Ring Concierge’s Nicole Wegman Talks 10th Anniversary, Hitting Sales Milestone

When Nicole Wegman founded Ring Concierge in 2013, her mission was to make fine jewelry more accessible for women — whether they were finding the perfect engagement ring with a partner or self-gifting a diamond tennis bracelet. 

Ten years and $100 million into business, Ring Concierge plans to keep increasing its product assortment of wedding-related pieces and fine jewelry, as well as expanding its retail footprint across the country. 

“Traditionally people are very nervous and uncomfortable to walk into a fine jewelry store,” said Wegman, who is also chief executive officer. “If you think about the stores on Fifth Avenue, even today, I would be a little nervous walking into some of them. It feels like you’re being judged. It feels like you’re being looked up and down, and that is something that we use social media and our in-person strategies to really make sure nobody ever feels that way.”

Wegman started Ring Concierge as a more approachable, female-focused way to purchase an engagement ring after she had a bad experience going to the Diamond District in search for her own style. Ring Concierge expanded into fine jewelry three years after launch, offering affordable pieces made with natural diamonds and 14-karat gold. The brand’s diamond pieces start as low as $119, with the majority of fine jewelry styles retailing for less than $1,500.

Although the brand started off in engagement rings, fine jewelry now comprises the majority of the business, Wegman said. The category makes up 60 percent of Ring Concierge’s revenue. According to Wegman, Ring Concierge sells a piece of fine jewelry every five minutes. The brand’s bestselling fine jewelry piece is its Mini Diamond Tennis Bracelet, which has generated $12 million in sales, according to Ring Concierge’s chief marketing officer, Neda Whitney. 

“The fine jewelry was really exciting because women were just shopping for themselves,” Wegman said. “It didn’t matter what the occasion was, or at what point in their life they were at. They could make this purchase independently and that started to really help us explode and grow because I always had marketed toward the women directly. I always wanted to speak to the end user, not necessarily only to men — which is how jewelry used to be marketed — and under the assumption that they are the ones purchasing it for women. We have always flipped that script here at Ring Concierge and we really made women feel comfortable and empowered to shop for themselves.” 

Ring Concierge’s 10-year anniversary comes at a time of sustained growth for the brand. In addition to hitting $100 million in revenue, the brand has recorded 222 percent in growth over the last three years.

Wegman credits this sustained growth to the brand’s robust social media presence, something that has been at the core of the business since launch. She explained that her strategy focuses on Instagram, where the brand has more than 746,000 followers, and offers an assortment of lifestyle and product content. 

The brand also uses Instagram to engage directly with customers, frequently teasing new products and asking customers for their feedback before launching new styles. 

“This is really not how any other luxury brand or jewelry brand behaves,” Wegman said. “Usually, it’s very opaque. You don’t really see behind the curtain. [Luxury brands] want you to feel like you don’t understand how the sausage is made and it’s really secretive and special, and that’s a strategy for a lot of companies that works, but that’s something that we never wanted to be our strategy. We really wanted to redefine what it means to be a luxury brand.” 

Going forward, the brand is focusing on retail. Ring Concierge has two New York City locations, one on Bleecker Street that opened in 2021 and another on Madison Avenue that opened in 2022, in addition to a private bridal showroom. Wegman said both stores have been highly profitable, with their per-square-foot revenue almost double that of an Apple store (said to be more than $6,000 per square foot).

Wegman and Whitney explained that both stores are beta rollouts, and the brand will be opening its first official flagships in the coming years in top markets across the country. The founder explained the stores will offer experiential and bespoke experiences not typically found in the fine jewelry category. 

“What’s really interesting is that across the whole industry, which is about a $90 billion industry, only 20 percent is done online,” Wegman said. “The other 80 percent is still sold in brick-and-mortar stores. We essentially have been only playing in the online spaces as a business for 10 years and we’ve grown to a really substantial size — only essentially selling online and 50 percent of our engagement rings are sold remotely to clients — so we were really more of a long-distance player to our customers. So, if we can tap into that other 80 percent of the market by rolling out a physical retail strategy, we know that’s going to help us in a really big way in our future growth.” 

Through the retail rollout and other upcoming initiatives, the brand is staying committed to its core values.

“What we really like to do is to make our pieces and our price points as attainable as possible,” Wegman said. “We actually want women to be able to afford to wear our jewelry. We want to have as many people as possible experience and shop with our brand. We don’t want to be a stuffy untouchable brand.”