She put skills learnt as communication design student to work, crafting her jewellery brand

SINGAPORE – Miss Crystal Woon, 22, once injured herself with a pair of pliers while assembling an accessory, even losing half a thumbnail.

But that is all in a day’s work for the owner and designer of home-grown jewellery brand WhoWantSayNow – which takes its name from a catchphrase she uses when she is impatient – which specialises in hand-sculpted silver pieces and stainless steel fashion accessories.

The edgy designs are inspired by Miss Woon’s love for K-pop, as well as her interest in fashion from her days of working part-time for retail stores while a student.

The design graduate’s brand was sparked when she was studying at Temasek Polytechnic (TP). She and her friend stumbled upon a stall in Chinatown that sold beads. Ms Woon bought some to make accessories, and that sparked her interest in jewellery-making.

“I gave them to my friends and then they were, like, ‘You should start a business’. I was, like, okay, why not?”

WhoWantSayNow was started in March 2021, but it was about a year later in June 2022 that Ms Woon poured more time and effort into it.

She tapped school offerings, including guided learning and mentorship, to gain skills in brand-building and marketing a business.

Ms Woon grew her brand while excelling in school, graduating with a course bronze medal in recognition of her placing third in her cohort in the communication design diploma programme.

Her final year project, based on how she would market a spicy noodle brand, won three awards at the Crowbar Awards 2023, a well-known competition for talent in creative communication and design that is judged by advertising professionals.

By the time she graduated in 2023, she had decided to make her jewellery brand her main gig instead of joining the workforce or furthering her studies.

She said of her decision: “I’m having a lot of fun doing this, and I felt like a lot of skills that I learnt at TP had already prepared me.”

Currently, as a one-woman show, Miss Woon’s tasks range from making jewellery to running WhoWantSayNow’s website and social media platforms. The night owl starts her work day by attending to the administrative work of her business from late morning to evening. She works on making the products at night, typically from 8pm until 2am.

Her jewellery creations are generally priced from $20, with the more expensive pieces crossing the $100 mark. She drops a collection about once a week and ships worldwide.

She also holds pop-up booths once every few months, which sees her making preparations about one or two months in advance as she creates at least 250 pieces for each booth pop-up.

Miss Woon has also put her design skills to use as one of the organisers and the designer of Mercury Festival, a biannual event for small businesses to showcase and sell their wares.

What has encouraged her are customers who make the effort to support her pop-up events, some queueing up hours in advance before opening hours so they can have the first pick of her wares. A customer even travelled from Malaysia to Singapore for one of her events.

For Ms Woon, who gifted her brand’s jewellery to American TikTok influencer “Kudasai Girl” (Devin Halbal) and South Korean group Aespa when they visited Singapore, her dream is to have her K-pop idols one day don her jewellery as part of their stage looks.

She brings in a four-digit figure each month, but says that she is not putting pressure on herself at this stage to bring in a target amount of money.

“I feel like the more fixated I am on numbers the more I feel like it’s a chore for me, but because it’s a passion, I want it to continue being something that I love. I don’t want it to turn into a chore.”