It can be difficult to purchase an engagement ring, especially if you don’t have any knowledge of diamonds. Current studies indicate that there are 1.7 million engagement rings purchased per year in the United States (74% of brides, from 2.3 million weddings), with an average expenditure of approximately $2,000 per diamond engagement ring.
Potential buyers have the ability to research the characteristics of the diamonds they want to purchase before visiting jewelers. In this case, we solve that very problem of “knowing so little” about the characteristics of the merchandise. This allows people to gather and learn information before actually visiting their local jewelers to buy diamonds.
Online retailers don’t want to have to learn and gather information. They want the learning and gathering process to translate into sales. However, selling diamonds online is not the same as selling books online. The actual product should be seen before purchasing. “What if the brilliance shown online is lower than the one I bought?
It is the question of how to leverage “high-touch” among the high-end dot-com retailers. We are struggling to find the right formula that will bring these high end loose diamonds to customers, while other low-end jewel retailers have been focusing on selling quantity.
Rocks by Request (RBR), is the solution. RBR was established by Rock Stone, a third generation jeweler in the Bay Area, three years ago. RBR plans on expanding its operations outside of California after the three-year-old operation. The RBR concept is quite simple, leveraging local jewelers as its “front-end.” Through this strategy, RBR answers both “credibility” and “high touch” issues in selling its high-end merchandise via the Internet.
RBR is changing how it positions itself in the aftermath the dot.com bust. RBR will continue to maintain connectivity, interactivity and speed but also ‘#8220’ humanize e-commerce by combining technology and tradition in the diamond retail industry.
In this strategic plan, we describe how to further optimize the connectivity, interactivity, and speed in developing recommendations for RBR’s new business strategy.
1.1 Objectives
- To create an additional course of action, recommendation, or change to RBR’s current strategy to increase market share in loose diamond etailing.
- RBR is to be informed about industry trends and market insights in the diamond industry. Provide a psychographic analysis of the current and possible engagement market. Also, describe the competitive landscape.
1.2 Mission
Our mission is to expand our current 2% market share to a greater portion in online diamond retail. When we look at the diamond retailing industry itself, the current 2% is rather low compared to the number of diamonds sold yearly in the United States. RBR needs to expand its network and strengthen its alliances with media vendors and Internet sellers in order to meet the growth criteria. RBR should also increase its R&D effort to provide the best e-commerce technology.
1.3 Keys To Success
RBR will expand its operations by taking advantage of these key factors:
- Expanding its network to include family jewelers throughout the U.S. as well as globally.
- Additional warehouses are being built to meet customer demand.
- Improvement of logistic/supply chain to enable fast delivery and return.
- Repositioning the website’s look by updating graphic elements and state of the art navigation.
- For the promotion of the idea of buying loose diamonds online, it is important to form alliances and work with supporting media.
- The addition of more product categories to the existing loose diamond section, such as gold settings in pendants, rings, earrings and earrings, along with gold trinkets/accessories that are aimed at a younger audience.