It can be difficult to purchase an engagement ring, especially if you don’t have any knowledge of diamonds. According to current research, there are about 1.7million engagement rings that are purchased annually in the United States. That’s 74% of brides from 2.3million weddings. An average diamond engagement ring cost is approximately $2,000
The Internet has revolutionized connectivity and interactivity, allowing potential buyers to learn more about diamonds they are interested in before visiting jewelers. This solves the problem of “knowing so little” about the product’s characteristics. Now people can learn and gather information about diamonds before actually going to their neighborhood jewelers to purchase them.
Learning and gathering information on the Internet is not what the online retailers want. They want to see the learning and gathering process translate into sales. Selling diamonds online, however, isn’t the same thing as selling books online. The actual product should be seen before purchasing. “What happens when the brilliance of the online diamond is actually less than the one I bought?”
It is about how to leverage the “high-touch” of high-end internet 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), the answer, is here. RBR was established by Rock Stone, a third generation jeweler in the Bay Area, three years ago. After its three-year operation, RBR is planning to expand its operations outside the state of California. RBR’s concept is simple. It leverages local jewelers to be its “front-end. This strategy allows RBR to address both credibility and high touch issues when selling high-end merchandise via Internet.
RBR is changing how it positions itself in the aftermath the dot.com bust. RBR will not only maintain connectivity, speed and interactivity but also “humanize” ecommerce by combining technology with tradition in the diamond retailing industry.
This strategic plan details how to further optimize the interactivity, connectivity, and speed for RBRՉ۪s development of recommendations for a 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.
- To advise RBR of industry insights and market trends in the diamond business, provide a psychographic study of the current and potential engagement market, and describe the competitive landscape of this business.
1.2 Mission
Our goal is to increase our current market share of 2% to an even greater extent in online diamond retail. If we take a look at the actual diamond retailing industry, the current 2% market share is very low in comparison to the total number of diamonds sold annually in the United States. RBR must expand its network of jewelers, strengthen alliances and partnerships with media and Internet vendors to meet its growth criteria. RBR also needs to increase its R&D efforts to bring the most recent technology to e-commerce.
1.3 Keys To Success
RBR’s key factors for expanding its operations include:
- Expanding its network across the U.S. and internationally of family jewelers.
- Additional warehouses are being built to meet customer demand.
- Improvement of logistic/supply chain to enable fast delivery and return.
- Repositioning the look of the current website by upgrading graphic elements and state-of-the-art navigation.
- Establishing alliances with support media and the Internet in order to promote the idea for buying loose diamonds online.
- Adding more product categories into the existing loose diamond category, such as gold settings for pendants, rings, and earrings, and gold trinkets/accessories aimed at younger audience.