Paper cutting has long been one of the most popular folk arts. Cutouts of the Chinese character for “double happiness,” for example, are commonly pasted to the doors and household appliances of the residence of a newly wedded couple, and people also use them for interior decoration. Due to the nature of the medium, however, paper cutouts are not considered something wearable. But Fenice Design, a Taiwanese jewelry brand, has managed to break the rules by sealing miniature laser-cut paper cutouts in acrylic and metal and making them into accessories. Fenice’s paper-cut collection of necklaces and earrings won a bronze award for best creative product at the First Cross-Strait Cultural Industry Fair held in Xiamen, mainland China in November 2008. “In the jewelry market, there are many international brands that have been around for centuries,” says Fenice’s creative director Wang Mei-ling. “To be recognized, we need to have something they don’t.”
Fenice was co-founded in 2008 by Wang and Ho Wen-jean, who is now the CEO of the company. Actually, the two come from totally different professional backgrounds. Wang earned her Higher National Diploma in jewelry design from London Metropolitan University in 1994 and returned to Taiwan to open her own workshop and teach jewelry design at several universities. Ho, who earned her master’s degree in communication arts from New York Institute of Technology, was working as a senior manager in one of Taiwan’s leading animation companies at the time. Ho notes that digital content has been an emerging industry, but Taiwan’s animation companies mostly do OEM work for foreign brands. “No matter how hard we worked, people saw Disney instead of the name of my company,” she says. “After a while, I was really tired and a little frustrated about the situation and wanted to do something different—something mine.”
She started to learn jewelry design from Wang as a hobby in 2005 and began selling her work at weekend markets in 2006. “It’s not about money,” Ho says. “But knowing people are buying my designs rather than some foreign brand gives me a sense of achievement that I couldn’t get in the animation industry.” Ho talked to Wang about the possibility of creating a jewelry brand and as it turned out, Wang actually had some experience in running a jewelry shop. Not long after returning to Taiwan, Wang had opened a jewelry gallery to showcase and sell her sterling silver jewelry designs, but the store lasted for only about a year. “It’s a deeply rooted Chinese concept that the value of jewelry is in the precious stones or metals such as gold or jade,” Wang says. “Silver was not considered a jewelry-grade metal, and design was something people just didn’t think they should pay for.”
The Magpies Playing with Plum Blossoms necklace draws on elements of blue and white porcelain. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Despite the disappointing experience, Wang was interested in Ho’s jewelry brand idea, since she observed that the market had changed and more people had started to appreciate the value of good design. She also recognized the business skills that Ho could contribute to the project such as those for building a brand, marketing, obtaining resources and managing costs—skills that the designer says she lacks. So after some discussion, the two decided to give it a try and aimed to create a brand of contemporary Taiwanese jewelry. What they had in mind was to use Western jewelry techniques to execute designs drawn from Chinese or Taiwanese culture. “I learned when I was in London that Taiwanese designers don’t stand much of a chance in Western-style jewelry design as those international brands have centuries of experience,” Wang says. “Our only shot was to come up with something they don’t have—something with our own cultural identity.”
After the principal design approach was set, the first thing Ho did was to gather as many resources as she could for setting up the company. “Creativity, quality products and a good marketing strategy alone don’t necessarily get you very far in a highly competitive market,” she says. “You need to look for all possible resources and take advantage of them to strengthen your competitive edge.” She contacted National Taipei University of Education’s (NTUE) Cultural and Creative Industry Innovation and Incubation Center. The center was one of the more than 130 incubation centers that have been set up in universities and enterprises with the assistance of the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA) to combine government and educational resources and provide enterprises with technical and marketing assistance. The incubation center at NTUE was established in 2007 as the first to focus on the cultural and creative industry.
In October 2007, Fenice Design became the first company to set up shop in the center. The design company was formally founded in January 2008. Wang explains that while fenice is Italian for phoenix, the accurate translation of the company’s Chinese name should be “water phoenix.” “Phoenixes are mostly known as ‘fire phoenixes’ that need to go through flames to be reborn, but we don’t want such a mournful story,” she says. “We prefer to be a water phoenix because water symbolizes purity, and it also has the same pronunciation as ‘beautiful’ in Taiwanese.”
The Silver Orchid line of designs under the Formosa Image series uses pure silver to capture the beauty of Taiwan’s various orchids. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Drawing on Chinese Culture
Fenice’s jewelry ranges from the meticulously detailed to the simple and abstract. All of the designs are inspired by Chinese culture and Taiwan’s ecology, however, and can be divided into three major categories. The Image of China series employs images or concepts drawn from Chinese historical stories and cultural totems; the Formosa Impression series draws its inspiration from Taiwan’s unique natural landscapes and plants; and Fenice Specials reflect Fenice designers’ life experiences and dreams. The Image of China series, for example, includes a Blue and White Porcelain collection that draws on the images of traditional porcelain, but replaces the “white” with silver and “blue” with cobalt enamel. The Double Happiness collection from the same series plays with the Chinese character for “happiness” and presents it in various configurations. Meanwhile, designs from the Formosa Impression series include the Formosa Ocean collection, which consists of sterling silver pendants based on the shapes of sea anemones, starfish and other ocean creatures found off the coast of Penghu. The Banana Paradise collection from the Formosa series is composed of designs based on the shape of banana leaves—a fruit that used to be one of Taiwan’s most important agricultural exports. “There’s a story behind each collection,” Wang says. “We think that if our customers understand the story, they’ll see the beauty of the design.”
One challenge facing small jewelry companies like Fenice is that they do not have many designers to create new products. To deal with the problem, Ho drew on her specialty in information technology and brought in a special touch-enabled digital design software system for fast 3-D modeling of complex and highly-detailed shapes for manufacturing. A file of a design is then sent directly to the factory to create a computer-generated mold. The computerization of the design process saves the time it takes to train new designers in the carving and molding techniques used in traditional jewelry design. Also, designers do not need to imagine the result or spend a lot of time modifying a prototype as they must when relying on designs created by 2-D software or hand drawing. “The time needed to develop an idea into a product is considerably shortened,” Wang says. “It enables us to provide customers with a greater variety of designs in a shorter time.” Thus far, Fenice’s three designers and one assistant designer have created more than 200 designs in 20 collection lines under the three main categories. Production runs are small, however, with 50 to 100 individual pieces made from the company’s designs intended for “mass production,” while just a handful of pieces are produced for limited-edition designs.
While Wang spends most of her time coming up with design ideas, her partner takes care of controlling the company’s budget, marketing and other administrative work. Lin Yan-dan, director of the incubation center, notes that the cultural creative industry is just like any other business in that management and marketing strategies are just as important as the goods created. Fenice, in his observation, is a perfect combination of the two—a creative designer and a management and marketing veteran.
The Mini Book and Butterfly ring from the Orchid Pavilion line is inspired by the lyrics of the Taiwanese pop song Orchid Pavilion. (Photo Courtesy of Fenice Design)
Yet despite the talents of the two founders, the company’s market debut was less than stellar. Ho explains that the company initially targeted the market in Europe, where people tend to appreciate design. In September 2008, Fenice took its collection to Paris for the fall Eclat de Mode show, which is an international trade fair dedicated to fashion jewelry. The first problem they encountered there was how to explain the meanings or stories behind their designs to visitors at the exhibition. “Our designs originate in our culture, and they’re very difficult to explain to those who aren’t familiar with the culture,” Ho says. The Legend of Mulan collection is a good example of the need to offer cultural background. Fenice must first tell the story of Hua Mulan—a young woman in ancient China who posed as a man in order to take the place of her aging father, who had been conscripted into the army—before people can associate the simple shapes and textured metal with the armor of the heroine. “And Mulan is hardly the most ‘unheard of’ character thanks to the Disney animation Mulan,” Ho says. “You can’t imagine what it was like to talk about the Palace Garden collection that references Yang Yuhuan.” Yang was one of Emperor Xuanzong’s concubines during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and is regarded as one of the four most beautiful women in Chinese history.
Despite their little-known cultural background, pieces by Fenice actually received good feedback in Paris. A ring from its Between the Circle and the Square collection was later showcased at the Precious Gallery in Paris, where selected items from the trade show were highlighted. The collection is based on Chinese philosopher Lao Zi’s words: “Wisdom must be as complete as a circle, and behavior must be as upright as a square.”
Positive comments, however, did not translate into interested buyers, so Ho got a little nervous, started to ask around and realized that the economic depression that began in mid-2008 was really hurting the jewelry market. “Design-wise, I think we managed to get some exposure in Paris,” Ho says. “But business-wise, it was frustrating.”
Fenice’s paper-cut designs transform the centuries-old craft into a modern-day accessory by sealing miniature laser-cut paper cutouts in acrylic and metal such as in this bracelet. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Economic Adjustments
Leaving the setbacks behind, Wang and Ho returned home and made some adjustments. To cope with the economy, the company shifted from focusing on larger pieces of sterling silver jewelry to smaller pieces with more economical materials. Ho also learned that in addition to technical assistance, she needed to seek more resources—specifically financial assistance—from government agencies. As a result of her efforts, the company, which had little money and lacked large orders in the early stages, received subsidies from the MOEA’s Small Business Innovation Research project as well as its Assisted Service Sector Technology Development Program and from the Council for Cultural Affairs. Fenice also won a subsidy from the Ministry of Education as it enthusiastically searches for talented design graduates from local schools and aims to cultivate the next generation of jewelry designers. Ho believes government resources are key to the survival of her company, as the investment needed to introduce new technology has proven larger than she anticipated.
Another change after Paris was that, considering the cultural barriers it encountered in France, Fenice redirected its focus to the domestic and mainland Chinese markets. “Now we don’t need to explain everything in a foreign language,” Ho says. “In fact, oftentimes we don’t need to explain anything, since people in this market share the same culture and are familiar with the elements we draw from it.” The company soon gained recognition after several trade shows and design fairs in Taiwan and mainland China. A number of local museums and historic spots such as the National Museum of History, the National Concert Hall and the Yingge Ceramics Museum expressed interest in selling Fenice jewelry, and several other locations such as the One Town One Product shops in Taipei 101 and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport have also started retailing Fenice designs.
This Square in Square necklace that doubles as a brooch is a design from the Between the Circle and the Square collection inspired by the words of ancient Chinese philosopher Lao Zi. (Photo Courtesy of Fenice Design)
What Customers Want
Currently, Fenice has set up about 20 retail sites in Taiwan and two in mainland China in Wuhan, Hubei province and Beijing. Both Ho and Wang have served as “saleswomen” in these shops. “We need to know who is buying our designs and what they really like,” Ho says. Through the experience, Ho has found that her clients are mostly females aged between 35 and 50. Most of them already own diamonds and other precious stones but want to have something different. To meet this demand among clients for unique designs, Fenice launched its custom jewelry service that allows clients to send in their own precious stones for custom designs.
Three years after Fenice’s founding, the company is still a few steps away from breaking even, let alone generating profits, as about 30 percent of the company’s budget goes to research and development in jewelry design technology. But Ho and Wang are both full of energy as they know that they have gradually squared most of the circle in building their own brand and selling their own designs.
Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw