A COUPLE has turned a side hustle into a multi-million dollar businessagainst all the odds – now they're lapping up their success.
Diamonds experts Olivia Landau and her husband Kyle Simon have an impressive office in the centre of New York where they run their modern jewellery business out of.
Their company – The Clear Cut – is an online jewellery business which is simplifying the diamond-buying process and educating customers along the way.
Olivia – a fourth-generation diamond expert – and Kyle met during a Geological course and quickly fell in love and married.
While they were dating, Olivia set up a jewellery blog that helped people understand how diamonds are processed.
The blog was an instant success and so she and Kyle piled their time into developing it into a full-time business.
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Olivia's father, grandfather and great-grandfather were diamond cutters or dealers so it's no surprise that she would continue the family trade – even when her parents discouraged her and warned the industry was in decline.
"I fell in love with diamonds and gemstones and I guess it was in my blood all along," Olivia said.
After her graduation, Olivia started to work for Tiffany & Co.'s flagship store on the engagement floor which is where she "really fell in love with engagement rings and diamonds specificially".
She told entrepreneur.com: "But I wanted to be a little bit more hands-on, so I left Tiffany to work at a large diamond wholesaler here on 47th Street."
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Kyle, who had also finished a degree at Columbia Business School, saw an opening in the market.
When all his friends started getting married, they'd turn to him for guidance knowing he had a connection to the diamond industry thanks to time he spend in Sierra Leone developing a fair-trade diamond-mining company.
"So they'd be like, 'Hey, know a guy who can get me a deal on a ring?'" Olivia said.
"And since I was the one working on wholesale, I was the guy. So I would educate everyone, pick out their diamonds, create their custom rings, and it turned into this fun thing I did on the side."
Her business boomed.
"I realized that most people didn't know the first thing about buying a diamond.
"There was information online, but no one knew what to trust or believe. So I started The Clear Cut for our friends to read about the dos and don'ts, the four Cs."
The four C stand for cut, clarity, colour and carat.
She also created a presence on Instagram and between 2016 and 2018, transformed her side hustle into a fully-functional business.
"Strangers across the country were DMing me and sending me their life savings, and I would create a ring and ship it to them," she said.
Kyle said: "Transitioning to full-time was pretty intimidating. I had just spent two years at business school and racked up a fair amount of debt. And Olivia was selling things on the side, but the demand was very sporadic. So it was like, Is there enough here to support [ourselves]?"
The couple were accepted into a Tech starters programme in 2018 which unlocked £105,000 in funding and used some of the money to build software to enhance the only jewellery-buying process.
Their software, called gem., offers customers a chance to design their own bespoke rings online.
They would engage with Olivia or a Clear Cut staff member in a 15-minute consultation where they see a selection of hand-picked diamonds for their review.
Once the customer is happy, they leave a deposit, and the ring goes into production. When it's done, it's shipped off to the customer.
The portal also gives them access to their appraisal, GIA certificate and even an optional NFT for purchase.
Also, their tech generates a QR code for each stone and customers can track it through the manufacturing process.
Now engagement rings are their biggest-selling item.
"Nowadays, young people at that age that they're going to get engaged have all looked on Instagram and TikTok for inspiration for their rings," Olivia said.
"They know exactly what they want, and they don't want to compromise the quality, what it looks like, or spend too much for it either.
"When we began, we were the customers, so we really understood those needs and tried to meet people where they were.
"We're democratizing that private jewellery experience that was once only [accessible to] celebrities or really wealthy people, [and we're] making it at an affordable price point, for anyone, anywhere."
She added: "We always [prioritized] education first, which seems pretty straightforward these days, but this industry is very opaque and traditionally likes to guard a lot of secrets and not be super transparent — that's how it always operated."
They also increased their social media pull by hosting weekly Q&As that would gather "hundreds and hundreds" or questions, giving the company more attention.
By 2019, The Clear Cut secured a steady stream of repeat customers and extended its range to pendants and tennis bracelets.
Since then, the company has doubled its growth year over year and shows no sign of slowing down.
In 2020, they made the Forces 30 under 30 list.
Starting out with barely any cash, the couple made "more judicial" decision when it came to their money day-to-day and ploughed it into scaling up the company.
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"We were able to invest in tech and build a very scalable, resilient company," Kyle explained.
"So regardless of what the past four years have thrown at us, we've always been able to succeed, and we may be entering a recession, [but] we are battle-tested and disciplined."
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