Zips don't lie: The secret behind a true luxury handbag

MENDRISIO, Switzerland — The zip on a luxury handbag is more than just a detail: it can be one of the best ways to tell whether it's the real deal or a cheap copy.

The zips found on the handbags of major brands are often made by Switzerland's Riri, which was bought by Swiss group Oerlikon in March.

Based in Mendrisio in the Alpine country's southern, Italian-speaking Ticino region, Riri makes snap fasteners and zips for major French and Italian leather goods and haute couture houses.

They work with the brand stylists' designs, such as colourful teeth that form a pattern, or pull tabs and sliders that look like jewellery. They are then manufactured in small batches of 60 or more.

"For these quantities our competitors in Asia don't even start their machines," said Renato Usoni, president of Oerlikon's luxury division, which was created during the takeover.

In a market that Usoni has estimated to be worth three-and-a-half to four billion euros ($3.75 to $4.3 billion), prices vary from two euros per zip to 20,000 euros for a gold one -- with the average price around 50 times higher than in Asia.

"If you paid thousands of euros for a handbag or a pair of boots, the zipper must be perfect," said Usoni, who managed Riri until the Oerlikon takeover.

Its zips are machine-tested at length to check their resilience and ensure that the logos and monograms do not fade with wear.

Riri's origins date back to 1923 when the Swiss businessman Martin Othmar Winterhalter purchased a zip patent from the Swedish-American engineer Gideon Sundback and opened a factory in Germany.

Faced with the rise of Nazism, in 1936 the Jewish businessman decided to load his machines onto a train and move them to a former pasta factory in Ticino, where he launched the Riri brand, Usoni said.

Given the high production costs in Switzerland, the company gradually shifted its focus to luxury.

More recently, Riri sought to expand into physical vapour deposition (PVD) technology, a process of coating metals to protect against corrosion, which is one of Oerlikon's specialties.

PVD coating is used in aeronautics, cars and industrial tools and Oerlikon was trying to offer the technology to luxury brands --