by
Photos: Madly Gems
Featuring elaborate and often whimsical design elements — along with highly sought-after coloured gemstones such as emeralds, Paraiba tourmalines and cobalt-blue spinels — the priciest pieces that local bespoke jeweller Madly Gems has created for its top clients can bear six-digit price tags. But it is not these extravagant designs that come to the mind of the brand’s founder, former radio DJ Maddy Barber, when asked about her company’s most memorable creations.
Instead, what stands out for the entrepreneur is the emotional reactions of her clients, the prices of their pieces notwithstanding. Petite with an outsized presence, Barber is dressed in a resort-ready palette of turquoise and green on the day of our interview.
Barber recalls a customer who came in with a sapphire ring she inherited from her late mother. The client wanted the sapphire, symbolising her mother, reset into a new ring, along with another Madly gemstone to represent herself.
Barber recalls, “When she unwrapped her new ring, she just cried because she felt so close to her mum. All of us also had tears in our eyes.” For the jeweller, it is this emotional connection that gives Madly Gems’ creations meaning. She shares, “Whether a design is simple, classic, or complex, what we hear over and over again from our clients is, ‘This is me!’ To me, that is what bespoke is.”
A disruptive approach
Featuring blue and grey spinels, this toi et moi ring is inspired by the client’s love for Japanese culture. (Photo: Madly Gems)
Specialising in top-quality coloured gemstones and bespoke designs since it was launched in 2014, Madly Gems’ business model is somewhat unusual. Barber recollects that when she first started, “people kept saying, ‘Coloured stones, sure or not? Singaporeans only buy diamonds.’”
Her previous experiences with the so-called bespoke services offered by some local jewellers had also proven less than ideal. Shortly before starting her business, Barber, a jewellery lover since young, had bought a three-carat emerald and taken it to a local jeweller to be set into a ring for her 40th birthday.
Aside from disparaging the quality of the emerald, the person attending to her asked only a few vague questions while hastily working out the design. The resulting design was “a simple one”, featuring Barber’s emerald surrounded by a few diamonds. When her husband Wesley, who is also Madly Gems’ managing director, saw it, he remarked, “It’s not you.”
Barber’s own preferences and experiences shaped Madly Gems when she started the brand with a jewellery designer, who has since left the company. Two years ago, Barber left radio after 25 years to focus on the business.
Eschewing the not-uncommon industry practice of copying big brands’ designs, Madly Gems has a team of eight designers who are paired up with sales representatives — who are also gem specialists — for client meetings at the Madly Gems store at Ann Siang Road.
(Top) A ring set with a pink sapphire as well as diamonds, moonstone, tanzanite, and alexandrite. (Bottom) A ring set with tanzanite, hot-pink spinel, mandarin garnet, and Paraiba tourmaline. (Photo: Madly Gems)
Each pair works together to engage customers in in-depth discussions about the designs they hope to achieve and, of course, gemstones. Madly Gems uses only the top 0.1 per cent of coloured gems, which it is able to obtain at competitive prices (and with full traceability) even as global gemstone prices keep rising. This is thanks to the fact that it has its own sourcing offices in two key gemstone-producing locations, Sri Lanka and Tanzania — a move upstream that Madly Gems embarked on during the pandemic.
The brand’s formula has proven to be a winning one: Currently in its ninth year, the business has been profitable from day one — impressive, especially for such a capital-intensive industry. Now, it is also revving up for expansion overseas, boosted by a recent investment from Indonesia-focused venture capital firm East Ventures.
Heading abroad
A fairytale-themed bangle with a detachable castle, adorned with spinels, Paraiba tourmalines, emeralds, tanzanites, aquamarines, and diamonds. (Photo: Madly Gems)
In a couple of months, Madly Gems will open its first overseas store in Dubai. The brand’s chief growth officer, Victor Saint-Pere, will helm the store, while Barber’s daughter Elizabeth, 27, will serve as the company’s general manager there. Once things have settled in Dubai, Barber and her team plan to expand to London and Munich.
Dubai was chosen as Madly Gems’ first location abroad for several reasons: Firstly, consumer behaviour there is similar to that in Singapore. Dubai’s business laws also make it an attractive destination for overseas companies. For instance, the city’s open hiring laws make it easier for business owners to find and hire talent, including those of different nationalities, notes Barber.
Barber is confident about her brand’s prospects in such competitive key markets: “When people tell me, ‘But there are a lot of jewellers there already’, I’m like, ’Great!’ — the more, the better. That means that there is a ready market of jewellery consumers. And there is no one like us there, or in any key city, for that matter.”
Featuring bi-coloured tourmaline, sapphires, spinels, and more, this chameleon brooch was commissioned by an art lover. (Photo: Madly Gems)
Rather than growth for its own sake, there are deeper reasons for Madly Gems’ expansion. The first is to boost the value of the brand’s jewellery pieces, with its customers in mind. Barber elaborates, “When you look at the sales of second-hand pieces at auctions, the value of a piece is often not about the metal used or the quality of the stones, but about the name of the design house. So, the value of building a brand that is internationally known is that the value of your pieces also increases.”
No less importantly, she sees expansion as a way of helping her staff grow. “We want our best people to grow with us, rather than feel like they have to leave the company to explore other avenues. With more stores, we can give them more opportunities. I already have staff telling me they want to go to London when we open there. And then we can rotate talent as well — people who were trained in England can come here, and vice versa. That’s how the team can grow, not just in terms of size but also in terms of their talent, experience, and calibre.”
