While Madeline Fraser (above) was starting her jewelry technology company Gemist, she also was building a homestead-inspired, five-acre farm with her husband in the Ojai area, about an hour north of Los Angeles.
While the two pursuits may seem different, both show Fraser’s inclination for taking risks and creating something from nothing. They also honor Fraser’s mother, whose regular advice to her daughter—the second-youngest of seven kids—was “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
“My parents are both from Ohio and separately made their way to Los Angeles, where they built their careers, met each other, and fell in love,” Fraser says. “Both entrepreneurs in their own right and very creative individuals. I was raised by two incredibly strong and dynamic people who taught me to follow my passions and stand up for what I believe in.”
Fraser says her entrepreneurial spirit—before Gemist, she cofounded two interior design–related businesses—has roots in her experience as an artist and an art teacher. She attended an all-girls high school in Los Angeles called Archer, where she studied art and received an art scholarship to attend George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
Rather than enroll in college right away, Fraser chose to defer for one year and seize an opportunity to create an art program at a public school in northern India. There, she taught kindergarten through 10th grade—and felt empowered by her exposure to travel, teaching, and making something from scratch.
“For years before then, I had been teaching art as an assistant every summer at a little art school in L.A. I was able to take all I had learned and apply it to the ultimate test—running my own class at a school in another country,” Fraser says.
She returned to Washington for her BFA. Her time in India had changed her, and she now wanted to do something in addition to art. She discovered George Washington University’s interior architecture department, and this major used her artistic and analytical skills.
In her initial architectural drafting class, Fraser met the cofounders of her first two start-ups. In 2012, during her junior year of college, she launched Zoom Interiors with them. That company, the first online interior design platform geared toward college students, ended up on Shark Tank.
“From there, we expanded upon that concept with the data points that consumers wanted to be their own interior designers,” Fraser says. “That’s how Hutch was born [in 2016] as a mobile app that enabled visualization of furniture in the customers’ spaces.”
Fraser conceived of Gemist in 2020 when she was designing her engagement ring. She wanted a ring made only for her, like the one her father had designed for her mother.
“I quickly realized that, like the furniture and interior design industry, there was next to no technology for jewelry visualization or customer creativity,” the CEO says.
Gemist began as a direct-to-consumer platform but recently shifted to a business-to-business model. Fraser now licenses her data-backed technology to jewelry retailers and designers, enabling them to create interactive, omnichannel user experiences. It bridges the gap between online and in-store sales, she says.
Her jewelry philosophy is simple: Embrace technology. It helps deliver what your customers want, but it also lets business owners scale the supplies and duties they may not enjoy doing and take a lot of time to do well.
“I am so thankful that I landed in this wonderful industry. It’s really filled with the most talented, down-to-earth, hardworking people. It’s kind of like one big family, which I love because that’s how I grew up,” Fraser says.
(Photos courtesy of Gemist)
Follow JCK on Instagram: @jckmagazineFollow JCK on Twitter: @jckmagazine
Follow JCK on Facebook: @jckmagazine
