Idit Ferder’s mark on Lugano Diamonds & Jewelry Inc. is visible at the company’s new flagship retail salon and adjacent members club at Fashion Island.
Ferder, chief operating officer and co-founder of the high-end jeweler, is responsible for designing the company’s upscale retail locations—which now total seven spaces with international expansion on the way—as well as overseeing inventory levels and managing the company’s personnel and IT solutions.
Her latest project is Privé, an exclusive club and venue space that opened in April for loyal Lugano customers next door to the company’s Fashion Island salon and showroom that opened at the end of last year.
Ferder prefers to take a behind-the-scenes role in the business, with her husband and Chief Executive Moti Ferder in a more public-facing role. She met Moti during her time serving in the Israeli Army, where he was an officer and she oversaw the assignment of soldiers to units.
“Moti was an officer who arrived at my unit toward the last part of my final service term in 1989,” Ferder previously told the Business Journal. “We had shared values, and a shared outlook on life and the things we wanted to do.”
The two got married a few years after Ferder left the army in 1990, at which point she pursued degrees in history and English from Tel Aviv University before working for several firms as a mediator.
The two launched Lugano in Israel in 2004 and moved to Orange County with their two children in 2005 to open their first location in Newport Beach.
Idit Ferder made moves to embed herself, and Lugano, in the local community, with heavy involvement with the Jewish Federation of Orange County; she later served on the organization’s Women’s Philanthropy Board.
Today, Lugano supports more than 80 organizations focused on healthcare, education and the arts.
Lugano is the best-performing consumer brand unit under parent Compass Diversified Holdings (NYSE: CODI).
Regulatory filings indicate Lugano reported $201.5 million in 2022 pro-forma sales, a 61% jump from 2021. In the first quarter of this year, it reported revenue of $64 million, a 36% year-over-year increase.
In July, Lugano signed a lease for its first international location in London.
