NICOLE OF RING CONCIERGE
Nicole Wegman, Founder & CEO of Ring Concierge, a New York City-based private jeweler. As a leader in engagement ring and fine jewelry trends, with a celebrity following to match, Ring Concierge has changed the bridal bling game by creating a luxury experience catered towards millennials.
“...[male jewelers] would always speak down to me. But I found that the best way to handle it wasn’t to respond in that moment or do anything or say anything. It was just to slowly prove them wrong. There’s no better way of doing that than working hard and growing a business and having it become successful.”
— Nicole Wegman
What inspired you to start the Ring Concierge?
I started Ring Concierge after I personally had gone through the engagement ring shopping process; I had shopped up and down 47th Street, I'd explored some of the online options, which at the time were, basically Blue Nile, and I had gone into Tiffany's and Harry Winston just to get inspiration – but everything was way too expensive. The real issue was that there wasn't a brand or a company that I really connected with, that spoke to me, or that I trusted.
There were pieces, at Tiffany's that were beautiful, but they were way out of my price range; 47th street is really difficult to navigate: It's extremely opaque, it doesn't feel like you can trust anybody on the street, and it's also completely run by, you know, sixty five year old men whose taste level definitely didn't align with my own. The online auctions were just extremely impersonal; they're really large companies where you just had a diamond feed of, you know, tens of thousands of options to pick from, and also, it's difficult to navigate.
So we did end up finding something that I liked, but it took a long time and it took a ton of research on my end trying to understand pricing; it was painful. It was a painful process, considering it was the most expensive purchase we made after buying our apartment. You would think that would be fun, or exciting, or at least some aspects of it would be pleasant.
That’s what I realized there was a huge void and a huge need in this industry; It's very antiquated, it's very traditionally run, family run, male dominated, and that's not how women want to shop, and it's certainly not how millennials want to shop. So that's when I started toying with the concept of creating an engagement ring company that really was all about transparency and a better shopping experience for millennial women, essentially.
How are you able to disrupt the fine jewelry industry with transparent prices while staying competitive and successful?
It's actually easy to do because we are a very honest company, and that's part of what helps us stand out: when people are working with us, they know they can trust us. We're not the type of jewelry company where we give you a price, and you feel like you need to negotiate it down twenty thousand because we're just being egregious. Our prices are fair, our sales team is extremely honest, and we want the customer to get a fair price, get a good deal, get the biggest thing they possibly can for their budget. We want them to love it. I think truly being on their side throughout the process is what helps them trust us and allows for us to be so transparent while still being successful.
What skills do you think are vital to starting a business and what skills were vital when you were starting Ring Concierge?
First and foremost, you have to have a really intense work ethic. Anybody that's ever started a company that's grown to be something successful would be would be, in my opinion, lying if I didn't say it wasn't hard and it wasn't a ton of work. A lot of people from the outside look in and they like, “oh, that's so cool. I would love to play with jewelry. You have the best job ever.” Well, OK. That is what it looks like from the outside. But behind closed doors, it's really difficult and it's a ton of work. I work 10 hour days on average, six days a week always, and a lot of people on my team do the same thing.
Personal life is difficult. Being able to mentally step back and separate yourself is impossible. So if you want a nice life, work-life balance, you are never going to get that starting company. But if it's more important to you and you personally derive more value out of creating something and building something, then the work comes naturally because you like what you're doing. As it's working, you want to work harder because you see the impacts of that. So for me, every hour is worth it. I don't regret any of it, but if you're not willing to put in the work, it would never, ever happen.
The next most important thing is being a creative problem solver. The new problems that come with starting a business are going to be brand new to you. You've never done this before. So you don't know how to solve a lot of things or you don't know how to anticipate a lot of problems that arise. If you're not a creative problem solver and the type of person that doesn't let every little issue stretch you out or bring you down, then there's a solution to everything, in my opinion. It might not always be the most ideal situation. You know, you might not want to be spending your day trying to figure out how to relocate your entire team because of coronavirus, for example. But there's always a solution to everything if you're willing to take the time to think about it and solve it.
So I think hard work and creative problem solving are probably, in my opinion, the two most important attributes anybody could have when wanting to start a company.
The next question is about your social media use, because it's pretty unique. The @RingConcierge Instagram is interesting in that it blends the brand, Ring Concierge, and your own personal life as an influencer of sorts. So why did you decide to take that sort of approach in branding through social media?
Yeah, that's a good question. I didn't want it to be that way when I started the company; I'm actually a fairly private person and I think contrary to what it looks like on social media, I don't love putting myself out there – it's just not completely natural for me, I'd rather be behind the scenes and just doing my work. However, I realized very early on, maybe year two of the brand, that people being able to associate me with the products and with the brand actually helped us grow. It separated us from other jewelry companies where maybe you don't know who owns the company or those that are owned by a 65 year old man. So our followers and customers started to really connect with me and they started to associate me with the brand.
I think I did a poll (this was many years ago) on Instagram, and I basically started dabbling, showing other parts of my life and on stories. I basically said, “OK, do you guys actually want to see more of me or should I just be showing jewelry all the time?” I think 96% voted that they wanted to see more of me. So I said “OK, this is what I have to do. This is clearly going to result in a better and more successful brand.” Obviously now I'm pretty comfortable with that.
It is a fine balance because I'm not actually an influencer, I'm the CEO of a company, but creating this “blurred line” where people ask “are you following an influencers account, who just loves jewelry, or are you following a brand?” Is extremely powerful because anything I recommend, people take very seriously, the same way people will shop all of the affiliate links that influencers link and post on their account. If I say I'm wearing this ring today and I love it and it's a stacking ring, we'll sell five of those rings that day, and I'm always honest.
But I think people like guidance. They like a voice of authority. They like somebody to look up to. They like their aspiration. And if I am that persona for them and it's just an aspirational brand, and there's this one person that's almost vetting each product and telling you how to wear it and why they like it, that's extremely powerful.
Were there any specific challenges that came with being a female founder in the fine jewelry industry?
Oh, definitely. People didn't take me seriously in the beginning, and there's men that maybe don't know of the company that still don't take me seriously at this point, but the majority of the industry is very well aware of who we are.
But for the first three or four years, I wasn't that big of a brand, and I would go meet with these different diamond suppliers or manufacturers or different vendors in the industry, and they would always speak down to me; Nothing terrible, but you could tell they looked at me like, “oh, you silly girl. You just like jewelry. That's cute.” That was kind of how they thought of me. But I found that the best way to handle it wasn't to respond in that moment or do anything or say anything. It was just to slowly prove them wrong. There’s no better way of doing that then working hard and growing the business and having it become successful. These people that maybe didn't take me that seriously four years ago are probably kicking themselves that we're not working with them today because most of our vendors are very happy to be supplying us.
But even recently, I was at a meeting with a pretty large company and we were talking about the possibility of using them to manufacture VOW, which is going to be our lower priced engagement ring line. We didn't end up using them, but I was sitting there with the founder and his team, and they essentially were supposed to be pitching me. I brought in a few example rings from our current right line just to show them. There were large diamonds because most of what we currently sell are very large diamonds, and he looked at me and said, “Do you have insurance for that?” It was just so offensive because there's no jeweler that doesn't have insurance. He basically looked at me as if to say “you don’t know at all what you're doing.” At this point, I'm almost seven years into the company; it's extremely successful. It was just like little things like that still happen. But the best thing to do is just to prove them wrong.
What are your top five favorite pieces on somewhat of a colleague friendly budget. So ideally under five hundred dollars.
Yeah, that's a fun one, I would say.
For a ring stack: Triple Row Diamond Claw Ring / Gold Claw Stackable Ring
For an everyday classic: Diamond Pendant
For a unique take on a classic: Baguette + Pavé Initial Necklace
For a stacking your piercings: Tiny Pear Studs
For everyday diamonds: Diamond Bar Bracelet
What are some must-have tips or words of wisdom you have for college students interested in business and entrepreneurship?
That's a good question! I think getting a broader experience early on is important. I didn't start out working for small companies and I didn't go straight to business school. I actually worked for monster companies: I worked first for Macy's and then for Bloomingdale's. I did the executive training programs at both. I have a background in both product development and retail buying.
The reason why I recommend something, maybe a little more formal and a little broader is because you get this professional experience and this professional background that you then would take with you at a smaller company or a startup. I’ve found that with a lot of people I'm working with or people I'm interested in hiring, it’s those that might have that combination of a more formal training at a larger company with working at something much smaller or more entrepreneurial that tend to be the most successful. That’s because a lot of people who have only ever worked at really small companies don't know what it looks like when things start to get bigger and don't really know what formalized processes may look to look like or best practices are.
When you have a team of 20, 30, 40, 100 people, you might not realize that there are better systems out there than these small ones. You can just buy, you know, like a quick-books type of a system, or there's things that can be custom built, which is how most larger companies would operate their accounting systems. I think you also just learn how to be a little more professional and understand bureaucracy and how all of that and how to navigate all the office politics.
None of that really applies when you then move to a small company immediately. But having that foundation and understanding what that looks like, I think is extremely important. When a smaller company starts to grow, it allows you to guide a smaller company towards the right path for growth so that they can scale efficiently and seamlessly without scaling up and not having all of their systems and back and processes being able to handle an increase in value.
What books are you reading right now or have you been reading recently that you would recommend any type of book?
I’ve been reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things; basically, that book talks about how to navigate the difficult times. I happened to have it sitting on my nightstand for a year now; I'm notorious for buying a bunch of business books and never having enough time to read them, but I grabbed it and brought it with me when we left the city, two and a half months ago for quarantine.
Basically, that book talks about how to navigate the difficult times.It's easy to navigate the good times, It's easy to make decisions when everything's great. It's not easy to make a choice when both your choices are hard. You know, it's not easy to have difficult conversations when times are tough. So that's my goal, is to try to get through that. Usually it takes me forever to get through these books because if I have an extra hour and a day, I'm usually going to spend that answering e-mails and not reading a business book. But I think that book could be more applicable to a time like right now.So I would definitely recommend that to any small business owner, anybody who's kind of navigating this crazy this with a company right now.
What are your top three favorite things to do in New York?
Eating downtown, I typically eat out like four days a week.
Shopping. My favorite thing to do is just like walk around on weekends and pop into stores. But the beauty of New York City is you can get so much inspiration out of that. And every time you walk in Soho, there's 10 new clothing stores or direct to consumer brands that weren't there two weeks ago. And then you go a month later and they're all different. Yeah. So it's really. Cool to see everybody's ideas and inspirations, whether or not a stick is a different story. But I love walking around downtown and seeing all of the new brands.
Being in my office with my team. It's where I spent the most time. And we love our office. We designed it to be an environment we actually want to be in and spend time in.
Who's your favorite woman leader and why?
I would say Sofia Amoruso. She’s the founder of Nasty Gal and Girl Boss. I'm sure you've heard of her. She started Nasty Gal, it blew up, and she became famous; she wrote the book Girl Boss started the Girl Boss movement. Then that company failed, it basically folded. But one year later, she launched an entirely new company, Girl Boss, and it is extremely successful; I believe she just sold it for a ton of money. But what I like most about her was not letting that first failure stop her, not not letting it be such an embarrassment or such a letdown that she didn't try to bounce back. Not only did she bounce back, she bounced back in a way where she took advantage of something that did still work, which was the power of the term “Girl Boss” and launched a whole new company, which is completely different. It's a completely different concept. I think it's a community; It's almost like a LinkedIn for women, just connecting different business women and having these different conferences and speakers.So I just like her resiliency and that she wasn't afraid to come back in a big way. But I loved how she came back from that, it inspires me a lot.