你大概永远想不到，一个将朋克摇滚美学、哥特艺术等元素融为一体、且深受 Teyana Taylor 与 Chappell Roan 等明星喜爱的珠宝品牌，竟然来自新加坡。这个品牌就是 Ask & Embla，由生活与事业合伙人 Ryan Gomes 与 Olivia Eleazar 共同创立。二人于 2013 年起步，最初精选其他供应商的身体珠宝进行销售，随后转型创作自有设计。品牌创意总监 Eleazar 表示：“我当时 19 岁，沉浸在另类音乐中，那塑造了我的世界观。”
You’d likely never guess that a jewellery brand that leans into everything from punk rock aesthetics to Gothic art, and is worn by everyone from Teyana Taylor to Chappell Roan, is actually from Singapore. That brand is Ask & Embla, the brainchild of life and business partners Ryan Gomes and Olivia Eleazar, who started out in 2013 selling a curated edit of body jewellery pieces procured from other suppliers, before transitioning to creating her own designs. “I was 19 years old, listening to a lot of alternative music, and that shaped my world view,” says Eleazar, the brand’s creative director. Since then, Ask & Embla has attracted an international following.
此后，Ask & Embla 赢得了国际追随者。在此，Gomes 与 Eleazar 畅谈如何从这个“小红点”新加坡打造出一个全球品牌。
Here, Gomes and Eleazar discuss how they were able to build a global brand out of the little red dot that is Singapore. Ask & Embla’s look is totally different from the usual mainstream brands in Singapore.
Ask & Embla 的风格与新加坡主流珠宝品牌截然不同。在一个相对保守的环境中，是什么给了你们坚持这种另类美学的自信？
What gave you the confidence to lean into this alternative aesthetic in a place that can be quite conservative? OE: Audacity [laughs].
OE：胆量 [笑]。我并非一直拥有现在的自信。我母亲开始看到证据，证明我不是在搞个毫无前途的烂项目。因为我们最初在家里打包发货，订单量大到我房间装不下了。信封洒满地板，打包单到处都是——一方面她因我弄乱屋子而生气，另一方面她却说，“我为你们感到骄傲。”第一步就是有胆量。带着恐惧去做。聊聊品牌名字的由来。
I didn’t always have the confidence I have today. My mum started to see proof that I wasn’t just doing some lame project that was leading nowhere. Because we [initially] packed out of my house, our order volume got so big that I couldn’t just pack in my room any more. Envelopes spilled all over the floor, packing labels everywhere – and on one hand, she’s pissed that I made a mess, but on the other, she’s like, “I’m proud of you guys.”That first step was having audacity. Doing it scared. Tell me about the brand name.
OE：Ask & Embla 在北欧神话中指代亚当与夏娃。创意宇宙受三大影响：首先是哥特世界的万物；其次是神话；最后是人种学。
OE: Ask & Embla means Adam and Eve in Norse mythology. The creative universe is influenced by, first, the world of all things Gothic.
我们深受美与黑暗等事物的启发。这是因为我是在天主教环境中长大的，具有讽刺意味的是，教堂正是我首次接触“黑暗”概念的地方。教堂从很小的时候就教导你天堂、天使和魔鬼的概念，再加上你在圣经插图或彩色玻璃窗上看到的那些美丽视觉形象——那种完整的哥特式美学。从像新加坡这样一个小国扩大业务规模有哪些利弊？
The second is mythology, and the last is ethnology. We’re deeply inspired by things like beauty and darkness. That’s because I grew up Catholic and ironically, the church is where I first encountered the idea of darkness. The church teaches you from a very early age the concept of heaven, angels and devils, coupled with all these beautiful visuals you see from either illustrations in the Bible or stained glass windows – that whole Gothic aesthetic.
RG：最大的优势是极其稳定。新冠疫情期间，全球企业都经历了一段艰难时期，摸索如何应对[动荡]。新加坡是反应最快的[国家]之一。即使是作为一个试图服务全球社群的小品牌，我们作为物流枢纽的定位也是一大优势。身处于此也让我们能紧邻亚洲的制造业中心。你们的客户主要来自哪里？你们依赖电商吗？
What are the pros and cons of scaling a business from a tiny country like Singapore? RG: The biggest pro is that it’s super stable. During Covid, businesses around the world went through a difficult time figuring out how to navigate [the disruption]. Singapore was one of the fastest [countries] to respond. Even our positioning as a logistics hub is a huge deal as a small brand that’s trying to serve a global community. And being here allows us to be close to manufacturing hubs in Asia. Where do most of your customers come from, and do you rely on e-commerce?
RG：我们的订单主要来自美国——[该国占]我们收入的约50%至60%。接下来[最大的市场]是英国、澳大利亚、加拿大和欧盟。我们正在欧盟建立第三方仓库，希望能大幅缩短[发往该地区的]发货时间。
RG: Our orders primarily come from the US – [the country accounts for] about 50 to 60 per cent of our revenue. The next [biggest markets] are the UK, Australia, Canada and the EU. We’re in the process of setting up a third-party warehouse in the EU so hopefully shipping [to the region] will be much faster.
我们一直走纯电商路线——仅靠我们自己的[网站]，直到今年。我们推出了天猫店铺以拓展亚洲市场，因为我们的大部分市场一直[在]西方。实际上新加坡仅占我们业务的约1%，亚洲其他地区约占3%至5%。
We’ve been e-commerce all the way – just our own [site], up until this year. We launched our Tmall store to expand into Asia because most of our market has been [in] the West. Singapore is about 1 per cent of our business actually, and the rest of Asia is about three to five per cent.