With help from technology, this bridal accessories maker has gone places

Helan Tan is not the stereotypical brash, zealous, and overconfident entrepreneur. Formerly employed by a bridal gown design company, she started her Singapore-based business after leaving her job as a means of attaining a more balanced lifestyle.

Her husband wanted to start a family with her. “I didn’t want to be so hectic, working till 3am when I have kids. At the same time, I wanted to bring in some income, and carry on enjoying my interests in fashion and design,” she says.

Now, she runs Gioielli Bridal Accessories (pronounced ‘gio-eh-lei’) out of her showroom in Clarke Quay.

While she has no grand plans for world domination, this lady is no lightweight. Her accessories have been featured in prominent bridal magazines like Tatler Weddings and Her World Brides, local celebrities like Fann Wong and Zoe Tay have donned her pieces for charity shows, and she has done work for television commercials and print ads for large brands like Lux, Fujitsu, and HSBC.

With such an impressive body of work, I wanted to meet her for myself.

So I headed up to Helan’s showroom, which turned out to be quite humble — a table and a cupboard full of things — and we discussed her business. She fished out an intricate crystal bouquet, painstakingly handmade.

“A client wanted something like this made to propose to her girlfriend,” she says, holding up the glittering thing of beauty. Depending on the size and complexity of the bouquet, it could fetch up to S$2,888. An ornament like this could contain up to 1,000 crystals.

Helan started the business seven years ago, and she found the early going tough. That’s because she could no longer ride on her previous employer’s brand name.

“Initially, I was suffering from low morale. Before I quit my job, I had a lot of referrals. When I quit a job, I’m a nobody. I was also transitioning from having a career to being a housewife. For a while I didn’t see results,” she says.

But as she gained more recognition for her creative pieces, the clients kept coming back.

Over the years, she has used the Internet to help her business. But she confesses that technology isn’t something that comes naturally to her.

“I get my husband to help in this aspect,” she says.

Nonetheless, maintaining an online presence, such as a website, has become an important component of her business. Whipping out her iPad, she shows me how users are finding her site through search engines like Google.