second was to take on a cost no one on my street was willing to take on: plating of eight to ten microns, three to five times thicker than average, paid from my own pocket while margins barely existed.
I chose the second. It was not heroism. It was fear of looking the customer in the eye a year later.
What changes when you triple the plating
Thin plating of half to one micron has a useful life of three to six months, depending on how much the person sweats, on the perfume they wear, on the city climate. That is what the popular market sells, and it works like a rental: the customer swaps pieces every season.
Plating of eight to ten microns resists three to seven years of daily wear. In pieces kept for special occasions, it lasts a lifetime. The difference is not aesthetic in the first month — it is structural by the third year.
Production cost rises between 40% and 60%. The final price rises less, because the rest of the operation (the atelier, the tools, the skilled hands) was already set up to do it well.
Why no one else does it
Because the short-term math does not close. If you have high turnover and customers who do not return, thin plating is rational: you sell three pieces instead of one, pocket triple, and when the customer complains you have already sold to ten others.
Herreira chose the opposite path: the customer who comes back. In eighteen years, that became the asset. Today I have resellers who have been with me since 2010, and end customers who message me saying they still wear the ring they bought in 2012. That is not marketing. That is the piece speaking for me.
What this means for you, the future reseller
If you are starting as a Herreira reseller, this is the strongest argument you have. Not "good price" — but "it will last". And you can say it with the same calm I do: pieces here at Herreira have real plating, in microns you can measure, with a protection layer that extends life even further.
The customer who understands this does not haggle. She calculates: what would it cost to buy three pieces a year, or just one that lasts fifteen.
And it is for that customer that I decided, back in 2008, that thin plating would not enter the atelier. It still does not.