Stephan Baroni President & COO, Colin Cowie Lifestyle

Stephan Baroni (SB): My first language was Schweizerdeutsch, and my first trip at the age of three (of at least 100 in my lifetime so far) instilled a strong connection to Switzerland where many of my relatives live. I spent every summer visiting my relatives and traveling throughout Switzerland and I even attended summer school in Morgins for a year to study French. My parents felt it was incredibly important for me to stay connected with my roots, and to this day I feel very much at home every time I return.

SB: Very much so. My father took great pride in being a Swiss and, as the Swiss do, he took great pride in the purpose and precision of his work which is a skill and ethic he instilled in me at a very young age. Or, maybe it’s just in my blood! My friends always pointed to my Swiss roots as a young boy and man when they commented on my work. “Oh, he’s so Swiss”, was an expression I heard many times except when it came time to ski, which oddly was almost everyone’s first question: “Do you ski?”. I always had to say “no” which everyone found incredibly odd, until I was 17.
I went on a ski trip to Austria with my then German girlfriend and on my very first time on skis, my Swiss roots showed when I went down the Olympic downhill slope without falling once! Of course, I could have been trying to impress her (and keep up!) but everyone said the same as I had heard so often “Only a true Swiss could do that on their first day, it must be in your blood!” I take the same approach to my work as it involves my team executing on an incredible number of moving pieces that require precision timing and detail.

SB: I started in the catering business very early on while still studying in college. I was exposed to an industry which required a great deal of accuracy in timing and execution. Turns out I was a natural! My career flourished as I went from food service to event production on a very large scale. In my 20’s when I first became more of a planner, I became so good at it that one night I had 11 events going on throughout Manhattan simultaneously ranging in guest counts from 50 to 800. Again people joked, “Only a Swiss could pull that off.”

SB: Yes, in my current role, our company has done several events in St. Moritz during The World Economic Forum in Davos-Klosters.  We would love to do more and hopefully will in the near future.

SB: Growing up, I was always impressed with the approach the Swiss took. Things just always seemed to work and work well, look and taste better and run more smoothly. I was either born with or adopted these qualities, which are all incredibly important to designing and executing events. This security is an incredible advantage when you feel things are going to go according to plan, and if for some reason they can’t, it won’t be a surprise because it will have been addressed ahead of time with a viable solution provided. The diversity of the culture and the different language-speaking regions also offers three different “flavors” to choose from. The country is simply breathtaking and offers so many choices by land or by water that it’s very hard to find any disadvantages.

SB: One of the most common that we encounter is to make assumptions. We have learned never to assume and when one person simply tells you they can do something, make sure they can beforehand. This obviously varies from person to person or culture to culture, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry.  The other is to neglect to realize that timing plays a key role in the success of any event. Managing the timing costs nothing, but often can make or break the success of the event experience.

SB: We value the privacy of our clients and have had some unusual requests, which shall go unmentioned. We are all for creating fun and unique moments, but some requests, while they sound like a good idea, simply won’t execute and translate well, so often they are toned down or struck altogether.

SB: I would have to say that, due to the pandemic, smaller micro weddings have started to pop up more regularly. Also, the interest level in a destination wedding seems to have increased due (I’m guessing) to everyone being locked down for quite some time.

SB: We have several events on the schedule after a very quiet time and we also spun off our company’s hospitality division into Thrive Hospitality, which has been more active during the pandemic. We have redesigned and opened two restaurants at a very large private member club in Florida which are re-defining what it means to have a wedding or event on this property. We are designing a new wedding and event venue combined with an open market hall for another client as well as designing the client experience on a massive project in a development for a real estate developer. We are opening a private restaurant and banquet space on top of the tallest residential building in New York City and designing a new event space atop a Zaha Hadid building in Hong Kong, to name just a few.

SB: Honestly, there are so many it would be difficult to mention one without mentioning them all. Maybe I’m biased, but there is just something so special Switzerland has to offer from small villages surrounding the incredible number of lakes to the resorts that sit near the mountain tops. I love the diversity the country offers and it’s a treasure chest for anyone seeking to host an event.

SB: You may laugh, but the Swiss bread and butter pretzels are two things that I haven’t found with any regularity. But seriously, the consistency and dependability one becomes used to when working in Switzerland are just two things that you can never have enough of.