‘InColor’ Founder Jean Claude Michelou Dies

By Rob Bates | May 05, 2021

Gem dealer Jean Claude Michelou (pictured), who founded InColor magazine and served as its editor-in-chief for 17 years, died of COVID-19 on May 3 at age 72, according to a LinkedIn post from the International Colored Gemstone Association (ICA).

A graduate of the London School of International Business, Michelou started in the industry selling emeralds in Colombia in 1977.

“I was a young executive at an American multinational corporation,” he said in an August 2020 webinar, “and I was traveling to Colombia often, and I fell really in love with emeralds, and with a Colombian woman. And I did it, I just decided that I had to leave my job, and I had to live in Colombia.

“And it was just at the turn of the emerald industry legalization.… [Our] offices were always full.”

He didn’t truly study gemology, he admitted, until eight years after he started in the business.

“I was interested in other stones,” he said. “I started to go to Asia to sell my emeralds. To be able to sell [emeralds in Bangkok], you had to be able to take sapphires and rubies as part of the payments.”

In 2001, he cofounded the gem business Imperial Colors, based in Colombia. In 2018, he relocated to Bangkok.

He was active in the gem industry, serving on the ICA’s board for 18 years, and as its vice president for 10.

But he may have made his biggest mark in 2004 by founding the ICA’s flagship publication, InColor, which is now published by Befindan Media. On a February webinar, he recalled there was a need for a gemstone-focused magazine, as Colored Stone magazine was fading out.

“I had the idea of transforming the gazette we had into a magazine,” Michelou said. “There was a vacuum. And I said, ‘Why don’t we fill the vacuum?’… I tried to do it, and I did it.”

On the webinar, he spoke with pride about keeping the publication high quality, and about giving many fledgling gem and jewelry writers their first bylines.

He also served as a consultant for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the World Bank, and different government agencies on developing marketing standards for the gemstone industry.

“He was known in our community [for working] passionately and tirelessly throughout his life to support the colored gemstone industry,” said ICA president Clement Sabbagh in the LinkedIn post.

Daughter Zoe paid tribute to her father on Facebook: “Your lesson and experiences in life and/or professionally helped us all until today and continue to help us. You were a man of passion that lived his life to the fullest and never feared anything, you were going to the bottom of the things and always tried to make things right in your own way.”

At the time of publication, there was no information on survivors.