Chapter 3 — When Pearls Found Their Meaning

The Moment Everything Shifted

When I first came home, I didn’t start with a brand or a studio.

Like many people in our industry, I spent my first year back trying the traditional path—B2B wholesale trade, bulk orders, and long conversations about price and grading. It was practical. It made sense on paper. But it also taught me something I didn’t expect.

For a while, my work with pearls felt strangely empty.

Not because the pearls weren’t beautiful, and not because the business wasn’t making money. In fact, it was the opposite: I was earning more than I do now with my Instagram and website. But day after day, I kept asking myself one question:

Is that all?

Back then, my customers were mostly in Europe and the United States. To match the time difference, I worked at night—starting around 8 p.m. and often finishing around 4 a.m. Our system could collect emails automatically, and we could send over 6,000 emails a day.

And then… I would wait.

Most days, I’d get more than 50 replies, but many of them didn’t lead anywhere—just small talk, quick questions, or conversations that ended before they began. The real inquiries—the ones that actually mattered—turned into long, repetitive loops: quoting prices, quoting again, negotiating, taking photos, filming videos, pointing out flaws, explaining flaws, discussing price again.

It wasn’t that the customers were wrong for asking. That’s business.

But the rhythm of it made me feel like a machine. I was always tired. Sometimes I drank a little at night—more out of numbness than celebration. I remember the feeling clearly: hollow, mechanical, and strangely disconnected from the very thing I was selling.

I grew up around pearls, yet I couldn’t feel their meaning anymore.

Three Postcards in Hong Kong

Then, one day in Hong Kong, something small stopped me.

I walked into a vintage shop. The lights were dim, and the air smelled faintly like vanilla incense. There were stacks of postcards—hundreds of them—divided into piles on a table. I don’t know why, but I started flipping through.

And somehow, out of all those postcards, I pulled out three—each one with pearls in it.

One was from England, dated 1918.
One looked like an image from an old oil painting, almost medieval in feeling.
And the third felt like an early Chinese studio portrait, something from the 1950s.

None of the pearls were particularly “high grade.” They weren’t perfect. They weren’t the kind of pearls I would carefully select today.

But I couldn’t look away.

I held those three postcards for a long time, just staring. And in that quiet moment, it finally clicked:

Pearls don’t become meaningful by being perfect.
They become meaningful when they belong to someone.

On a person, pearls come alive.
Off a person, they’re just… objects.

That was the moment I “woke up.”

Why I Chose Instagram

When I returned home, I made a decision that surprised even me:
I stepped away from traditional wholesale work and started over—on Instagram.

My first photo was taken in winter. We had just processed a new batch of pearls—star pearls, actually, very similar to what I’m working with again as I write this now. I didn’t have a big plan. I was honestly still a little lost.

I simply picked two pearls and made a pair of earrings.
I thought: maybe someone will like this.

In those early weeks, I also shared small pieces of the process—opening oysters, sorting pearls, the behind-the-scenes moments that felt normal to me, but new to others.

For the first two months, nothing happened.

No traffic. Almost no views. No real growth.

By the third month, I had just crossed 100 followers, and that already felt like a miracle. And then—on the exact day my account passed 100—my first order came in.

I remember the date clearly: July 11, 2023.

A customer named Allison placed three orders: one star necklace, and two pairs of earrings. It felt completely unreal, especially because she had barely interacted before—maybe just one like on a video.

I was so excited I almost jumped up.
That night, I stayed up selecting pearls for her, drilling them, finishing her necklace—because suddenly, it wasn’t “inventory” anymore.

It was going to a real person.

The First Friends Who Made It Real

After that, more customers found me—and slowly, a small community began to form.

In Singapore, Jessica loved large Edison pearls.
Her friend Saema leaned toward Tahitian pearls.

From Morocco, Coco became someone I’ll always remember—especially because she supported me during one of the hardest moments in my business (the story of my hacked account is a whole chapter of its own). I later sent her a pearl Christmas tree as a thank-you.

And then the map kept expanding:
Gianna in Northern Cyprus.
Anna and Ewa in Poland.
Elena and Lucy in the UK.
Customers from Ukraine, Israel, Russia, Germany, Ireland—Even Mauritius and Hawaii。
And of course, so many from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan.

What surprised me most wasn’t the orders.

It was the feeling that pearls were quietly connecting people—across languages, across distance, across completely different lives.

The First Photo That Made Me Stop Walking

About four months into running my account and website, I received my first customer “wearing photo.”

I was walking when it came in. I opened the message, and I just stopped.

She was wearing a necklace she loved—Aurora Necklace No. 02, with a 9mm pearl and a 6mm pearl. The pearls were glowing on her chest, yes.

But what I saw first was her expression—her eyes, the way she smiled.

My first reaction was to freeze. Then my eyes felt warm. I saved the photo immediately and sent it to my family.

In that moment, I understood something very simply:

The beauty wasn’t only in the pearls.
It was in the person wearing them.

And suddenly, my work made sense again.

It felt like the pearl had completed its purpose—
and I had found mine, too.

View our customer's gallery here!

What I Want Alya Pearls to Be

I don’t want Alya Pearls to be just a shop.

I want it to be a collection of stories.

I want every person who wears our pearls to feel like they’re not just buying jewelry, but adding a small, lasting light to their life—something that stays with them, quietly, for years.

That’s why our slogan feels true to me:

Where every pearl finds its story — and yours begins here.

And maybe this sounds a little unusual, but it’s honest:
I try to remember you—your preferences, your messages, your pearls—almost the way a good craftsperson remembers their work.

Because to me, pearls are never “just pearls.”
They’re the beginning of a story that gets to live on someone real.

And that’s when pearls finally found their meaning again.