Carrying on a family business is no easy feat, not least when it’s a brand with over 150 years of history. For Shanya Amarasuriya, taking the reins at B.P. de Silva Jewellers has been a delicate balance of moving the needle while staying true to the brand’s origins and heritage.
“B.P. de Silva has so much of our family DNA,” says the fifth-generation jeweller.
It’s such an intimate type of business centred around human connection.
The brand was founded by Shanya’s great-great-grandfather, Balage Porolis de Silva, in 1872. Since then, the family has expanded into multiple other ventures, including acquiring a minority stake in Swiss luxury watch maison Audemars Piguet.
Options last caught up with Shanya in 2022, shortly after B.P. de Silva moved into its flagship store at Dempsey Road. Just over two years on, we’re here again, ready to find out what’s new and what’s ahead for the jewellery brand.
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From ‘mine’ to yours
Among B.P. de Silva’s latest releases is a six-piece extension to its signature Pocketful of Gems collection, featuring fully traceable gems.
“It was about three or four years ago that I had this idea of doing a traceable sapphire line,” says Shanya. The goal, she adds, was to give consumers a better appreciation of how each piece of jewellery makes its way from a mine to the store. “As part of the industry, I always felt like the front end of the business was the part clients would get to see — and it’s very beautiful, but this idea of the journey of a jewel was missing.”
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Traceability, which entails following and documenting a product’s path throughout its value chain, gives consumers a better understanding of where their purchases come from. The heightened level of transparency can also help consumers avoid products made with unethical practices.
But with so many hands involved in the jewellery world, ensuring traceability can be an arduous task. Finding the right people to work with to bring the pieces to life was a top priority, says Shanya. “For this project in particular, having a trusted partner willing to open their doors to invite us … to the behind-the-scenes of the jewellery industry was big.”
Shanya zoomed in on other family-run, multigenerational businesses that would have a “shared value system” with B.P. de Silva. Once these partnerships had been established, going down on the ground from day one was key to getting things right. “We were involved right from the mine,” says Shanya.
Working with partners in Sri Lanka to source loose, rough gemstones, the B.P. de Silva team looked through parcels of uncut sapphires to find just the right stones to become part of the extension.
After narrowing down more than 400 rough sapphires to a shortlist, they sent the stones on to a lapidary, who did a rough cut known as a preform. This gave the team a sense of what the final cut gems would look like. Another round of selections was then conducted, with the team eventually landing on six stones that went on to be cut further, polished and set to create the final necklaces.
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Asked about the specific benefits of incorporating traceable jewels into B.P. de Silva’s catalogue, Shanya says that traceability “isn’t a selling point” for the brand. “It’s part of what we believe the jewellery industry as a whole should move towards,” she explains.
Taking the first step of creating these six pieces, she adds, is the brand’s way of encouraging other players in the jewellery scene to take on similar efforts. “It seems small, but … five or ten years down the line, we’ll realise that we were putting that first ripple in the water of what could be done — for ourselves and the wider industry.”
Beyond pure traceability, having a deeper involvement in its sourcing and the creation process is also something the B.P. de Silva team enjoys. “It’s an extension of us sharing who we are as a company,” says Shanya, noting that “very few” jewellers have a hand in every step of jewellery-making. “Usually, you’d outsource different parts, and maybe you focus on just the design or the creation.”
Ultimately, the goal is to foster a deeper connection with jewellery. “[Traceability] is like the sugar sprinkles on top for the clients,” she quips, “but it’s actually very core for us.”
Carrying the torch
Rather than creating a new collection for the traceable sapphire pieces, Shanya opted to include them as part of the Pocketful of Gems line, which was introduced in 2022 to mark the brand’s 150th anniversary. “We thought, ‘What better collection to have this concept than the one that pays homage to B.P. de Silva’s start?’”
That proverbial pocketful of gems was carried here by Balage Porolis, a travelling jeweller from Sri Lanka who made his way sailing around the world. He eventually set up shop in Singapore, sowing the seeds for the five generations who would come to form the city-state’s longest-running jewellery brand.
Shanya took over leadership of B.P. de Silva from her father, Sunil Amarasuriya, in 2018. She hadn’t always set out to do so, however. She had initially wanted to get into fashion design before Sunil encouraged her to pursue studies in business. “He said it would be a good foundation for whatever I chose to do,” she says.
Though she admits she wasn’t entirely sure then, Shanya says going to business school paid off. “In hindsight, it made a lot of sense for me,” she adds, noting that her education gave her the commercial know-how that has supported her, not just in her time at B.P. de Silva but across her career in general.
Shanya spent time working at RISIS — another homegrown brand bought by the family’s holding company, B.P. de Silva Holdings, in 2000 — before her family landed at a crossroads.
“At that point, my father wanted my brothers and I to decide whether or not to keep the jewellery business,” Shanya recalls. Sunil believed that unless one of the scions got involved in B.P. de Silva, they should “let it go”. “He wanted our personal investment to take it forward.”
It was here that Shanya decided that she wanted to try her hand at helming the original family business. “I’ve grown up with this business; I’ve seen our craftsmen working from sketch to finish, the gemstones, the retail workers … This is a world that’s so close to who we are as a family, and I didn’t want to give it up.”
So, she set off to New York to complete an associate’s degree at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Along the way, she reaffirmed her passion — and uncovered a talent — for design. “There are things that come naturally to you that you just lose track of time with. Those are the things that are meant for you, and that’s design for me.”
Taking things forward
Armed with a newfound knowledge of and appreciation for gemology and jewellery design, Shanya returned to Singapore and quickly set to work on B.P. de Silva, designing new products and conceptualising the flagship store. Since then, she has extended the brand’s high jewellery collections, and added new ready-to-wear lines to cater to a wider, younger clientele.
The tastes of this generation are certainly different from those of generations past, says Shanya. “Clients today have a different point of view and different behaviour when buying jewellery.”
Among their top priorities, she believes, is customisation. “This sense of having a distinctive identity is much more embedded in the younger generation,” she points out, adding that even when they like something off the shelf, they may ask to personalise certain aspects, to “get involved with what they’re going to bring home”.
Brand identity is also becoming a bigger focus for consumers, who increasingly seek to vote with their dollars. “That sits really nicely with us,” says Shanya, “because that’s oftentimes when they realise that we are a value-based family business; we’re a brand that’s looking long-term.”
Part of B.P. de Silva’s efforts to better integrate its values throughout the organisation was getting certified as a B Corporation in 2022. The designation is awarded to businesses that meet high social and environmental performance standards, accountability and transparency.
“Getting certified gives us a means to align our values with our decision-making,” says Shanya. It’s also allowed the brand to seek out ways to further its potential social impact. “When you go through the certification, they have a pool of companies and data to help you ascertain where you are and where you can go … It keeps us in an environment of continuous improvement and a commitment to that.”
Onwards, with feeling
Shanya flags that the designation is far from a one-and-done situation. “We’re not done yet,” she says, further highlighting that it is more of a signal that a company has taken its first steps. For B.P. de Silva, this manifests as a “constant awareness” in its decision-making processes, even down to the types of ribbon used in its packaging.
“We don’t have all the answers,” Shanya notes. “But the fact that we’re asking ourselves these questions and getting certified again every three years with more stringent standards positions us as a company that believes in our social impact and takes a certain degree of responsibility towards it.”
With the new year underway, Shanya aims to take B.P. de Silva to new shores. “We have a few exciting markets that we’re planning to expand into,” she teases, though she declines to share exactly where the brand is heading next. Collaborations are also on the cards, she adds, with potential for launches that go “beyond jewellery”.
As she lays out her plans to grow and evolve B.P. de Silva, Shanya is set on keeping its identity and values at its core. “My dream is for B.P. de Silva to be a soulful luxury brand.”
What this means, she explains, goes beyond the execution of a well-made product and a high level of service. “It’s what makes us different: our family business, the human connection, how we relate to others, and how we imbue a part of ourselves in what we do.”
