Jewellery designer takes aim at ‘cynical’ people after post about €7,500 ring went viral

A boutique Irish jewellery designer has put a new spin on the term “engagement” ring, after it used a tale about a lost sapphire to tell a viral story.

But the hunt for the owner of the €7,500 ring came to an abrupt end after it emerged the mysterious story had a “sad” ending.

Social media posts relating to the ring had driven significant online engagement.

Chupi Sweetman is the CEO of Chupi, the Dublin-based jewellery designer at the centre of the story. She said there were “some cynical people out there” who doubted the story.

Ms Sweetman said she shared the tale on social media in a “very genuine attempt to reunite this engagement ring with its owner”.

On the Chupi Instagram page, the company initially claimed that a woman had walked into its Clarendon Street store this week with a 1.5-carat sapphire engagement ring in her possession.

The woman had found the ring “up in the Wicklow Mountains at the weekend” while going for a “ramble”.

The blue sapphire ring with diamond detailing was found in a branded Chupi box, and had sustained minimal damage despite being exposed to the elements.

According to Chupi, its pink velvet jewellery boxes are made of cardboard, so they would not fare well outside for long.

Ms Sweetman later clarified that the ring had actually been found on February 12 “in the woods”. She said there had been attempts to find its owner locally before it was handed in this week to the store where it was bought.

Ms Sweetman told her social media followers this week that while the store has a database of all of its customers – including everyone who bought that specific type of ring – she was restricted from contacting customers directly because of GDPR rules.

In a video, she claimed that the “only way” to find the owner was by her followers sharing Chupi’s posts, which soon had #chupimissingsapphire as a dedicated hashtag.

“I figure we have about a quarter of a million people who are engaged [on social media] with us, so if all of you share it with one person, that would be half a million people,” Ms Sweetman told her followers.

RTÉ was also invited into the store to do an interview with Ms Sweetman.

By yesterday morning, an update was posted on Chupi’s Instagram page.

It stated: “We have found the owner. There was a bunch of potential leads, most of which were dead-ends.”

The post added that a store manager had spoken to the rightful owner, who had confirmed details that only they could know. The store was “finally” able to find the ring and the buyer on their system.

“They have asked for privacy so we won’t be sharing any more details,” the post said.

Yesterday, the Irish Independent spoke to the woman who found the ring. She did not wish to divulge any information as she had been told the story had a “sad” ending. The woman added that she had been asked by Chupi not to discuss it.

It is understood Chupi sold fewer than half a dozen of that type of ring over the last couple of years. Because of this, the store’s internal system should have easily been able to find the small number of customers who had bought the same kind of ring.

On social media, Ms Sweetman argued that her store had sold “nearly 100,000 pieces so it’s a big body of work to go through the orders”.

“I was hoping this would find the owner faster,” she said.

A series of posts about the missing sapphire prompted hundreds of comments and views on the jewellery brand’s page – significantly more than any of Chupi’s other recent posts.

Ms Sweetman said: “Our advice was that due to issues around data privacy, we couldn’t start contacting customers out of the blue to see if this was their ring.

“I took a photo of the engagement ring and shared it on our social channels hoping that someone would recognise the ring. I never expected it to go as far and wide as it did.

“I appreciate there are some cynical people out there, but this was my very genuine attempt to reunite this engagement ring with its owner.”

Ms Sweetman said the lost ring was a blue sapphire starlight, a design no longer sold by the store. She added that the box it was found in was also an older design that was no longer available. This meant the ring was probably bought more than 18 months ago. Yesterday, Ms Sweetman cancelled a number of radio appearances relating to the story.

A spokeswoman for the brand said: “We have put out a statement on our own social media to say we have found the owner of the ring and they have asked for privacy, so we won’t be doing any further media.”

She also declined the Irish Independent’s request to use its imagery or video of the ring to run with this article, citing the same reason.

“I took a photo of the ring and shared it, hoping someone would recognise it”