(Ep 11) THE CLEAR CUT -> Diamonds are forever đ
Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon | Co-Founders, CEO & COO
Hey friends,
Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 11. If youâre new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this weekâs episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.
No idea what The Founder is? Read this.
Housekeeping
Podcast show link (direct to Apple Podcasts)
Discount codes (from our foundersâ companies)
Instagram (where I spend way too much time making quotes and audiogram content)
Recommended learning resources (from all our founders)
And who are you?
Iâm Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.
Letâs get it.
This Weekâs Episode (Ep 11)Â đ
Olivia Landau and Kyle Simon, Co-Founders and CEO/COO of The Clear Cut.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google
Listen to the podcast if youâre interested in learning aboutâŠ
đ The diamond industry
â What itâs like being in Techstars or another top startup incubator
đ How to build a viral brand online in 2020
đ Popular engagement ring cuts and styles
đ What itâs like founding and running a company with your significant other
Summary đ
Whatâs The Clear Cut?
The Clear Cut is a direct to consumer diamond engagement ring and fine jewelry company.
Traditionally, when searching for a ring, buyers would either look to a big box retailer (e.g., Jared, Kay, Tiffanyâs, etc.) or a local mom and pop jeweler. The in-store experience would often result in a rather uninformed (on average) buyer paired with a pushy salesperson talking about clarity, length/width ratio and all sorts of other âjeweler-speakâ that was hard to understand.
The experience typically ended up with a less than optimal outcome for the buyer. Without a deep understanding of the product or an unbiased guide to help navigate them through the process, buyers would often pay huge markups and not feel great about the experience.
The Clear Cut was created to solve that problem and introduced a direct to consumer, digital solution for ring buying. Hereâs how it works as a buyerâŠ
First, you reach out to Olivia, Kyle or anyone on The Clear Cut team and schedule an initial phone consultation. Next, Olivia or one of the other gemologists on the team will gather detailed information on what type of ring youâre looking for (if youâve done your own research) or ask background questions to try and make a recommendation based on your significant otherâs preferences.
Olivia and her team will take that information and source 4-6 diamonds for you to look at (either in-person at their Diamond District office in NYC or virtually over email/Zoom). During that meeting, the team will walk you through the different aspects of each diamond, transparently giving you pros and cons based on your specs and budget.
After you select a diamond, Olivia will help you design a custom setting and then work to create your custom ring. Itâs that easy!
The simplicity and transparency in the process comes from the partnership vs salesperson relationship Olivia builds with her clients.
In addition to diamond engagement rings, The Clear Cut also sells their own collection of fine jewelry. They became extremely popular online after amassing over 100K followers on Instagram with weekly traditions like Clear Cut Couples (weekly feature of an engagement with their rings) and Clear Cut Classroom (weekly educational videos on diamonds and jewelry).
Who are Olivia and Kyle?
Olivia comes from a long line of diamond cutters and dealers from Antwerp, Belgium. She grew up around diamonds and gemstones her entire life, and while her parents urged her not to join the family business, she decided to enroll in the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) directly after undergrad at NYU.
Kyle, on the other hand, spent time in Sierra Leone, West Africa working in politics after undergrad and was on the path to start a Fair Trade Diamond Mining Company. His investors thought it was a good idea to send him to gem school, and thatâs where he met Olivia.
A few years after graduating from gem school, they started noticing a lot of their friends were looking to get engaged and would often ask them for help, tips and even to design their custom rings.
What initially started as an educational blog to help people better understand the doâs and don'ts of ring buying, quickly turned into a frenzy on the internet, with people from all over the world wanting custom rings and jewelry.
Olivia and Kyleâs Startup Manifesto đ
Whatâs a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask my founder guests the same question:
If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?
Hereâs what Olivia and Kyle had to say:
If youâre not embarrassed by your launch, you waited too long.
Do more, faster (Techstarsâs slogan).
Donât wish for it, work for it.
Be authentic and believe in yourself.
Allow competition to help you craft your own voice. Donât be consumed by your competition, but have it motivate you.
Olivia and Kyleâs Thoughts đ
What are the differences between buying with The Clear Cut vs a big-box store vs a private jewelerâŠ
âSo thereâs the online marketplaces, thereâs traditional brick and mortar retail and then thereâs âknow a guyâ mom and pop style situation.
The online marketplaces are very much Internet 1.0 companies. The whole thesis around them is complete optionality, total choice, hundreds of thousands of diamonds, which is really overwhelming and confusing even for diamond experts like ourselves. Thereâs no personalization and thereâs no curation.
And then you have the brick and mortar retail which is dramatically overpriced, and often youâre just being pushed something thatâs just in someoneâs inventory by a salesperson who might not even be that sophisticated or aware of the product themselves.
With The Clear Cut everything we do is custom, itâs made here in NY and you deal one-on-one with a graduate gemologist.â
How does the buyer today differ from the buyer in 1980âŠ
âI think itâs changed a lot in the past couple years. The longer weâve been on Instagram making our educational content, our clients have become pretty informed. They know exactly what theyâre looking for, theyâve been searching online, on social media and they want what they want at a price thatâs fair.
Iâd say itâs really the couples working together more than just a guy coming in with no clue and just getting something and hoping that his partner loves it. Right now, itâs a lot of the couples working together and the women know exactly what they want.
In terms of the historical evolution of the industry, itâs really interesting. Before the Internet, your choices to understand diamonds were either to trust a salesperson blindly, trust a family member or go to the library. Those were your actual choices.
Todayâs customers are incredibly sophisticated and very aware. Thereâs almost too much information and we try to cut through the noise and tell them what does matter, what doesnât matter and really empower them to make the right decisions for themselves.â
What are assumptions/facts that people come to you with that arenât trueâŠ
âI would say that âdiamonds are totally unaffordable.â A lot of timeâs weâll get these funny comments where people are like, âThat diamond is at least 1 million dollars!â because whenever a celebrity gets engaged you always see these headlines on social media, when in reality it was like $30K.
Weâre fed a lot of misinformation about pricing and quality. A lot of people are like, âDonât I need a deflawless diamond?â Not if youâre going to wear this ring everyday, and itâs not something youâre going to put in the safe. Thatâs also a misconception.
Just around budget in general. People say, âIs it 2 months salary? Is it this or that?â Itâs a totally personal decision and some couples value it more than others and thereâs nothing wrong with either direction.
And, a lot of women are contributing financially to the ring as well, thatâs changing too.â
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode đ€
After reflecting on my conversation with Olivia and Kyle, hereâs something that really got my wheels spinning:
Unlimited choices vs curation đ€Ż
As recently as 5 years ago, consumers on the internet had to hunt and search to create comparisons of different products before making their final purchasing decision. It was almost as if they âstruggledâ to find what they were looking for. Today, things have gotten a lot more noisy.
Letâs take buying a 6â plant for your apartment as an example. Five years ago, your options were:
Go on Amazon [always the easiest option]
Go to your local Home Depot/Loweâs brick and mortar store [you could buy at Home Depot or Loweâs online but people werenât doing that]
Go to your local flower shop
Early e-commerce brands [but you probably wouldnât have discovered them. My 50+ year old parents definitely wouldnât have]
I would venture to guess that most people 5 years ago either chose option 2 or 3, primarily because it used to be nice to go to the store and look at the plant with your own eyes before buying it.
Today, if I search âplant online,â I get bloomscape.com, the sill.com, thespruce.com, artiplanto.com, proflowers.com, rooted.nyc, plantshed.com, not to mention furniture stores like West Elm and IKEA, as well as the OGs amazon.com, homedepot.com and lowes.com.
The point is, thereâs a lot to go through. A lot. I went from not having enough options to having so many options that I need to read a blog post titled âBest place to get plants for apartment 2020â just to help me narrow down my choices. And this is the problem weâre facing - weâve got too much optionality.
When I talked to Olivia and Kyle, they compared the online diamond marketplaces (e.g., Blue Nile, etc.) with The Clear Cut and highlighted how those companies were built for Internet 1.0. Their strategy was to throw up as much inventory as they could possibly find on a halfway decent, plug and play ecomm interface, figure out how to take credit cards, sit back and let the cash roll in. Or so they thought.
The reality is that people wonât buy from a customer experience like that anymore because itâs too confusing - they suffer from choice fatigue.
The solve? Curation.
My hypothesis is that the brands that win over the next 5-10 years will be the curators of information, products or both in their space.
The Clear Cut is doing both for diamonds. By creating a curated experience, they help their consumers cut through the noise and make a more relaxed decision. They only show them 5-6 diamonds. The rest, they donât need to see, and thatâs exactly how it should be.
In addition to curating the diamonds, they are also the curators and knowledge hub for information in the industry. Because thereâs so much misinformation about the diamond industry, The Clear Cut can create a home for transparent and real information that serves as a major lead gen tool for their business.
Curation is the key.
Wrapping it Up đ
I hope you found this semi-interesting and inspiring/helpful in any way. If so and you want to help support The Founder, hereâs a couple things that would be valuable to me and the show:
If you enjoyed this post, share it with a friend you think is on the same wavelength. Canât hurt and would help spread the word!
If you havenât already, subscribe to the newsletter so you can get them delivered to your inbox each week!
Listen to the full podcast episode with Olivia and Kyle on Apple or Spotify. Or, if you donât have an hour to listen to the full episode, pick a couple topics and skim through (topic time codes in the show notes).
If youâre feeling super giving:
Go to the show on Apple Podcasts, subscribe, give a 5-star rating and a couple sentence positive review -Â https://apple.co/2VCosu6
Give our Instagram (@founderpodcast) a follow - I promise you wonât regret it!
Till next time âïž
Kallaway
Want more? Check out other companies weâve featured on the show!
â Kettle & Fire | Justin Mares
â Alpha | Nis Frome