Hadasity's Journey
The Long Story
2010 to 2021
Hadasity really started in NYC when I started making jewelry on my living room sofa when my husband was finishing up his studies 2009.
I remember exploring 7th Ave, also known as the fashion district where there were streets and streets of fabric, beads, buttons and trimming shops. Basically the stuff of my dreams!
When I was a teenager, I had already started making jewelry with rolls of wire my uncle had passed me. He was a bit of a random collector, and somehow thought that I could really do something with a spool of copper wire he chanced upon. He was right. I started to wire everything I could put a wire through. It started with small beads that I could afford as a student together with loose buttons to make a ring, and any ribbons from presents and paper bags never went to waste. I would wire even the ribbons with beads to make jewelry.
My doors and walls were covered with looks from tear-outs from Vogue and Marie Claire as I thought to myself, that one day I would be a fashion designer.
Alas the day to choose what I wanted to become, and I applied for Fashion design at Temasek Poly and at the same time, mass communications at Ngee Ann. I weighed my choices very carefully and thought about how many Singaporean designers from humble backgrounds made it to having their own brand, I chickened out. My family didn't have much, and I would end up waitressing my way through school to support myself. I knew I loved being creative and the only other path I felt led to was mass communications.
Few years on after graduation, when looking for a job, I stumbled into being a Financial advisor and was sold on the idea that this was where I could attain financial freedom and not join the rat race of an office job. I enjoyed meeting all my clients and worked really hard in those days and at the age of 21, I had hit commissions of 3 to even 10k on one of the months but at my highest point in my career, the creative in me felt like I could go on no longer. I started to make jewelry again as a hobby and went full steam with wiring when I quit my job to be with my husband in New York for his studies.
This hobby became intense as I found myself now with a lot of time on my hands and living in the fashion district, I took almost daily walks to the shops for materials and in a year when I did the math, realized I had spent close to $30k on pearls, chain, crystals, semi precious stones and all the materials I wanted to create in. With my savings from my job, I invested into my hobby that now had to become a business considering how much I had put into the materials and the number of designs I was coming up with daily. I could not stop wiring and I loved it!
I loved vintage markets as well and found these beautiful vintage brooches which I started incorporating into statement necklaces and that was the beginning of it all. From placing My jewelry in a little designer collective on the upper East side which did regular fashion shows in NYC, I found myself one day with the favor of being featured in Marie Claire's online magazine.
That day I saw my handwired necklace featured in Marie Claire, I was over the moon. Did this really happen? I would later go on to be featured in CNNGO as Singapore's top 20 people to look out for, be on the cover of Straits Times twice, be interviewed and featured in multiple magazines and a few TV shows. Looking back at how those features happened, I now know that it was God.
When asked how I got featured in all those traditional media forms in those few years, I had no idea. I had no form of PR, no marketing team, and did not ever once send out any media kits or press releases. It was all GRACE. Unearned.
In 2010, I had moved back to Singapore a year after this all started and with the very encouraging sales and press, I jumped into opening my own brick and mortar shop which would prove to be more challenging than I had expected. After the good experience and meeting many customers turned friends, I closed the physical store and moved the business online just after one year of hoorah together with my sister Talitha who was my partner in the business for the next few years.
Things were going very well and on my last pop up event, my sales were record high and I thanked God as I managed to pay off the $30k personal loan I had taken to open up the shop front. God provided and it was also during these few years after I had opened the shop in Singapore that I started encountering God and growing in my personal walk with Jesus.
I had big dreams for Hadasity when we ended up moving back to NYC again in 2014 for my husband's job, but God had other plans for me in this season. Shortly after we moved, my prayer to be a mom got answered after many years of waiting and it was hard to continue hand wiring jewelry with a new born baby and no help or family in a foreign land. My life slowly transitioned into being a full time mom and home maker for the next 4 years and I only released small collections twice a year. Our regular customers still continued to support the business and they encouraged me to keep designing no matter how small the collections were and how infrequent they were. I am so thankful to them.
In 2018, I had my second daughter and God moved us back to Singapore with another job opportunity here and it took me almost 2 years to transition back to life in Singapore again with my 2 girls. I knew that Hadasity was something I could jump into again but at the same time, my heart was not fully there. I wanted to seek God's will and purpose for my life and not just go back to doing the same thing that I had always known how to do.
As I prayed and waited on God, I knew that I had to completely let Hadasity go in that season. Through dreams, his word and visions, he had impressed on my heart to not work for the riches of this world but for His Kingdom and His Purposes. What would that be? Too much of my identity and self worth had been wrapped up in the success of Hadasity. It was my first baby and at times, I had allowed it to become my idol and the source of my joy or sadness based on sales. Too many times I had allowed whether something sold or not determine my creativity and I was not free from this. I now know that God knew that for me to fully live for him, I would have to fully surrender all that I was TO him.
In obedience and with a heart of peace, April 2019 I laid Hadasity down at his feet and announced a closure of the business. At the same time, Talitha became a mom as well and could no longer work on Hadasity full time. I gave all my existing stock away and honestly had fully accepted in my heart that the season of wiring jewelry was over. I was ready to do whatever else God had for me or not do anything at all.
However to my surprise, on the 2nd day of 2020, a brand new year, I had a very vivid waking dream. In that dream, I was showing an auditorium full of people a video about social causes, raising awareness for an issue, selling something to raise funds for the cause and at the same time doing a workshop corporately - it was something to do with Hadasity. The dream was very real to me. God speaks to me through dreams and I knew that this was from him.
Hadasity again, God? I continued to pray about the dream and when I met my close sister in Christ Grace and shared the dream with her, she shared similar kingdom purpose business dreams that God had placed on my heart and we started to pray and dream about it together and wondered what that would look like. April 2020, just a year after I had closed the business, God breathed new life and purpose into Hadasity. We released our first collection and the business RE-BIRTHED. Hadasity was BORN, AGAIN.
Starting from zero with a new found purpose - LIFE GIVING was exactly what we wanted to do. GIVE LIFE through design. We dream of partnering and supporting NGOS all over the world to love on widows, orphans, the impoverished women and provide jobs through our business, collections and stories we tell.
Wiring again kickstarted the baby walking, but as we walked, we transitioned into other forms of story telling through other collections like our 18K Letters Jewelry and Phos Wear.
Hadasity has been a business adventure (with many risks to take and stepping into the unknown) and at the same time a faith journey, spiritually. God has woven the lives of many of our customers into His heart through the jewelry as He speaks and draws them to Himself and I got to share the heart of God and minister to our customers along the way. That has been my greatest source of income and has been making me feel rich in the bank of my heart.
If Hadasity's Story and Vision could be summed up in a few words, it would be "Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done".
Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow. - Isaiah 1:17
James 1:27
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
While what Hadasity can actually do is but a drop in the ocean of needs in the world today, I hope that this little light will spark a bonfire in the hearts of many others, and that the ocean will get a little less intimidating when we all come together.
Praying that Hadasity’s designs and words release LIFE over you and your circumstances and daily be reminders to Shine like Stars and to be the light in the dark of this world. Thank you for reading and being a part of our dream and journey!