Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania, one hour by road inland from the coast, and it has been a metalworking city for centuries. The MB Loretana workshop sits inside this history. Small, family-scale, deliberate about what it makes and how much of it. This article explains where Loretana comes from, why the pieces are what they are, and what a Baltic silver studio operates like in 2026 compared with the mass-market silver that dominates most online listings.
Everything below is factual and specific. The dates, the addresses, the company number, the hallmark provenance are all documented publicly. The pieces we make are a small line, deliberately, and this article does not pretend the line is larger than it is or the studio older than it is. What follows is what is actually here.
Where Loretana is
The company is registered as MB Loretana in Kaunas, Lithuania. Company code 307418489. The registered address is Draugystės g. 17-1, LT-51229 Kaunas. The company is owned and directed by Marouan Khazri. Head of marketing and technical operations for the brand is Amin Benkaddour, working from Badalona in Spain.
The website is loretana.com, run on Shopify, priced in euros, shipping to the Baltic states directly and to other EU markets more selectively, with the three main markets being Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia because those are the three countries where the interchangeable line was designed to fit specifically, and where the buyer culture aligns most closely with what the pieces are.
The scale is deliberate. Loretana runs a small catalog of around 95 SKUs across the whole brand, of which seven are interchangeable pieces and the remaining ninety are fixed silver and gold-plated jewelry across earrings, rings, necklaces, and bracelets. Prices sit between 25.99 and 98.99 euros for the interchangeable line, and a similar range across the rest.
Why Kaunas matters for silver
Kaunas has been a metalworking city since the medieval period, when it sat on the trade route between the Hanseatic League ports and the interior of Lithuania. Precious metal work in the region traces back to the 14th and 15th centuries, when Baltic silver moved through Kaunas as raw material and as finished goods. The tradition never fully disappeared, and it revived after Lithuanian independence in 1990.
Today Kaunas hosts the Lithuanian state assay office, Lietuvos prabavimo rūmai, which tests and hallmarks precious metal pieces from studios across the country. Every Loretana piece is submitted to this office for testing and stamping before it ships. The 925 stamp inside a Loretana hoop, ring, or pendant was applied in Kaunas by the state assay office, not by us.
This matters for two reasons. First, the assay office does not answer to Loretana. Our pieces receive the hallmark because they pass the metal composition test, not because we are a customer of the office. If a piece failed the test, it would not be stamped, and we would not be able to sell it as 925 silver in the EU. Second, the office is a short walk from our workshop. Small studios in the Kaunas silver district can hand-deliver pieces to the office, receive the tested pieces back within days, and ship immediately. The proximity is part of why a Loretana piece can be ordered on Monday and be in Riga or Tallinn by Wednesday.
The Baltic market and what it expects
Baltic customers buy jewelry the way they buy most things: fewer pieces, at higher quality per piece, held for longer. A wardrobe of eight to fifteen carefully chosen pieces is normal here, and each piece is expected to last a decade or more.
This shapes what we make. A closed interchangeable piece with two or seven configurations does more work than a single fixed pair, and it fits the Baltic pattern of owning fewer but using them more. It is not an accident that we designed the interchangeable line specifically for this market. The format solves the problem this market has.
Two other Baltic buying patterns worth naming, because they affect the choices we make.
Hallmarks are read. Baltic buyers know what a 925 stamp means, know what a maker's mark is, and check pieces at purchase in ways that would be unusual in most Southern European markets. The three-mark hallmark we put on our pieces (925, assay symbol, maker's mark) is what serious buyers here look for. A piece with only a manufacturer stamp reads incomplete.
Material claims are checked. If a piece is described as gold-plated, buyers here expect the plating to actually be gold and to be described accurately. Overclaiming (marketing gold-plated silver as "gold jewelry" without qualification) leads to public reviews here that permanently damage a brand. Baltic consumer protection law is strict on this point, and buyers use the mechanisms. Our gold pieces are always described as gold-plated 925 sterling silver. This is a legal position and a market discipline; both apply.
What a small studio operates like in 2026
Loretana does not run a factory. The workshop produces small batches of each design, submits them for hallmarking, and ships them across a controlled distribution rather than a mass-market channel.
Three things follow from the scale.
Design decisions are made and reversed by a single team. If a piece is not working, we stop making it. If a new design fits the line, we add it. The turnaround from decision to shipping is weeks rather than months, which is impossible at factory scale.
Every batch passes through the same hands. The quality control is not a separate department. The person who designs the piece is close to the person who finishes it and to the person who ships it. Errors are caught earlier and fixed faster.
The number of pieces sold matters less than the number of pieces that stay worn. A Loretana piece that spends five years in the wearer's rotation is a better outcome for the brand than a piece bought and returned in a month. This shapes what we ship and what we do not.
The trade-off of the scale is that we do not carry every category a larger studio might. We do not make watches, rings above 20 mm inner diameter, or heavy men's chains. We make what we can hold to the quality standard we set, and we do not extend beyond it.
The interchangeable line, specifically
The seven interchangeable pieces are a relatively new addition to the Loretana catalog. They were designed after we observed that many first-time silver buyers in the Baltics were buying two matched pieces at the same time (a hoop plus a matching pendant, or two similar hoops in different finishes) to cover more outfit range from a single visual family.
The interchangeable format collapses that pattern into a single piece. A buyer who would have bought two similar hoops at 40 euros each can now buy one interchangeable hoop at 55 euros and get more range than the two separate purchases would have delivered. This is why the interchangeable line has grown to seven pieces across two years while the rest of the catalog has stayed stable in size.
The line will keep expanding, but slowly. We add an interchangeable piece when we can identify a specific outfit gap it fills, not when we are looking for a new SKU to release. This is why the current seven pieces (five hoops and two rings) cover distinctly different aesthetic categories rather than overlapping.
What we do not do
Being honest about what a small studio is not is more useful than pretending to cover every category. Three things we do not do:
We do not manufacture at scale for wholesale. Every Loretana piece is direct to consumer. We do not supply department stores, wholesale marketplaces, or third-party jewelers.
We do not carry solid gold pieces. Our line is 925 sterling silver, some of it with gold plating. The pricing that this produces (25 to 99 euros) sits at a completely different point in the market from solid gold, which would price roughly 10 times higher for equivalent designs. A studio that tries to cover both usually does neither well.
We do not use natural gemstones in the interchangeable line. The stones are cubic zirconia at AAA grade in the earrings and AAAAA grade in the rings. Adding natural stones would change the price structure of the pieces enough that they would become a different product for a different customer.
The wearer we design for
The Loretana wearer is between 25 and 40, educated, quietly confident, values quality over quantity, and lives in the Baltic region or in a similar cultural context in Northern or Central Europe. She does not wear jewelry as a signal of what she can afford. She wears it as a considered part of a considered wardrobe. She reads hallmarks. She notices plating quality. She returns pieces that do not fit her wardrobe rather than keeping them for the sake of the purchase.
This is a specific customer, deliberately defined rather than left vague to cover the widest possible base, and describing her openly matters because it explains why our line looks like it does across price, materials, and design. We do not make jewelry for every customer, and we would rather have the wrong buyer skip us and go elsewhere than have her buy a piece that will not suit her wardrobe.
Frequently asked questions
Where are Loretana pieces made?
In the MB Loretana workshop in Kaunas, Lithuania. Every piece is submitted to Lietuvos prabavimo rūmai (the Lithuanian state assay office) for testing and hallmarking before it ships.
How long has Loretana been operating?
MB Loretana is registered in Kaunas as a limited partnership under company code 307418489. The brand is small and continues to grow deliberately rather than at scale.
Are all Loretana pieces hallmarked in Lithuania?
Yes. Every silver piece and every gold-plated silver piece is submitted to Lietuvos prabavimo rūmai for testing and stamping. The 925 hallmark on any Loretana piece was applied by the Lithuanian assay office, not by the studio itself.
Where does Loretana ship?
Primarily to Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, which are the target markets for the brand. Shipping across the Baltic states arrives within 24 hours of order confirmation. Wider EU shipping is available to selected countries.
Can I visit the Kaunas workshop?
The workshop is not currently a public showroom. Pieces are shown online at loretana.com and shipped from the studio directly to the customer. For workshop or brand inquiries, contact us through the website.
MB Loretana. Kaunas, Lithuania. Company code 307418489. Every piece hallmarked at Lietuvos prabavimo rūmai before it ships across the Baltic states.
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