Charif Debs of Gemmyo on challenges facing high-end jewellery brands

Charif Debs is the latest guest of the LuxurynsightXFashionNetwork podcast series. Debs, co-founder of Parisian jewellery brand Gemmyo, talks (in French) with Olivier Guyot, editor-in-chief France of FashionNetwork.com, about his business career and about running Gemmyo with his wife Pauline Laigneau. He also discusses the challenges they are facing on a daily basis to freshen up the world of high-end jewellery.

In contrast to the traditional jewellery industry model, “in which, in most cases, companies are the expression of family dynasties,” Debs launched Gemmyo in June 2011, after a first funding round with some business angels, deploying a model based on “just-in-time manufacturing and directly controlled distribution.” Debs, a graduate of CentraleSupélec university and the Harvard Business School, set up Gemmyo with Laigneau (herself a graduate of the HEC business school and the Ècole Normale Supérieure university), helped by his younger brother Malek, an engineer, and Fanny Boucher of the Gemological Institute of America.

Unfussy jewellery

Gemmyo has a novel, unfussy approach to traditional jewellery. Its website sells France-produced items characterised by bold design and affordable entry-level prices (from €340 for a classic wedding ring, and from €725 for a gold engagement ring, up to €18,585 for a diamond and rose gold solitaire ring). Last year, Gemmyo also began to sell watches. The bridal jewellery category currently accounts for half of the brand’s revenue. According to Debs, the hard luxury segment is one where “everything goes a little bit slower” because “purchasing cycles are very long, and consumer behaviour is much more stable than in other categories.”

Gemmyo styles itself as a “pioneer of smart luxury,” but went through a “tough first summer,” being turned down many times before finding a partner workshop – which prefers to remain anonymous. “We started with a notion of ‘jewellery and disruption,’ then we realised that it was too harsh a word for something so precious, so we toned it down, adopting the slogan ‘jeune et joaillier’ (young jeweller) and an irreverent, offbeat approach, but we became almost schoolboyish […] our brand platform has changed significantly over time. It was like perfecting a wonderful recipe over various decades,” says Debs.

Opening stores “to indulge (…) our customers”

Born as a pure player, Gemmyo opened its first physical store in 2015 in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of Paris: “we had to force it on ourselves, and indulge the preferences of some of our customers by opening [physical] stores. Now we have nine, and we will continue to open new ones […] but orders taken in stores account for less than a third of our sales,” says Debs. 

Gemmyo has opened branches in Brussels, Geneva, Tokyo and recently Zurich. The company has 80 employees and generates 20% of its sales outside France. Gemmyo currently operates 10 stores, distinctive for the “warm, personalised customer experience, in contrast to the codes of traditional luxury.” An approach designed “for a clientèle that dislikes feeling compelled to buy immediately [and] the sensation of having a knife at the throat.” In the podcast, Debs also analyses the jewellery industry’s trends after the pandemic, and how Gemmyo is positioning itself to maintain competitiveness.