The world of jewelry design may have once been all but impenetrable, but now, thanks to a new iOS app, those days are long gone. With Japan’s Monomy, described as an online DIY custom jewelry marketplace, anyone can create their own fashion accessories, cobbling together any combination of the more than 1,500 different parts available on the app. Now, you can decide exactly what sort of jewelry you want for yourself, and rest assured that Monomy’s experienced craftspeople will deliver your pieces to your specifications.
“The market for handmade items has been growing a lot recently with some items surpassing 1,000 orders a month,” app representative Eri Yamaguchi told VentureBeat. But because of this huge spike in demand, he noted, keeping up with orders has gotten difficult. “Even if [craftsmen] worked without any sleep,” Yamaguchi said, “they wouldn’t be able to keep up with production; it’s not unusual to see items sold out or with a waiting time of several months.”
But thanks to Monomy’s specially curated operations department, efficiency is the name of the game — once a user designs an accessory, it’s handed off to a Monomy employee with the bandwidth to complete the item in around a week’s time, making the entire jewelry-making process relatively straightforward, even with its customization.
“I think that the most important thing is for users to experience joy by making items and enjoy being part of the community before selling,” Yamaguchi said. “There are some users that just silently design on the app when they can’t really get to sleep. We are aiming for a service where users get into designing so much that they can’t keep their hands from designing.”
And because the design of the app makes the entire process feel very real, with physics, gravity, and even natural “wobbles” taken into consideration, you know exactly what you’ll feel like you’re getting the real experience when you start your career as an amateur jewelry designer.
“It is not easy to find accessories that one likes in accessory shops and online in Japan,” Yamaguchi pointed out. But hopefully, with Monomy, everyone will be able to find, or at least make, something they like.
