The Yakutia-based Kierge company, one of the Top 100 of the leading jewellery brands in Russia, opened its showroom in Moscow this autumn, which is gaining popularity in the capital of Russia.
“Kierge” is the Yakut for a “finery, decoration” in a broad sense, not just adornments but rather a jewellery set.
Galina Pavlova, Director of Kierge, told R&P about setting up the Moscow showroom and how to take advantage of being under the lockdown restrictions due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
While many firms are closing their outlets and going online, or ceasing to exist altogether, you are opening stores and expanding. How do you manage to do this?
Everyone has a hard time during the pandemic as the sales continue, but the revenues decline. Nevertheless, we did not waste any time and made a good thing of it - we opened a showroom in Moscow and also made major repairs in the old building and reconstructed a new building in the centre of Yakutsk.
We connected the new and the old buildings, and we set up our beautiful Diamond and Mammoth Center on the expanded ground floor, launched our new collection The Symphony of Permafrost and opened a museum of women’s pectoral adornments from all over the world.
In addition, we have scaled up our activities in online social networks, started and constantly update our Instagram #kierge#.
What prompted you to open your showroom in Moscow?
There is no room for complacency, one must always move forward. Our market is limited, we filled our specific market niche in Yakutsk, and we should expand. Three years ago, we set up a small branch of our firm in the building of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) in Moscow. Nearby, there was the Diamond Yakutia store, which is a nice place (somewhat reminiscent of the Tiffany store in New York) that was offered to us two years ago, but at that time, we were not ready to use it, and we decided to take advantage of the opportunity now. Of course, it was necessary to invest our own funds in expanding our activities. By the way, it helped us a lot that the government provided us with a non-repayable loan to pay salaries to our employees, and thanks to the loan, we kept all jobs and our team and paid all taxes. My background is economics, and when I came to work at Kierge (founded in 1993) eight years ago, I introduced the financial planning of the enterprise, which gave its results, and we set up our Production Expansion Fund. The Permanent Mission of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) held a tender, we won it, and within a very short time, in two and a half weeks, we did the renovation quickly and economically.
There were many guests at the opening of the Kierge showroom located in the centre of the capital, in a beautiful Art Nouveau building. Did you expect so many people to come to support you?
It was an unhoped-for success as we expected about 40 people to come, but 135 persons came. There were the representatives of the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), President of the Union of Women’s Forces of Russia Inga Legasova, art critics, jewellers, journalists; many kind words were said. I have my sincere gratitude to all our employees, we quickly started our business, reconstructed the premises and the inauguration was carried out in a wonderful way - with an opening ceremony, concert, lottery and a charity event, our first one in Moscow. In Yakutia, we often hold charity events, and every time, we are amazed at how kind the people are and at their strong desire to help. For example, when a person who won a super-prize (a luxury diamond jewellery piece) gave it to the mother of a sick child to buy a wheelchair for her kid ... In general, there are a lot of such stories.
Image credit: Kierge
Tell us about the new collections made by your skilled craftsmen.
We offered our new collections to the Muscovites, including The Power of the Yakut Land, The Symphony of Permafrost, and The Sun of the Arctic, and we hope that this jewellery will find its way to their hearts. The most recent collection created this year is The Power of the Yakut Land made of rough diamonds. It arouses constant interest at the exhibitions, sells very well, and the Italians show their interest in it now. These are exclusive jewellery pieces with the stones bearing the sacred code of the Earth, they are unique and one-of-a-kind, set in yellow, white and red gold, they look like rough diamonds entwined with tree roots as if came right from the depths of the permafrost. We have passed the expert examination, the rough diamonds are provided to us by ALROSA. The jewellery pieces from the first lot won at tender have already been sold out. We need funds to continue this successful collection and to make it our brand. So, we decided to open a showroom in Moscow and expand the area for our trade to be able to develop and create new collections, and to promote the Yakut jewellery art as well, of course.
Your company has joined the North Mosaic tourism cluster. What opportunities does this give to you?
I always wanted to take part in organizing and promoting the jewellery tourism in Yakutia, which attracts many people who are fond of travelling.
So, we created the Diamond-Mammoth Center, a permanent gallery The Symphony of Permafrost where the ethnic elegant costumes by the Yakut fashion designer Avgustina Filippova are displayed, and a museum of women’s pectoral jewellery made by different nations of the world.
The Symphony of Permafrost is a collection of exclusive pieces made from natural minerals mined in the Republic of Sakha, like gold, silver, diamonds, chrome diopside (Yakut emerald), lilac charoite, and mammoth bones are used as well. The designer of the collection is Nikolay Fyodorov, a Kierge jewellery house’s jeweller. The collection became famous and ranked first in the Ethno-Style nomination at the Moscow Junwex two years ago. Its idea lies in the simplicity of its forms and a skillful combination of seemingly incompatible materials like mammoth bone with diamonds, and of silver and gold with woven horsehair.
The jewellery house has a unique collection of women’s pectoral jewellery pieces from the whole world, including the ones from Nepal, Hong Kong, Bahrain, Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. By the way, until recently, there was no old Yakut jewellery piece in the collection. And quite recently, the Ilin Kibeher was brought to the jewellery house, a pectoral plate of the late 18th century, a family heirloom of a wealthy merchant family from Tattu. Such moments bring a lot of joy ...
But first of all, all this was arranged to attract the tourists visiting Yakutia. National holidays, festivals and business events are held here. And since the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) is famous for its diamonds, the diamonds of Yakutia have become a brand, people buy our jewellery pieces and diamonds as souvenirs and gifts. Recently, the Japanese Ambassador and his wife visited the Kierge showroom. Famous people, politicians, people of art come to our showroom, too.
By the way, at the October IJA conference held recently, our Yakut showroom was a prizewinner in the nomination the Jewellery In-Store Design Preserving the Cultural Traditions of the Region.
Galina Semyonova for Rough&Polished
