Swarovski Establishes Services Center in Costa Rica

European jewelers and crystal manufacturers Swarovski has unveiled a global business center in Costa Rica that will provide finance and administration (F&A) services to the company’s operations across the region.

Starting out with 30 employees, the number of workers at the San Jose center will be increased over the years, said the Austrian company in a statement.

Thanks to the time zone alignment with other countries in the Americas, Costa Rica has been an ideal place for several global multinational companies to set up a back-office.

Swarovski stated that it chose Costa Rica ‘following a very thorough evaluation process’. The news about its plans to launch a F&A services center first surfaced in October last year.

“We are looking for well-educated talents who are interested in working for a global company. Our scope of activities in Costa Rica will include a growing number of multi-functional processes and services, jointly operated with all the other parts of our global service network”, said Amed Espinoza, Managing Director Swarovski in San José.

The Swarovski Crystal Business is run by the fifth generation of family members and has a global reach with approximately 3,000 stores in around 170 countries.

“Swarovski now joins a selected group of companies with innovative and sophisticated activities in the country. This positions Costa Rica in advanced areas of high-added value services,” said Duayner Salas, Costa Rica’s Minister of Foreign Trade.

Last year, the services exports accounted for 46% exports revenue in the country. This is “almost twice the average of the OECD members (27%)”, according to Jorge Sequeira, Managing Director of Cinde, Costa Rica’s investment promotion agency.