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Stand-up comedian, improv instructor and jewellery designer Amy Vaya aims to charm gem lovers with her latest range of bespoke beauties ... after dazzling small business entrepreneurs at an international conference.
The United Nations invited Amy, founder of My Gold Souq, to the organisation’s recent first-ever Arab SMEs summit in Amman, Jordan. The event brought together industry experts and decision-makers to promote innovation, alongside 50 start-ups from across the region.
“It was an honour and inspiring to be around a community of people who are all motivated by their vision of a brighter future and are building exciting products and services that will make lives better,” she explained. “I definitely came away from the event with some great ideas and connections.”
Amy, 34, set up her direct-to-consumer jewellery startup with her brother, Priyesh, 31, last year. The company sources exceptional 18k gold jewellery with diamonds and pearls directly from factories in Bahrain.
“My family has been in the gold jewellery sector here in Bahrain since 1937, so that’s going all the way back to my great-grandfather,” Amy, who is also a communications and PR professional with 15 years of experience in the Middle East, told GulfWeekly.
“My father eventually moved away from the business because he could not figure out a way to modernise or scale it. We felt like there was still a lot of online potential, which is where the idea for this came from.”
In her spare time, Amy, who lives in Hamad Town, enjoys making people laugh on stage and helps others to step out and entertain. She believes that teaching people how to communicate is a vital life skill which can help open doors.
On the jewellery front, she also fulfils special requests for bespoke creations, including lovingly-crafted wedding rings for friend Charlie Holding who recently tied the knot, after first making him a surprise engagement ring for his sweetheart, Regine.
“Requests like this are very special because they show that the customer trusts us with the most special moment of their lives, and it is such a privilege for us to be a part of their life for the rest of their life because gold is forever,” she added.
“One of the most special orders we ever had was a man and woman who had both made up their mind to propose to the other at the same time and secretly ordered engagement rings for each other without the other knowing! We were so excited for them and it was very hard to keep it all a secret until the big proposal.”
Amy’s next step for My Gold Souq is creating a platform to allow people to customise pieces exactly how they like them, so they can effectively build their own bling and create highly-personalised gifts for themselves or a loved one.
She will also be expanding her exciting NFT project called Sardana, which she recently developed in collaboration with Bahraini artist Leena Al Ayoobi. Buyers will receive one of Leena’s artworks as an NFT alongside a limited-edition piece of 18k gold jewellery created especially for the project and featuring Bahraini pearls.
The pearls are accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from the Bahrain Institute for Pearls and Gemstones, ‘DANAT’, which will be held on the Blockchain.
“This project shows that NFTs can be attached to actual utilities, in this case, the jewellery pieces, merging digital and physical ownership,” she explained.
“It also highlights how Bahrain has always embraced pioneering technologies.
My Gold Souq is working to make jewellery more accessible to a wider audience and revolutionise an industry that hasn’t been modernised in 200 years.”
