New York – A little over a decade ago, like many New York brides and grooms, Nicole Wegman and her now-husband wandered down 47th Street looking for an engagement ring.
The experience was underwhelming.
I felt like the people trying to sell me a diamond ring didn’t know what a woman in her 20s would want or care about,” Wegman said of the diamond district’s salespeople, who were typically male and much older than her.
“I didn’t relate to them in terms of the styles I liked. A lot of the styles were chunky and ornate. I wanted a thin band that I could stack. I realised there was a huge void in the industry and a huge opportunity.
This epiphany led Wegman to leave her career in fashion retail and launch Ring Concierge in 2013.
While it started as a private jewellery business, with Wegman facilitating couples’ diamond engagement ring designs, 10 years on she says she has achieved her original vision of “disrupting” the industry and allowing “the end user, the woman, to feel represented and heard”.
Today, Ring Concierge employs 70 people and estimates it sells a piece of fine jewellery every five minutes between its e-commerce and New York City boutiques. And while jewellery sales have slowed in 2023, the company is currently on track to have its best year yet after experiencing 222 percent growth over the past three years.
To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Ring Concierge is launching a mini diamond tennis necklace – the sister style to its best-selling tennis bracelet – on 2 November.
Set in a “cupcake” setting, in which the metal gives the illusion of larger diamonds, the new product epitomises the company’s evolution from an engagement ring-only business to an accessible luxury jewellery empire that caters to the self-buyer.
Ring Concierge will be giving away one of the new diamond tennis necklace styles at an upcoming scavenger hunt event in New York City’s West Village neighborhood near its Bleecker Street store. (See Ring Concierge’s Instagram for more details.)
National Jeweler chatted with Wegman about her early days in fine jewellery, her takeaways from 10 years of growth, and her advice for other jewellery entrepreneurs.
