Moissanite crashed into earth on a meteorite 50,000 years ago, is grown in a laboratory using state-of-the-art methods and has a name that sounds like something out of Star Trek.
Crystal-clear, durable and very, very sparkly, the synthetic version of moissanite, which occurs very rarely in nature, has been generating buzz as a high-tech, affordable diamond alternative. Wedding Web site TheKnot.com praises the jewel as an eco-friendly substitute for mined gemstones in engagement rings, while forward-thinking couples on forums like Indiebride.com and Offbeatbride.com who are wary of conflict diamonds or just want something a little less traditional are also turning to the laboratory-grown gem.
And over the past four years, Taiwanese consumers in particular have begun developing a taste for the jewel, thanks to the marketing efforts of Joalan Designs (喬愛倫珠寶), one of the first companies to sell moissanite jewelry and the exclusive distributor of the gem in this country.
Based in the US, Joalan was founded in 1994 by Taiwanese-American entrepreneur and jewelry designer Josephine Lee (李以莊). Joalan expanded to Taiwan in 2004; since then, the company has opened stores in Taipei and Kaohsiung and made its jewelry available at retailers throughout the island. Joalan is also sold in Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, but Taiwan remains the company’s top Asian market.
“In Taiwan, consumers are more open-minded,” says Lee, “They like new ideas and moissanite’s backstory appeals to them.”
Moissanite’s history, which Joalan pitches as “a classic tale of beauty and brains,” started in 1893 when Henri Moissan, a French chemist and Nobel Prize winner, stumbled upon the mineral while examining samples from Meteor Crater near Arizona’s Canyon Diablo. Known scientifically as silicon carbide, the rarity of the mineral in nature meant that moissanite jewelry did not become more than just a glimmer of an idea until a way to grow large silicon carbide crystals was first discovered in the 1980s by Cree, Inc, a US semiconductor manufacturer.
Lee, in turn, first discovered the stone when a close friend of hers, a diamond dealer, pitched moissanite as a business idea.
“He said that it was his gut feeling that this jewel was going to be the ‘jewel of tomorrow,’” says Lee, who at the time was running the computer hardware business she had founded in the early 1980s after immigrating to southern California. Lee’s entrepreneurial instincts sensed a new market niche, and she launched Joalan to design and sell jewelry featuring moissanite and other lab-grown gems.
Synthetic moissanite was initially manufactured primarily for industrial and scientific use, where the mineral’s hardness makes it a cost-effective replacement for diamonds. Not knowing how consumers would respond to moissanite as a jewel, Lee started with small trunk shows, presenting just 12 to 15 jewelry pieces at a time. Buoyed by positive responses, Lee began to focus on expanding her fledging company through the US and overseas to Europe, Asia and Australia.
Since the beginning, Joalan has worked closely with Charles & Colvard, the sole source of lab-created moissanite. The company credits her with helping to increase consumer awareness of the new jewel in the US, where Lee makes regular appearances on the Home Shopping Network, and abroad.
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