Suggestions/advices on how to start and compete on a diamond ring jewelry business?
Hi everyone, I'm currently thinking of giving a chance to this business since a friend of mine has available a free stock of these rings from a manufacturer. I see a good amount of profit margin on a sale here and since our rings provider is going to provide us with all his products without having to buy them beforehand, I think that the path will be easier.
After doing my research and planning the bootstrapping of this I see that the only potential customers are 90% people buying a wedding ring and 10% for others reasons. I've thought that the most effective way to catch someone trying to buy this wedding ring is by being on top of the results when someone looks for "buy wedding ring". I see here a David and Goliath fight since every time that you google these words you find huge professional companies with perfect shops investing a lot of money on advertisement and offering a lot of things that we can't afford from the start point.
I don't have any experience with SEM yet I'm a little bit afraid of losing all my savings ($2000 I know, ridiculous 😅) on advertisements without making conversions. I have a marketer friend with 6 years of experience who could be in charge of these google Ads but... do you think that there is any possibility to compete? Would you start this by creating the most perfect affordable e-commerce shop and investing in advertisements?
Any advice, different perspective is appreciated,
Thanks in advance.
Oh wow.
I like this question, it's a bit out of the ordinary for IH but really interesting. Here's my $0.02...
The first thing you have to understand is why are people buying diamond rings?
I'm going to let you in on a (not so) secret - the value isn't in the diamond (or even in the ring, really) - the value is in what the ring represents...
Rightly or wrongly, a wedding ring is a symbol of the man (traditionally at least) investing in the relationship. It symbolises his commitment (financially, romantically, and in terms of time/thought invested) to his partner.
So 'just' a perfect, affordable ecommerce shop isn't really an advantage - your customer is looking for a brand and product which represents that commitment I talked about above. That makes
easyandaffordabletwo terms to avoid for starters.Now bigger brands have had a lot of time and money to invest into really building up this brand identity and experience for the customer. And they'll do this for the 'bigger' niches where they can shift a lot of stock (or be really high end with a great margin).
So I wouldn't even think about competing there.
But the great thing about the wedding business is that it's really, really personal. And there are lots of people out there looking for something different which isn't currently served by the popular brands.
I don't know which niches are underserved (could be environmentally friendly couples, lesbians, arranged marriages, couples going through a low-key third marriage, whatever) but if you invest into one of those underserved niches, really understand your customers and build up some great content and a great story around that niche, I'm pretty sure you can build up a great business pretty quickly.
Good luck!
This is an uphill battle unless you're a skilled Jeweler that can customize the rings or have a network of folks that can do it for you. Few just go buy stock engagement rings unless they are vintage, and rings like this typically bought in person after lengthy consultation, not online.
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I have a friend who runs a localised wedding directory site and he once told me that the ring vendor is typically the first point of contact (and hence where all of the other vendors get their leads from).
This comment was deleted 7 years ago