FundStone For WOMEN
Origin
Around the world, there are many exceptionally talented female jewelry designers. Some have graduated from prestigious jewelry design schools, while others come from families with a long tradition in the craft. Many have transitioned from other fields into jewelry design driven by their passion. However, these “ambitious” young women designers often face numerous practical challenges. Despite the pressures of daily life, they may pursue their dream of establishing jewelry studios, yet many also juggle careers as doctors, IT engineers, or business managers. Yet, their love for jewelry design never fades.
Since 2017, FundStone has collaborated with renowned Chinese and Israeli female designers to launch the FundStoneForWOMEN project, aiming to support these talented and driven women. The project takes advantage of China’s vast jewelry market and its well-established manufacturing infrastructure, offering a platform for emerging designers. Through FundStoneForWOMEN, we provide female designers with the opportunity to showcase their jewelry collections, helping them introduce their brands to China and ultimately transform into fully independent designer brands.
Building on the lessons learned over the years, FundStoneForWOMEN has evolved into a global platform, expanding its mission to serve female designers from all around the world. These designers, leading the FundStoneForWOMEN initiative, represent a diverse range of ages and styles. Together, they stand confidently and elegantly, embodying forward-thinking creativity that challenges and redefines traditional ideas in jewelry design.
Our Mission and Vision
Mission
Support women jewelry designers advance professionally through education, leadership development, and the provision of member services.
Vision
Be the premier business networking organization dedicated to enriching and advancing the professional lives of women in the jewelry industries.
Value
Be passionate
Pull together
Show we care
Shape the future
Our Values Steer Us as Love and Passion
We are guided by our values, the characteristics and behaviours that keep us focused on our purpose. These are:
Be passionate: We are exhilarated by the product we design, the challenges we face and the opportunities we create.
Pull together: Being united in purpose and action, we will turn the diversity of our people, skills and experience into an unparalleled source of strength.
Build trust: We will always listen first, then act with openness, honesty and integrity so that our relationships flourish.
Show we care: The people whose lives we touch, their communities, nations and the environment we share all matter deeply to us. We will think through the consequences of what we do so that our contribution to the world is real, lasting and makes us proud.
Shape the future: We will find new ways. We will set demanding targets and take both tough decisions and considered risks to achieve them. We will insist on excellent execution and reward those who deliver.
Our Story
The FundStoneForWOMEN program was founded in 2017. As a jeweler, I frequently traveled between Israel and China, and during these travels, I discovered that many talented jewelry designers in Israel were constrained by the small size of their domestic market, making it difficult for them to fully showcase their creativity. To address this, we launched the FundStoneForWOMEN program, with the aim of helping these female designers build their brands from the ground up, transform their designs into tangible products, and introduce them to the Chinese market. We assisted them in finding the right sales channels and even helped some open their own brand stores in China.
One example is the independent designer brand KerenKopal from Israel, known for its exquisite jewelry boxes. At the time, their products were only sold within Israel. Through the FundStoneForWOMEN program, we helped them expand into packaging design and opened an independent brand store in the heart of Shanghai. We also introduced their products into several high-end shopping malls across China, enabling the brand to achieve greater commercial success.
The turning point came when I met my mentor, Eli Izakkoff, in New York. During our conversation, he encouraged me to "think long, think big." Inspired by this advice, we decided to elevate the FundStoneForWOMEN program into a global platform that could support female jewelry designers from all over the world.
Perhaps one day, the FundStoneForWOMEN program will no longer carry the FundStone name — and that’s the outcome I hope to see most. We’re not focused on making our company famous; our true mission is to help every talented jewelry designer reach their full potential.
This is the simple story of FundStoneForWOMEN, and on behalf of all committee members, I sincerely invite you to join us.
If we are to make the jewelry industry better, we need to go beyond just technological innovation — we need system innovation.
Mark Fang
Chairman of FundStoneForWomen Committee