Gemolith: The First Coloured Gemstones Marketplace

Who Philippe Ressigeac, COO of GemCloud
Where Hong Kong
Why The first coloured gemstone curated marketplace from a live stream directly from the source
Web gemolith.com

Gemolith, launched in November 2020, is a project powered by GemCloud, a state-of-the-art inventory management software that allows syncing to B2B platforms, through a system of verification of both the vendor and the gemstones, to provide a reliable feed with consistent imagery. It is a unique opportunity to make business on a safe and trustable platform with specific quality standards and also traceability gemstones options. Gemolith is the first coloured gemstone curated marketplace from a live stream, directly from a source, here below explained by Philippe Ressigeac, co-founder and COO of GemCloud.

In an interview you said that you took inspiration from the main outstanding fashion e-commerce platforms. Is the jewelry industry ready to access a digital platform for its buyers?
That’s quite an interesting question because I just spoke about it right before this call. Due to Covid, travelling is going to be impacted for another year and yet both buyers and vendors need to resume their operations and start to do business again. Digital is the easiest solution to do this fast and the industry will adapt to it. Through Gemolith buyers can now screen a large inventory without having to leave their office and we are working on integrating features so they will be able to also share this inventory with their own clients. We are working toward producing an online purchasing experience which is as close as possible to the physical experience. 

For a jewelry company, which are the first steps to do to board Gemolith
Basically, people can contact us through the website, by requesting access from it.. They then need to go through a verification process and they can then access our live inventory. We currently have regional offices in the USA, UK and Thailand.

How many gems do you deal with and where do they come from? 
Right now we have more than 10 thousand stones, about 28 different types of stones, that includes the big 3 – ruby, sapphire and emeralds – but also stones like alexandrite, spinel, tourmaline, different colors of tourmaline, chrysoberyl, many different types of garnets, and more exotic and rare types of gemstones. 

And which is the size range, I mean the minimum and maximum of carats?
Our inventory goes from 0.3 ct to exceptional gemstones in the 10 cts + range. 

Which is the target of your potential client?
Our potential clients are jewelers but also brands and retailers who want to integrate smart solutions to their operations. Currently we are focusing on the USA and Europe but we will be opening in new regions in the next few months. 

Do you think there could be any criticalities in terms of reducing the gap between the need of human touch and the digital, that could influence the client's behaviour towards the platform?
You can recreate emotions digitally. Brands are doing it very successfully now in the fashion industry and this is going to happen to jewelry purchases as well. In our case, we use high quality visuals so you can see all the beauty and the default exactly like if the item was physically in front of you. We are also using a proprietary grading system that gives indications of the quality of the gemstones to the buyers. Also we are providing the buyers with educational content about our gemstones which includes history and information about the exotic sources about gemstones. All this creates a different experience where there is space for emotions and for love at first sight. 

Has the pandemic somehow influenced the purchasing of colored gemstones?
In general, Covid  has strongly impacted the luxury industry . Nobody knows exactly how long it will take to recover from this. But if you actually look at the online segment, ithas been growing exponentially because people still need to get married or have other celebrations. Many companies in the gemstones industry like in Thailand, they had closed their offices and just came back recently. So all these traders are now quite desperate, because nobody can travel, and they still want to sell gemstones. The only way they have now to communicate to the client efficiently, is through a digital selling platform like ours, which is able to share a visual as close as possible to the reality. And to have a way to communicate about their inventory in an efficient way.     

How long does it take to purchase a stone, from the first contact to the end of the transaction?
Gemolith is a marketplace similar to any other ecommerce platform such as farfetch or amazon. Buyers can select a product they like, purchase it and the product is shipped to them within 2 working days. Including the international shipping time frame, the product usually gets to them within 7 working days.