By Hadia Mostafa

Over the past decade, the Egyptian jewelry business, traditionally a male-dominated industry, has become extremely attractive to women, many of them housewives and other amateurs who have taken up jewelry design as a hobby or a creative way to make some extra cash.

Few have official retail arms from which their jewelry is sold, with most preferring to sell from home on “open days.” The trend has flooded the market with Azza Fahmy Jewelry (AFJ) knock-offs or AFJ-inspired designs that sell for a fraction of the price of the originals.

“We see imitations of our designs all the time, but the fact that you are being copied means that you are successful, so in a way it’s a compliment,” says Amina Ghaly, Azza Fahmy’s youngest daughter and top designer. “They sell for half the cost because in most instances we are talking about small operations with zero overhead. The quality is also very poor. You can just look at a piece and know immediately that something is off because the proportions are all wrong,”

“Abroad, there is a clear distinction between jewelry designers and beaders,” Azza Fahmy says. “Beaders string beads together to create jewelry. I am not belittling their craft in any way — in fact they make very nice pieces, and there is even an official beaders’ society — but it is not the same thing as jewelry design. Most of the so-called amateur jewelry designers in Egypt are actually beaders.”

“Again we are talking about perceived value,” Amina says. “You can pay thousands of pounds for a Gucci handbag, or you can get a fake for next to nothing. The same thing goes for jewelry: It’s ultimately up to the consumer to decide, even though the copies are ethically wrong.”

“One dramatic example of value versus actual cost is designer fragrance,” Fahmy adds. “A bottle of perfume which sells for $60 actually costs $1.25 to produce. The rest of the cost is all overhead.”

Of course, Fahmy and her daughters realize that market awareness when it comes to signature jewelry is still quite low in Egypt —and it can still be a problem abroad.

“Jewelry brands are at least seven years behind fashion brands,” says Fatma Ghaly, Fahmy’s elder daughter and the marketing whiz in the family. “The trends that took place in fashion seven years ago are now taking place in jewelry. The fact that we now have trends in jewelry to begin with is in itself very new.”

“It’s true that when you compare the jewelry industry with the fashion industry, it is severely lacking,” Fahmy adds. “There are thousands of new aspiring fashion designers that come out each year. In my daughter’s graduating class at the University of Central England alone, there were 300 fashion designers and just 26 jewelry designers.”

In 2000, the World Gold Council, an industry association that promotes the gold market by supporting jewelry designers, launched the Gold Virtuosi Jewelry Design Award for up-and-coming talent around the world. Among the jurors: fashion designer Alberta Ferretti, Bulgari Design Center Director Luca Bartoleschi and former CNN fashion correspondent Elsa Klensch.

“They wanted to find a judge to represent the Middle East and I was selected,” says Fahmy. “It was a remarkable experience that involved traveling across the globe to track down 30 top designs. The exposure alone was definitely a big plus for my business,” she smiles.  bt