Hpone Gem Lab Progress
Hpone, co-founder and director of Hpone Gems, has been thinking about going back to his home country Myanmar for quite a while. After all, it is where his family and childhood friends stay and his roots are firmly grounded in.
And what better to do than opening his own gemmological laboratory. 20+ years of experience in gemmology gave him the courage and the know-how to set up his own lab in Myanmar.
In June 2021, the idea of a Hpone Gem Lab in Myanmar really started to take shape.
From August 2021 to December 2021, Hpone started writing business proposals, looked for possible cooperations and started talking business with interested stakeholders.
Like every business idea and startup, Hpone Gem Lab needed a lot of research and conceptualisation to start growing.
Hours of hours of research about financing, possible names for the lab, partnerships, investments in gemmological machinery, legal structures, marketing and so on.
Some of the very first investments have been made beginning of 2022. The first Hpone Gem Lab instruments were microscopies, an EDXRF spectrometer (Energy Dispersive X-ray Fluorescence) and a raman & photoluminescence spectrometer. Although, gemmological instruments are very capital intensive, this has been a very exciting time nevertheless.
It has been the first time that the Hpone Gem Lab was not just an idea on paper but a real life project.
Although, there will be many more investments in gemmological machinery and office supplies, etc., this marked an important step into a great journey for the Hpone Gem Lab.
Dennis was helping Hpone during parts of the process as an economic advisor, but the two decided to team up and build a partnership. So, in March 2022, Dennis joined the Hpone Gem Lab as Operations Director.
Hpone and Dennis have been working together for 6+ years at the Gübelin Gem Lab. While Hpone was Head of Laboratory at the Gübelin Gem Lab in Hong Kong, Dennis first worked at the Gübelin Gem Lab in Luzern as Management Trainee, Administrative Manager and eventually as the global Head of Operations and Head of Laboratory Luzern.
The two form a strong team with Hpone having lots of gemmological and Dennis lots of economical experience.
In April 2022, Vlora joined Hpone Gems as Marketing Director.
In order to reach out to clients, create brand awareness and an identity for the Hpone Gem Lab, it became clear that we needed help.
With experience in sales and marketing for more than 10 years, Vlora was the right person for the job. She was working in sales at Swiss Education Group and at the Gübelin Academy as Business Manager where she was taking up the role of deputy to the Managing Director and Senior Vice President. She was also project leader of the Gübelin online courses and the Gübelin Gem Museum.
In May 2022, the first instruments were delivered to Hong Kong. The UV-Vis spectrophotometer (Ultra Violet Visible) and the FTIR (Fourier-transform infrared) were ready to be calibrated and eventually be shipped to Myanmar.
UV-Vis, FTIR, EDXRF, Raman, Microscopes, etc., all packed and ready to be shipped.
The "only" thing missing is all the customs papers to ship all these scientific instruments.
