Jane Phare talks to a Christchurch brother and sister who used to forage for coloured agate on a South Island beach and now run a luxury gemstone and jewellery business.
It was a search for a special sapphire in Christchurch four years ago that led Gemma Brain to start a business importing gemstones from around the world.
Brain, 40, went on a sapphire hunt with her brother Thomas, 38, who was looking for a special stone for an engagement ring for his fiancee Nicky, now his wife.
They visited a string of local jewellers looking for loose sapphires and found just two small stones. “And the price was astronomical,” Brain says.
It occurred to her she could do better using contacts built up during a previous trip to Sri Lanka in 2018 when she visited the renowned sapphire mining region of Ratnapura and the Beruwala gemstone markets, treating herself to a sapphire.
Brain had been fascinated by gemstones since her early childhood days when she collected crystals, and when she and her brother would spend hours scouring the beaches at Birdlings Flat and along Kaitorete Spit looking for semi-precious stones – agates, jasper and carnelian. Birdlings Flat was a favourite, a beach they grew to love after their primary school teacher took pupils there to search for stones.
“It’s full of just beautiful stones so Tom and I would spend hours on this beach looking for agates,” she says.
Her brother later joined a lapidary club, learning to cut, polish and shape stones. He describes the search for the most beautiful stone as like an addiction.
“So there was always that strong interest around geology,” Gemma Brain says.
Now the pair are in business together after Brain launched The Sapphire Merchant three years ago and Thomas joined her as a business partner to help expand the company and the brand.
Initially selling gemstones was a “hobby business” to supplement her income while working at the Brain family’s four childcare centres in Christchurch. Brain, a solo mother to three sons aged 18, 4 and 3, wanted to make sure she could support her children in the future after she and her husband separated three years ago.
Why not, she thought, travel overseas to source beautiful precious and semi-precious gemstones and sell them on a website in New Zealand. Brain began writing blogs about her travels to Thailand, Sri Lanka and Cambodia and posting videos on Instagram after visiting mines and markets. The idea was to help educate people about the range of coloured gemstones available and the ethics around mining. She rates Sri Lanka as one of the most ethical.
“The mining practices are small, it’s gentle on the environment so they’re definitely my favourite type of sapphire for that reason.”
Those blogs led Kiwis to her website and suddenly the gemstones were selling.
Three years later, The Sapphire Merchant has more than 400 gemstones on offer, across 20 different varieties, and sourced from mines and markets in Sri Lanka, Madagascar, Myanmar, Cambodia and Thailand. The stones range in price from $700 up to more expensive gems such as rubies, emeralds, sapphires and the rare paraiba tourmaline – Thomas' favourite – stones that can reach $80,000 to $90,000 in price.
Gemma Brain now thinks she holds the largest retail collection of loose stones in New Zealand, with sales doubling since last year.
“We have a little bit of everything so I have something for everyone.”
In New Zealand, blue sapphires are the biggest seller, followed by teal and greenish-coloured sapphires. Aquamarine stones are also popular with Kiwis, as are tourmaline and garnets. Eventually, clients began asking The Sapphire Merchant to make their precious and semi-precious stones into rings so Brain and her brother inadvertently became jewellery designers and manufacturers.
“There is a move towards customised jewellery. People want something unique.”
Last year they made more than 50 one-off rings for clients. Now that’s increased to 10 to 12 a month, and they have developed a range of their own jewellery under The Sapphire Merchant brand.
Brain works closely with clients on the design, then uses a CAD designer to mock up the ring and, after sign-off from clients, sends the stone to jewellery manufacturers in Bangkok. Four weeks later the finished ring arrives back by FedEx.
So far, none have gone missing. Neither has Brain been sold a dud or a fake gemstone by a merchant. There’s a high level of trust involved in relationships in the industry, she says, because reputations are important.
Even so, she’s cautious. Brain insists on having gems certified by reputable gem labs before money changes hands. That proved tricky on a recent trip to the remote gemstone markets of Pailin in Cambodia, a former stronghold of the Khymer Rouge until the 1990s. The nearest gem lab was 90km away in Chanthaburi, Thailand, one of the largest cut-stone markets in the world.
She bought high-quality sapphires on trust, backing her experience with the gemstones.
“I’ve worked with sapphires for so long I know what I’m looking at.”
Brain had them tested in Bangkok and the results were exactly as she had been sold.
Only rarely has she been tripped up, paying for the more valuable unheated sapphire only to find it had been heated. (More than 90% of sapphire stones are heated to improve the clarity and depth of colour.)
Unheated gem-grade sapphires are more valuable and rare due to their natural clarity and colour.
Brain is keen to educate her clients to think past “the big four”, the sapphires, rubies, emeralds and diamonds that are traditionally considered precious stones.
Semi-precious stones are any coloured stones outside those four but Brain says as people become more aware of other stones their popularity, and the price, increases.
“Now what we’re seeing with certain semi-precious gems is that their prices are on par with the precious four so I think that distinction has become a little bit blurred now.”
Around 80% of the rings made by The Sapphire Merchant include small diamonds so the siblings plan to introduce a diamond catalogue to the brand. And Gemma Brain plans to keep travelling to the source of the stones, with the help of her parents and an au pair to look after her young sons. She’s already been to the gem market at Chanthaburi in Thailand twice this year.
The long-term plan is to establish The Sapphire Merchant as a luxury brand and household name in New Zealand and abroad.
“We have a long road ahead of us with a lot of work to be done.”
Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based business, features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of the Weekend Herald and Viva.
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