Gemmyo expands beyond Europe as it marks 15 years of growth

Can a jeweler built on made-to-order, digital trust and 100% French craftsmanship scale more cleanly across borders than the inventory-heavy luxury model? Gemmyo is answering that question with Canada and South Korea, the next markets in a push that turns its 15th anniversary into a live experiment in how fine jewelry now travels.

The company began in 2011, when Pauline Laigneau and Charif Debs came away disappointed by their engagement ring search in Paris and set out to build a different kind of maison. Gemmyo has long described that ambition as a modern alternative to Place Vendôme codes: rare and unusual stones, warm service, just-in-time manufacturing and exclusively in-house distribution. The result is a house that treats the ring counter less like a vault and more like a conversation, with French workmanship doing the heavy lifting.

That model has proved resilient. Gemmyo says it has about 100 employees, more than nine physical doors, and a business split that still leans heavily on the digital and the tactile at once, with roughly 40 percent online and 40 percent through brick-and-mortar channels. Sales outside France account for about 20 percent today, while France still represents around 80 percent of revenue. Sophie Garric, who has led the company since 2024 after stints at Jaeger-LeCoultre and within Richemont, says growth has averaged above 20 percent year-on-year since the beginning, and that Gemmyo’s largest online order reached 60,000 euros.

Japan offered the clearest proof that the formula can cross borders without losing its intimacy. Gemmyo opened a permanent Tokyo boutique in late 2024 after a six-month residency at the Okura hotel, and the store generated about 2 million euros in its first year, making Japan the brand’s third-largest market after France and Switzerland. The company’s footprint now stretches from Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Aix-en-Provence and Toulouse to Brussels, Geneva, Zurich and Tokyo, a footprint that suggests selective geography rather than brute-force expansion.

Gemmyo reinforced that discipline in January 2026 by taking a stake in Callistorea, its longtime workshop in Nice, a move meant to strengthen control over production and craftsmanship as French artisanal capacity comes under pressure. The brand’s 15th anniversary will be marked with a Paris soiree in early July 2026, but the larger story is strategic: Gemmyo wants international business to rise to about half of sales over the next few years, and it is doing so by betting that jewelry buyers in new markets value transparency, personalization and the reassurance of French making as much as they value the object itself.