Designer’s empire built on making exotic handbags

Providing high-quality bags at moderately high prices is her magic formula.

McClatchy Newspapers

MIAMI — There is a universe in a single scale of a crocodile, if it’s one of Nancy Gonzalez’s.

It ripples and glistens, melting into tiny slivers of gold, silver, salmon or scarlet.

The Colombian designer can work wonders with a reptile. It’s not for nothing that they call her the Queen of Croc.

“Croc became my signature,” she said slowly, at Neiman Marcus in Bal Harbour, Fla., her gaze faraway, almost as though this were just occurring to her now, nine years after she launched her high-end handbags, which have become wardrobe fixtures among the moneyed.

Gonzalez was sitting at a table by her handbag display, greeting customers and gingerly signing the suede interiors of their newly purchased bags in an uneven cursive with a black Bic pen.

In the overstocked handbag business, seasonal trends and It Bags still rule. But Gonzalez has earned a solid following by hewing closely to her winning formula: high-quality bags at moderately high prices that take their direction from small advances in processing skins, rather than from fads.

Her pieces speak to a woman who wants a vibrant accessory, one noted for its mild exoticism more than its logo. At Bergdorf Goodman, her white croc clutch costs $820 and her large red tote is priced at $4,400. But when Bottega Veneta is offering a dainty patent crocodile envelope bag for $5,900, Gonzalez’s creations seem like a bargain.

Avoids leather

The designer has carved her niche mainly from the hides of crocodiles, but she also works with mink, sable, chinchilla and astrakhan (a breed of lamb from Russia). What she doesn’t use is leather, on which so many designers in the industry rely.

“My challenge is how to offer something different,” said Gonzalez, 54, wearing a black suit by Comme des Garcons, Bulgari watch and a clunky antique ring from India.

“I really think luxury is having something different.”

From her croc farm in Colombia, Gonzalez is able to produce 32,000 bags a year for customers across the world. Her line offers as many as 150 styles per season in a range of colors and finishes. Gonzalez begins working on a collection 18 months before production. Skins are tanned in France, Italy or Singapore.

“The details are so difficult,” she said, adding that new styles “have to be in development for a very long time.”

Fulfilling project

Raised in Cali, Gonzalez was one of five children. She married at 17, went to college and quickly had two children of her own. She joined the family insurance business at first. It didn’t fulfill her.

“I was looking for something that came from inside me, and I found it,” she said. ‘I started [designing] belts, and my friends asked, ‘What about handbags?’”

Gonzalez is hands-on with the business. She studies all facets of production and ferrets out new methods worldwide for treating hides. Her son, Santiago Barberi Gonzalez, is president of her company and lives in New York City.

But Gonzalez pegs her success to more than hard work.

“Do you know what The Secret is?” she said. “The attraction law: You attract what you feel.”

She educates her employees on her philosophy. “I do lectures on ‘The Secret’ [in my factory]. I’m totally convinced that we need to transmit energy through the product, and people who make bags need to feel the same way.”