Deal focus: How to go global as a neighbourhood shop

A few years ago, Willson Cuaca, co-founder and managing partner of East Ventures, went into a boutique jeweller in Singapore’s Tiong Bahru neighbourhood with his wife to have a custom piece made. The shop has since closed at that location and moved into bigger digs in Chinatown.

Fast-forward to 2023, Cuaca’s team at East encourages him to check out a potential investment, a profitable bespoke jeweller in Chinatown called Madly. Unbeknownst to the investor, he was returning to a business that had already impressed him.

Madly’s founder, Maddy Barber (pictured, centre, with Wez Barber, a managing director, right, and Victor Saint-Pere, chief growth office, left), had already been fielding private equity and venture capital solicitations for a couple of years. But she immediately felt East was different because the first point of contact was not one of the firm’s deputies – it was the boss.

“When we started talking, I liked that he asked the question, ‘Why us?’ Most VCs just assume you should be thankful, like ‘Of course you want us.’ And then in the conversation, we both realised he was actually a client,” Maddy Barber said.

“Another thing he said that I loved was, ‘Wasn’t your old place better because it was more intimate?’ He got it. Most VCs and PEs want the big sign and everything posh. But Madly has always been about the intimate experience, and that never daunted Willson.”

In many ways, Madly is more of a geologist’s rock shop than a traditional jewellery retailer. There are only about half a dozen ready-to-sell pieces in the showroom; the rest of the stock is raw stone. Synthetic, lab-grown diamonds are therefore not on the menu.

Customers come by appointment only, examine the specimens, learn about mining, gemstone classifications, cutting, and polishing. It’s more experiential than transactional, which explains a sponsorship by the Singapore Tourism Board. “When you’re holding a rough sapphire, it doesn’t look anything like the sapphire you might know. It’s super interesting for people,” Wez Barber said.

The idea is to take this concept to three more cities in the next three years, and possibly as many as 10 in the longer term. Dubai, being identified as the most comparable market to Singapore, will be first. Europe will follow.

The trick is to keep things small, bespoke, and neighbourly while expanding, creating an almost paradoxical mom-and-pop chain. To some extent, this will be achieved through technology – hence the partnership with East – but Madly is committed to doing business in person.

“The holy grail for many businesses is to be able to scale by selling product online. And we’ve really gone against the grain in that we don’t sell anything online,” Wez Barber added.

“We generate leads online, our funnel is online, and we nurture relationships online. But we continue those relationships in person in the store. We want to be people’s friends and educators before we become their jeweller. You can’t do that when you sell products online.”

East has invested an undisclosed sum in the company to make this expansion happen. In lieu of an e-commerce strategy, its technology connections are expected to be helpful in streamlining operations in areas such as data about client interactions and the use of 3D mock-ups of potential jewellery designs.

The most significant portion of the capital will go toward the acquisition of stones for the new shops and the fit-out of those locations. The investment is sufficient to achieve the initial milestone of adding three additional locations, but no more, which implies more investors will be onboarded in future rounds.

For now, Madly is an anomaly from the PE and VC perspective: a 10-year-old profitable operation, still constrained to a single location and looking to scale without going too big or going online. As the business adds its first overseas locations, it may come into focus as an archetypical target for more investors – but access will be limited to those with a personal touch.

“I’ve already identified another VC I really want to work with. It just didn’t happen the first time around. They still tell me, ‘You’re the one that got away,’” Maddy Barber said.

“It’s about combinations of the right people. You add one person to the team, and it can change the entire dynamic. It’s the same with partnerships to take a business in the direction you want.”

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• Topics
• Southeast Asia
• Early-stage
• Consumer
• Singapore
• East Ventures