Kanasucre: Innovating through recycled jewellery

The Do It Yourself (DIY) trend is gaining ground, but not many people have the creativity to design jewellery. It has been a real challenge for Shweta Lutchmun Jeetoo to come forward with her ingenious and innovative idea of crafting masterpieces. 

Set in 2010, Kanasucre specialises itself in designing fashionable creative jewellery, mastering the techniques and innovating to craft great pieces to boost up the designed fashion jewellery and handicraft sector in Mauritius. 

“We wanted to differ as a designer brand of jewellery by offering a wide range of designs to our local clients and tourists. Our various collections are designed while keeping in mind our tropical island and I included the recycled section (paper clay) to create eco-friendly awareness within the community. The recycled jewellery collection is very trendy, well designed and mixed with other quality materials,” Shweta reveals.

She started Kanasucre with her pocket money and gradually started to invest on a constant basis. She designed her own collection, craft the jewellery pieces and the branding. “My husband decided to help as I started to face fierce competition and needed a trustworthy person to work for me at the SMEDA airport outlet. In 2016, I had access to some capital through a family member to pursue and develop my project, furthermore investing in a wide range of materials and tools. The urge for designing, implementing of ideas, mix of quality materials, colour matching through trendy colour palettes after brainstorming and research made Kanasucre unique in the jewellery market.”

Recycled products 

In order to differentiate herself from the crowd, she started to use recycled products to create something different. She uses good quality materials like corals, pearls, sea urchin spines, sea shells, fresh water pearls, organic cipaye (sipayi) seeds, metal charms (copper, sterling, silver, aluminium, plastic, ceramic, crystals, semi-precious stones, glass stones, paper beads (recycling), paper clay and polymer clay. “I usually make my own polymer dough and clay. Similarly for my moulds, I use home products like silicones to create my own moulds,” she elaborates.

Intellectual property issues 

The journey of Shweta has been a roller coaster ride. Firstly, she always faced competition from big outlets and who used to complain about her presence in shopping malls. “Many big companies who deal in fancy jewellery complained that I am ruining their business. But there has been always a huge difference between their products and mine,” she avers.

Similarly, some of her competitors would copy from her jewellery designs. “A famous shopping mall did not respect my intellectual property rights by using my jewellery to attract customers. It is unfair as my jewellery line is unique and well designed.”

The Future 

According to Shweta, the DIY fancy jewellery trend has peaked in Mauritius and internationally. It is followed by various teens and people copying from designers or the internet. “Each piece in the Kanasucre Jewellery Design line is hand-crafted and tailor-made for the different target audiences. This provides a much sought-after appeal to our pieces, while offering unique designs that are hand-crafted to the highest standards specifically for our different age group of customers. This also allows us to apply the highest level of craftsmanship to every piece in the Kanasucre Jewellery Designs line,” she highlights. 

Shweta holds a B.A. (Hons) in Graphic Design. She is very passionate about doing a course on Fashionable Fancy Jewellery at Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority to learn local trends and new techniques to use an artisan approach to craft unique pieces. She is also following a leadership course at the National Women Entrepreneur Council organised by WIN and Lottotech for women entrepreneurs.