From Singapore to Hong Kong: The Genesis Story

Genesis began, as many good houses do, with a private obsession. Years before the company existed, its founder was quietly assembling a collection of precious gemstones, acquired patiently, held long, and studied with a lawyer's discipline. The collection outperformed every expectation set for it. The lesson was not lost.

Singapore, 2012

Genesis-Global Gems & Jewellery (Singapore) Pte Ltd was founded in 2012 by Kelvin Tan, who left a senior legal career of judiciary appointments, the Bar and head of legal roles across major institutions to build a house around the stones he collected. His brother Dennis Tan, whose career ran through The Ritz-Carlton and Asia's most demanding houses of service, joined to shape the client experience. The house styled itself an investment jeweller: a purveyor of exquisite gems whose beauty was matched by their seriousness as stores of value.

The Bangkok years

The house's showroom era in Bangkok placed it at one of the great crossroads of the coloured stone trade, the city through which much of the world's ruby and sapphire passes. There the house deepened the sourcing relationships with gem mining companies that remain its quiet advantage: rubies, sapphires, emeralds, jadeite and diamonds, acquired close to origin.

Exceptional stones are acquired close to origin, through relationships built over years; there is no other way.

The public record

Those years left a paper trail the house is proud of: features in Prestige, Millionaire Asia, Jewels & Time and their peers; television segments with Channel NewsAsia; exhibitions and private events whose photographs fill the Genesis archive. The Gems Equities plan of that era, a structured programme of acquisition and managed resale, its profits shared equally between house and client, reflected the founding conviction that great stones reward patience. Its specific terms always were, and remain, a matter of private agreement.

Hong Kong

Today the house operates as Genesis Global Gems & Jewellery (Hong Kong) Limited, headquartered in the city that has become the world's clearing house for exceptional Asian gemstones, the market where the great jadeites, sapphires and fancy colour diamonds change hands. From Hong Kong, Genesis serves private clients internationally, by appointment: the same discipline, the same relationships, the same conviction that began as one collector's private rule, buy rarely, buy documented, and keep what is irreplaceable.