Ep. 5: Elisa Martini – Italpreziosi

Elisa: You really hit the spot there. Yes, I was very scared and I'm still scared. Every time I walk in a room, I still feel the pressure. I know that people I'm talking to, like you, they're great professionals, they've been spending their lives, many times their lives in this field and I still feel that pressure. But again, I feel like everyone has always been very helpful. Actually, in this industry, I've been supported by these professionals to learn and yes, I think this part of the process just to be scared and go with the flow.

Intro: Welcome to Y'all Street. Today, I speak with Elisa Martini of Italian metals refinery, Italpreciosi.

Tarek: Elisa, you want a cup of coffee?

Elisa: Sure, I would love one.

Tarek: I got you these special coffee cups. These are, because your last name is Martini, they're actually Martini glasses, but they're insulated Martini glasses that we're going to drink our coffee out of today.

Elisa: I love this.

Tarek: And you're going to get to keep this. You got to bring it back to Italy with you. Look at this. This is going to be interesting. So, this is your first time to Texas?

Elisa: Yes, very first time to Texas.

Tarek: What are your experiences?

Elisa: It's been amazing so far. It's been very fun and very eye-opening. I learned a lot about Texas. I learned a lot about the culture and I loved it.

Tarek: What did you think about shooting? We just came back from the range. Pretty wild, huh?

Elisa: It was wild and it's one of the things that you'd never know you'll do in your life, shooting. Basically, the first time ever, if we don't count the only time that I hit myself at the range in Italy. But no, it was amazing and I was lucky enough to have the best teacher.

Tarek: So you were with my [redacted]. So you shot an AR-15, you shot a Banshee, you shot a .22 Creedmoor, which is manufactured by Kaspar Companies.

Elisa: Exactly.

Tarek: Which was your favorite?

Elisa: The .22 Creedmoor.

Tarek: Why did you like that one?

Elisa: I liked recharging it all the time.

Tarek: The bolt action?

Elisa: Exactly. That was super cool. And then it was kind of a surprise because they told me it's not going to move much and it moved a lot. It was super fun. It was amazing.

Tarek: Good, good, good, good. And you saw the depository earlier as well.

Elisa: Yes. And it was impressive. It's really great to see the levels you guys are working with, the level of the depository. It's really unprecedented.

Tarek: Good. I'm glad you liked it. Well, we have a lot of your silver in the depository as well, so we'll get to that. Before we get to Italpreziosi, which is where you're from, obviously you're Italian. You grew up in central Italy, outside of Florence and Tuscany in that area, in Arezzo. And I'm curious, what was it like growing up in Italy and how did you— I'm just curious how you even got into the precious metal space, actually.

Elisa: Sure. So as you said, I come from a very— I'm originally from a very small town in central Italy, one hour from Florence. But what many people don't know in this little town called Arezzo, it's the main district for jewelry manufacturing, precious metals for jewelry. So either everyone works in precious metals or knows someone that works there.

Tarek: How long has it been like that? Has that been for generations or is that something more recent?

Elisa: Yes. It's been there from the Etruscan era, so before the Romans. So it's really...

Tarek: Oh my gosh.

Elisa: A lot of centuries BC. So it's really endemic in our town to be linked to precious metals. So it's really something that people grow up into and that's basically what happened to me. And now, of course, now today developed and be like a very big industrial area. I think one of the main, if not the main one in Europe. And so for me, it was very natural because my daddy, he had a jewelry company, jewelry trading company.

Tarek: So was he selling retail or he was trading jewelry with other businesses?

Elisa: I was trading with other businesses. So he would sell to wholesalers, basically.

Tarek: Okay.

Elisa: From factory and sell to wholesalers. And I've been growing up seeing him packing or weighing and doing the quality control and then . . .

Tarek: From how little? When you're like 10 years old?

Elisa: Maybe even younger.

Tarek: Really?

Elisa: Maybe even younger. Yeah. Because I would spend school afternoons after school at his office and watching him work, watching the people that work for him, again, packing, shipping, weighing.

Tarek: And did you ever have the opportunity to make jewelry or do anything like that?

Elisa: Unfortunately, yes. Like some, like in the summer when I didn't have school, of course, me and my sister, we would spend time helping at his facility with the packing mostly and having small hands. It was, yeah, we would spend time packing the material and like each piece must be singularly packaged. So we would literally like put the pieces in the bags or like once. I think he messed up because he wanted to make, to order like some bracelets with some like balls. But he probably ordered like separately the silver balls and the wire. So we had to manually put the balls like in the wires and to manually close them and make the bracelets. Hundreds of bracelets. We spent the whole summer putting bolts in wires and closing them to make bracelets.

Tarek: It reminds me of my oldest children because I've had to recruit them for similar things in precious metals. We get the coins in like, yeah, the wrong tubes or something, and they have to pull them all out and put them in the new tubes or repack or what have you.

Elisa: Is this something like endemic to precious metals? Like having kids doing the job?

Tarek: I think it's endemic to dads. Recruiting their children to help out around the property or help out around, you know, the business.

Elisa: Yes. And so, yeah, that's how I grew up. And it felt like very, for me, like the world of jewelry is very different from the world of precious metals, bullion. It's still linked, but it's different. So I didn't know much about like the precious metals themselves, but I grew up knowing like the kind of clasps, kind of chains, and how you weigh, how you make the alloys. That's, it's mostly like the environment I grew up in.

Tarek: So did you go to school for that? Was that the plan was to sort of graduate into the jewelry business?

Elisa: Actually, no. Actually, I never really wanted to work in a jewelry business. I wanted to be a translator, like, like one of those simultaneous translators, like to translate.

Tarek: Like for like the UN or something like that?

Elisa: Exactly. Correct. For the UN. Exactly. That was like my aim. And this is why I started like uni and I've been traveling during uni a lot. And I specialize in English and Russian.

Tarek: Oh, interesting.

Elisa: Yes.

Tarek: So did you study in Russia?

Elisa: Yes. And I went to SPBGEU, which is like the St. Petersburg State University.

Tarek: What is the name of it?

Elisa: SPBGEU, St. Petersburg State University.

Tarek: Okay.

Elisa: So it's like the main, with the Moscow State University, are like the two main universities in Russia. And I went there at the Filološki fakultet, which is like the philology, I studied philology, Russian philology there.

Tarek: Amazing. So philology is the study of languages and the origin of languages.

Elisa: Exactly. Yeah.

Tarek: So that's actually the most famous philologist that I know is J.R.R. Tolkien, right? That's what he was, that's what he taught at Oxford University was philology.

Elisa: Exactly.

Tarek: And he was very much into like the Icelandic languages and the Nordic languages. And actually a lot of that informed Lord of the Rings. So I know that we had dinner last night and you're a Tolkien fan.

Elisa: Yes. A big Tolkien fan. It was also part of my thesis. And yeah.

Tarek: Really?

Elisa: Yes. So what was your thesis? Like I would link like his work to different subjects, like one of them being like philosophy or like, again, languages, how he built his own language. Like we would look at the morphology, how he built like the Helfic language and the Mordor language, because, you know, they're like literally like languages that make sense.

Tarek: Like he created his own language.

Elisa: Exactly.

Tarek: Like multiple languages, I guess, for Lord of the Rings.

Elisa: Yeah. And they really, they have their own morphology. They make sense. Really. He built the whole system.

Tarek: Did you read Lord of the Rings in English or in Italian?

Elisa: Both.

Tarek: Really?

Elisa: Yeah.

Tarek: So what was the difference in the experience reading in one language or the other?

Elisa: Of course, like also because some translations are old for Lord of the Rings, like most of the nuances get lost, like the language. It's beautiful in English and part of that gets lost in the Italian translations, I would assume. It's not like I read the updated ones. Like I was reading like the old ones. And yeah, part of it goes lost. But then for the rest, yeah, it's always better to read the originals, I believe.

Tarek: And I'm speaking way out of my comfort zone here. But if I recall correctly, I think that the Romance languages like Italian and Spanish and French, they don't have a vocabulary that's as big as the English language, because English borrows from all of the different languages, borrows from Latin and from the Germanic languages and, you know, all of the other Romance languages. So it's a much broader vocabulary. So I'm always curious how in the translation of something that or a book that is as dense in language as the Lord of the Rings, what that's like.

Elisa: So part of it goes through compensation. So they would use like longer phrases, longer words, like to create the concept that maybe in English you can convey through one word.

Tarek: I see.

Elisa: But it gets lost. Something gets always lost, unfortunately. And in poetry even more than than in like the novels and in fiction.

Tarek: I'm really interested in your experience in Russia. Obviously, you know, Russia and Putin, it's sort of a hot topic globally. We don't have to get into the politics of all of that.

Elisa: Okay, perfect.

Tarek: Yeah, but I'm just fascinated. My sister-in-law lived in Russia, and she's always loved the Russian people and the Russian experience and how rich in history the Russian culture is. And I'm curious what your experience was like. You went to school there and, you know, were obviously enriched in the language itself, which I'm sure enhanced the experience at large. So I want to hear your thoughts.

Elisa: Again, like I went to Russia, was very young, was like 20. And I was not sure. And I'm not sure I didn't really understand what it meant.

Tarek: Did you feel safe? So you went to Russia alone?

Elisa: Yes, I went to Russia alone. And I did. Again, I think I took this decision, like, not being fully aware of what I was doing, like a bit of like, when you're young, you don't really think about consequences, just go. And that's what I did. I just went. I knew that I had a room in a dorm. That's also an interesting story in the Russian dormitories.

Tarek: What's interesting about it?

Elisa: It is interesting that you arrive at the dorm very confused. You don't know where you are. Like I spoke the language. I knew the language, but I never spoke to natives. So also like to make me understand by the taxi driver was not very easy. So I made it to the dorm. And there's one very aggressive lady that threw me like this sheets and pillows. And then she told me to go in my room. I had to register everything. And I went to my room. And it's like they rebuilt, they used to call it kommunalka. They were like the ancient, like Soviet, like the old Soviet apartments. So they would have like a main area for the kitchen and then a lot of rooms that were shared by different families.

Tarek: Oh, I've heard of that. Yeah.

Elisa: Yeah. And you can still see that they're structured the same way. So we were we were a lot of students sharing like one, one bathroom.

Tarek: A common area.

Elisa: Exactly. And one kitchen. And like in each room, there were like big rooms. There were like three, two people per room. We were three in my room.

Tarek: Was co-ed mixed male and female?

Elisa: No, it was separate.

Tarek: Was it all Russian women that you were with? Or was it a mix?

Elisa: It was mixed. We had Germans, but most of the German people that were in Russia, like in the dorm, they would have like Russian parents. So we would speak Russian inside the apartment. And that was very good for me.

Tarek: So are you fluent in Russian today?

Elisa: Yeah, I am fluent.

Tarek: Difficult language, isn't it?

Elisa: It is. It's like basically structured as Greek and Latin. So it has a lot of like cases. So for me, since I studied ancient Greek in high school, it was easier to pick up.

Tarek: Wow, you studied ancient Greek in high school.

Elisa: Yeah, useless in precious metals, but it was fun to study, fun to learn.

Tarek: So how many languages do you speak now?

Elisa: Fluently, I would say English and Russian. And then I speak like a little bit of Spanish. And I'm also studying French just to expand the range.

Tarek: Impressive. So in Russia, when were you there? In what year?

Elisa: 2018.

Tarek: OK, so this is basically a year before COVID. Yes. So right before COVID. So what was your experience like? I mean, did you enjoy it? Did you like it?

Elisa: Honestly, I loved it. And but I'm saying this now, but at the beginning, they tell me that I was like kind of unsettled because I arrived, of course, it got like it was very cold. I arrived in August. It was super hot in Italy. I arrived there. It gets very cold. What I had to do was, I had to get used to the Russians. And I don't want to generalize, but like in general, Russians are like colder and they might come off as rude. But then once you get to know them, they're very warm people. So at the beginning, I felt like a bit like people were a bit cold, but then I got used to that. And I made some amazing friendships there that still last. And I still talk to them and they visited me. I visited them and it was it was amazing. I really loved the people there. They really made me feel welcome.

Tarek: And so after you left Russia, you went back to Italy, back to university.

Elisa: Yes.

Tarek: It was like an exchange program.

Elisa: Yes, it was an exchange program. And after like I took my exams there and I came back to Italy, I graduated like in the first three years and then I moved to my MBA, like to my master's.

Tarek: And what did you get your master's in? Was this also in philology?

Elisa: It was in again in like translation and interpreting.

Tarek: OK.

Elisa: Just to keep because I still didn't want to work in precious metals. I still thought that I would be an interpreter for a big organization or for the UN. And there, since I had been specializing in Russian, I thought that I needed to specialize in English, too. So, yeah, this is when I decided to have like another exchange period in a completely different part of the world.

Tarek: So where did you go from there?

Elisa: I went to very hot Florida, Tallahassee. Yeah, there was a big, a big change.

Tarek: Was that your first time to the United States?

Elisa: Yes. Very first time. I've never been anywhere in the U.S. before Tallahassee.

Tarek: So you went from Russia, back to Italy, to Tallahassee, Florida.

Elisa: Correct.

Tarek: Some big cultural shifts there.

Elisa: A very big one.

Tarek: A very big one. What was your experience like in Tallahassee?

Elisa: So I went to Florida State.

Tarek: OK.

Elisa: The first thing I remember was like, again, the humidity of Tallahassee, which I did not expect. And life was great on campus. And I was shocked by the difference between the life on campus and off campus. And as a European person, like I'm used to walk places. And I remember seeing like things on map being very close. Think on Google Maps being very close. And thinking that I could walk there, but actually it was not walkable for the eat, for the like no sidewalks, no everything.

Tarek: And actually, in much of Europe, for the places that you can't walk to, there's typically a train that's available and easy to just hop on and get from point A to point B.

Elisa: Correct. Or a bus.

Tarek: Right.

Elisa: Which was not like, was not the same in Tallahassee. So I understood that if I didn't have a car, I would be cut off. Most of the things happening there, which was a little bit of a little bit weird for me.

Tarek: So did you get a car?

Elisa: No, I didn't. I'm not used to big cars.

Tarek: So how did you end up getting around?

Elisa: You just asked friends for rides? Exactly. Asking people lifts, basically.

Tarek: What was the most surprising thing about living in Tallahassee? The biggest cultural change for you?

Elisa: I was very shocked when I walked into a Walmart. I'd never seen a Walmart before. I'd never seen anything that dimension, that size. And I remember I went there with a friend of mine and because she was like, we're going to do the groceries. We went to Walmart. And I think I was in a kind of sugar rush there because I could see all these big things. So cheap. And I bought so much stuff. Like, again, I was thinking like three kilograms cereal box. Why do I need that? I don't, but I still bought it. And I bought so much food that I didn't even finish it. I had to donate it at the end of the exchange.

Tarek: Did you ever have the chance to go to a Costco?

Elisa: No, no, I didn't.

Tarek: The next level up when you're looking for bulk groceries.

Elisa: But I saw a Costco pizza, which is next level. It's huge. It's like 10 normal pizzas or something.

Tarek: And how does that compare to Italian pizza?

Elisa: You can have a whole Italian pizza by yourself. I don't think you can have like a Costco pizza by yourself.

Tarek: Yeah, I think there are a lot of Americans that would disagree. That's interesting. So from Florida State, you were there for what, just a semester?

Elisa: Yes.

Tarek: And then you went back and you graduated with your master's in Italy.

Elisa: Yeah. But when I was graduating, COVID happened. I wanted to travel more. I had other exchanges planned, but then basically I remained in Arezzo. And that's how I basically trickled down to finding a job in precious metals in a jewelry factory. That was never the plan, but actually being in Arezzo and finding jobs there, I ended up in a jewelry factory.

Tarek: Okay. And how long were you in the jewelry factory?

Elisa: A couple of years.

Tarek: And what did you do there?

Elisa: So it was a very small artisanal factory and they would do mostly silver. So there being so small, I could do anything. They were looking for someone that spoke good English and they could help by maybe with international clients. But also I could do things in the factory. Again, going back to making the bracelets that I've been making when I was a kid or like making like the packaging, again, the waiting, invoicing. So I would do anything that was needed. And this is also something that I enjoyed.

Tarek: How many employees in total were with the company?

Elisa: About 20.

Tarek: About 20. So it's sort of like startup size a little bit. And so, yeah, you do have to have your hands and everything when you have a company that small.

Elisa: And it was good because I knew like the products and I could go like to clients and be aware of how else we could change the model, how we could shape them.

Tarek: Was it mostly an export business or were the clients mostly in Italy?

Elisa: I would say 60% in Italy and 40% export. Oh, that's surprising.

Tarek: Yeah, that's surprising. So there was a lot of consumption just in Italy alone for jewelry.

Elisa: Yes, that's correct. We see a lot of consumption.

Tarek: Is that a cultural thing to, I mean, do a lot of people wear jewelry in Italy? I don't, I mean, I've been in Italy, but I don't recall, you know, how much jewelry people wear.

Elisa: I think, yes. I think like people like to for like baptism or like when you graduate, they still give you like as a present, like gold bracelets, gold little chain, gold necklace.

Tarek: Why is that, do you think?

Elisa: On the one side, I think because it's been traditional, like it's what people expect or they're used to giving. And also because, again, there's a huge tradition of jewelry in Italy, like again, with the Truscans, the Romans. And I think that on the one side, they also see it as an investment. So even if it's not investment jewelry, still you have your 750 carat chain that maybe they think one day you can resell if needed. It would have not lost its value.

Tarek: And you were with the jewelry company for how long?

Elisa: A couple of years.

Tarek: Okay, and then from there you went to Ital directly?

Elisa: Yes, exactly.

Tarek: Okay.

Elisa: Because I was looking for something more international, I wanted to travel and I didn't get to travel much in the other company. And yeah, and this is how I ended up in Italpreziosi, basically.

Tarek: And so tell us a little bit about Italpreziosi.

Elisa: So Italpreziosi, it's an LBMA refinery. We are based in Arezzo, again, in the main center of jewelry in Europe, one of the main ones. And it started in 1984. So we recently celebrated our 40th year. And it started as a trading company, which was specialized in supplying the material to the jewelry industry. And then it developed in an LBMA refinery. So, really what's interesting about Italpreziosi, what's really made me also apply is that it's a woman-founded company.

Tarek: Ah, okay.

Elisa: Yes.

Tarek: Which is rare in precious metals.

Elisa: It is.

Tarek: It's a heavily male-dominated industry.

Elisa: It is. It's very rare. And the founder and CEO, it's Ivana Ciabatti. And it's amazing to think how she founded this company, like in the 80s, in also like a male-dominated. It was probably harder than that now. So she's a very strong woman. She's a role model. And she's still very present in the company and in the operations.

Tarek: And she was investing not just in Italpreziosi, but wasn't she also in manufacturing as well? Was it Tera Automation?

Elisa: Yeah, correct. Ivana Ciabatti is also the founder, one of the founders and shareholders of Tera Automation, which is a like, yeah, automating company.

Tarek: Yeah, a very well-known manufacturing company in the precious metal space because they make a lot of the equipment for, you know, the cast bar production. And I know that they also do some manufacturing in the food industry as well. So packaging for.

Elisa: Correct.

Tarek: If I'm not mistaken, yeah, food items and things like that.

Elisa: Yes. And this gives us like the present, like gives Italpreziosi the present all over the supply chain. Because in addition to Tera, we also have some shares in like jewelry companies. So we do have the whole, the group has the whole like supply chain in the precious metals.

Tarek: There aren't a lot of Americans who buy precious metals that are actually familiar with the brand Italpreziosi. So what can you tell them? What's unique about the brand? What's your kind of go-to-market strategy? What do you specialize in?

Elisa: So I think that part of it speaks for itself as Italpreziosi. And this is like made in Italy. We produce it completely in Italy. We don't outsource anything. So we think it's Italian quality. So I would, as we can see from the bars, they look pretty nice, right? They look neat.

Tarek: And do you want to hold up one of these bars?

Elisa: I can try, but I'm not the strongest. They look, they don't look as heavy as they actually are. And again, we have, since we're based in the Arezzo, so we have like our people in the production. They have a lot of knowledge of the material of the production. So they can deliver like, I think a very good product. And again, Italpreziosi has always been involved. This is something that I really like about the company. It has always been involved in sustainability in a sustainable path. Ivana has always been focused on sustainability. And recently we got the B Corp certification for our 40th anniversary, which is like a standard for companies that can have certain goals in not only ESG, but also like social corporate responsibility.

Tarek: Especially in precious metals today, it's a big concern about the origin of the metal. Where are you getting the metal from? Is it from individual groups that are stealing metal from mines? Is it like dirty gold or dirty silver? And so it is a really big concern, especially when we go to conferences like LBMA and making sure that the sourcing of the metal is unadulterated. Where do you get your metal from? Because Italy, there's not much metals mining in Italy itself. So you have to import the raw material.

Elisa: It's not really correct, like depending. Because again, like we do not have mines in Italy, but banally we don't have mines. So the mining material we have to import it. But we do have a lot of like market for jewelry. So we see a lot of recycled material coming to our refinery. So people selling back their jewelry, companies that maybe wanna like broken jewelry, jewelry that did not sell. And that we see it like going back to our refinery. So it's actually a good market for the feedstock, but for recycled material. For material that is eligible as recycled.

Tarek: So what percentage of the finished product that you produce is recycled material versus imported? Do you have a sense?

Elisa: It should be the last data that I revised would be around like I would say 85, 90% recycled and the rest be mine.

Tarek: Wow, that is much higher than I would have expected.

Elisa: Yeah, this is like the last data that I was revising.

Tarek: So basically this jewelry is like coming into, do you have pawn shops? Like the equivalent of pawn shops in Italy. So it would be coming into shops like this and then they're just gathering up all of the jewelry. People might die and people are inheriting things that they don't want. And then they're just selling it to you upstream. Is that what's happening?

Elisa: Yes, exactly. We don't buy directly from the people, but they need to sell to like the equivalent of pawn shops that we have.

Tarek: What do they call pawn shops in Italy?

Elisa: Banco dei pigni or even more famous is compro oro.

Tarek: So it's like a, we buy gold type shop. Okay. And that's all they buy is gold or do they buy all kinds of other things, gold and silver or?

Elisa: Gold and silver. I would say mostly gold and silver.

Tarek: Okay.

Elisa: I've never been to one of those actually because I'm keeping my jewelry now.

Tarek: Yeah, sure. Yeah, interesting. And then when you have to buy the raw material, where do you typically get the raw material from? Is that European based?

Elisa: Mostly it's going to be Latin, like Latin America. There's a lot of reserves there. Yeah.

Tarek: And then you take it in in the form of doré bars. Is that typically how you do it?

Elisa: Yes, we take it in the form of doré bars.

Tarek: So I know that during COVID and immediately after COVID, all of the refineries and mints around the world saw this huge surge. We came out of this period in 2017, 2018, 2019, where the industry was very slow. There was a lot of money pouring into Bitcoin and real estate and equities. But through COVID with this flight to safety, the metals business was booming. And I imagine that that was part of the launch pad for Ital to really start branding in regions that were, as we said earlier, not as familiar with the brand. So can you talk a little bit about that and sort of what your mission is now as a mint going forward?

Elisa: Yeah, so that's correct. Most of our expansion in the U.S. happened during COVID. And after we noticed this huge demand of silver, like I would say almost unprecedented demand of silver in the U.S. And that's how we started. But again, as you said, we were not very well known. But still, I think we have the capacity to supply to this demand.

Tarek: I think oftentimes for investors in precious metals, they're thinking, well, the only available silver is what's coming out of the mines. Well, actually, there's a lot of metal that is being recycled. And if you're sitting in the sweet spot of that, it provides a great pool of raw material for finished production.

Elisa: Correct, exactly. So all of these things considered, this gives us the possibility to actually reply to this demand in the U.S. And this is actually what I'm trying to do now, being here with you guys.

Tarek: Have you found that this has fulfilled your professional goals and where your career has taken you?

Elisa: Honestly, I think it does. Again, I would have never expected that I would be working in precious metals. I thought that I would be outside of Arezzo, outside of this small niche market. But actually, I'm finding out that this is what I really like, what I really enjoy. And I enjoy traveling. This brought me to shoot in Texas. How many people can say they've been doing that? And this is also bringing me to learn more about precious metals. Because honestly, as I was saying before, I didn't know much about the value of the investment for the end consumers. Now, as I started working with Italpreziosi, I started researching. I started understanding and getting passionate about it. Getting generally passionate about the investment products, the value that they have for the people to protect their purchasing power against inflation. This is something that I started to appreciate just as I started this job.

Tarek: If you're having a conversation with a young woman in the US or in Italy, and she's 17, 18 years old, what advice would you have for her as lessons learned over the last decade here in business?

Elisa: So I would tell her to travel as much as she can and to take everything that she can. To do every experience, to try to get out of the comfort zone. I know this sounds stereotypical, but that's true. That's from conversations with people abroad, meeting other cultures, meeting, talking to people. This is what really has been enriching me way more than reading, way more than studying by itself.

Tarek: Was it intimidating for you not having a financial background? Instead having more of a linguistic background and you obviously had a little bit of exposure to jewelry, but now you're going to these major precious metals conferences where there's a lot of trading that's taking place and there's terminology that is its own language that you have to learn. It's like just another one of your—

Elisa: You really hit the spot there. Yes, I was very scared and I'm still scared. Every time I walk in a room, I still feel the pressure. I know that people I'm talking to, like you, they're great professionals. They've been spending their lives, most many times their lives in this field and I still feel that pressure. But again, I feel like everyone has always been very helpful. Actually in this industry, I've been supported by these professionals to learn and yes, I think this part of the process just to be scared and go with the flow.

Tarek: I was speaking with David Henrie a few podcasts ago and we were talking about fear and how important it is to overcome fear and how it inhibits you in your professional growth and your personal growth and how rewarding and fulfilling it is when you overcome that fear. And it reminds me a little bit of this morning. There's trepidation handling this really large gun for the first time and what is it going to be like and am I gonna hurt myself or am I gonna hurt someone else? And you have all these thoughts that go through your mind and then when we were done at the range, you were just grinning ear to ear and how much fun that you had. And it seems like that's a metaphor for life and the experiences that you have is just to overcome that fear and to sort of just do it.

Elisa: It is, exactly. And these go back to what we were saying before. Maybe me a few months ago, I would have said I would never, no, no, thank you, I will not shoot. No, thank you, I will not do the podcast. But just with this philosophy, just to take as much as you can, make as more experiences as you can. That's what I would feel like saying to a young female professional. Just do it and go with it. You'll learn and you'll grow.

Tarek: That's great advice. I'm interested in what your experience from the minting side has been from the beginning of the year to now. We've had all kinds of changes in the precious metals market with the threat of tariffs, then the implementation of tariffs, lease rates have skyrocketed. There's been a lot of concerns about the cost of capital in the industry because of how expensive it is to finance the metal while it's in production and while it's being transported. What have you seen from your end in Europe? What are you hearing?

Elisa: So this trend of metal flying from Europe and London to the US, we have been seeing that a lot. For gold in particular on our side. And this brought a lot of issues, like operational issues, because you have to supply a demand that you have not been supplying at this pace, at these levels. You need to supply big quantities in a very fast time and everyone is trying to do the same. So banally having issues with actually flying the material. This is something that we have not been experiencing so far at this level before the first quarter of 2025. Actually having flight rebooked, overbooked, delayed, and the time gets longer. And as you said, the financing is heavier and heavier. So this gave us some operational issues that we had to overcome with logistics, with the production. How do you reshape your production to supply the demand?

Tarek: Well, this whole idea of actually flying silver bars across the Atlantic Ocean is a new phenomenon, relatively new phenomenon. I mean, it's not common. I know certainly during COVID there were these major shortages and metal was moving from Australia and all over Europe into the United States just to meet the demand. But it's costly to move metal and 30,000 ounces of silver weighs roughly one ton and you're putting that on a 747 or whatever size jet that is. It's interesting and I think it just speaks to the fact that the silver market's a very, very small market and it takes very minor disruptions to have an outsized impact in the availability of supply. And that's one of the reasons why you see such profound swings in the premiums on these products because the premium is the barometer for supply and demand. When the demand outstrips the supply, those premiums widen because people are willing to pay more to have the material now versus in the future. So it's really been an amazing development and certainly I think there just aren't a lot of mints that are handling silver and silver is not an easy thing to refine either.

Elisa: Yeah, that's correct.

Tarek: Can you talk about that a little bit actually? Because when I've been to refineries before, what I have been told is that silver is actually harder to refine than gold. Would you say that that's accurate?

Elisa: I'm not in the refinery. I go there very often, but depending. I would say it really depends on the kind of material that you're getting from the different feedstock. Like if you get jewelry, it's 925, 800 to 900. The purity. The purity, yeah. Like 80%, 90% just to give like a reference. And so it's a quick process, but maybe there's some materials coming from mines that have like deleterious elements and like higher percentages and that can really impact the refining process. I can see that happening. I think it really depends on the machinery you're using, on the techniques. Again, we have people very good in the foundry. We have people that have been doing these jobs forever. So I feel pretty confident on how we manage the silver that comes in actually. I don't know if it's easier or tougher, but I think it depends on the material mostly.

Tarek: What does the future look like for Italpreziosi? And what does it look like for you?

Elisa: For Italpreziosi, I'm very excited. Because I don't want to disclose too much, but we have a lot of, we've been discussing this, a lot of projects of expanding like our products, our offer, also on the investment side. We have been also recently launching a new PGM refinery. We are working with low-grade materials to refine. So we're really growing. We have a new big plan for like our facility coming up. I think there's a big space to grow. And I'm happy to be part of this because for me it means again so much experience coming in.

Tarek: More travel.

Elisa: More travel, which I love. And yeah, and learning more about precious metals that I haven't learned so far, of course. There's so much more that we need to learn. I think we never stop learning in this industry.

Tarek: If people want to connect with you, what's the best way to connect with you? Is it on LinkedIn?

Elisa: Yes, I would say it's on LinkedIn. I'm like as a Gen Zer, I'm very active on social media. I'm always scrolling Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok. So yeah, I would say that the best way to get in touch with me. And I would be happy to.

Tarek: Elisa, thank you very much.

Elisa: Thanks to you, Tarek. It's been amazing.