In the Loupe
In the Loupe
Unpacking 2025 Engagement Ring Trends & Data ft. StoneAlgo
We bring back StoneAlgo's CEO, Devin Jones, to share how a human concierge turns website visitors into verified, high-intent appointments. We also dive into engagement ring trend data across lab grown and natural diamond purchases, straight from the StoneAlgo platform.
Book a Demo with StoneAlgo: https://getjeweleros.com/
Read the full Engagement Ring Trends report: https://getjeweleros.com/2025-engagement-ring-trends
Send feedback or learn more about the podcast: punchmark.com/loupe
Learn about Punchmark's website platform: punchmark.com
Inquire about sponsoring In the Loupe and showcase your business on our next episode: podcast@punchmark.com
Welcome back everybody to In the Loop. What is up everybody? My name is Michael Burpo. Thanks again for listening to In the Loop. This week I'm joined by Devin Jones. He's the Stone Algo CEO and co-founder. And last year I had on Devin to talk about their product right after JCK when they demoed it to me. And it was our most popular episode of In the Loop season six. And I wanted to have him come back on to talk about what they've been developing because they're working very fast and developing a lot of new really impressive features. One of the ones I think is really cool is this concierge chat, which has a real human that chats with these leads for you and kind of works back and forth with them to get an appointment set up. And we talk about that, but we also dive into some of the data that Devin was able to provide from his platform. They have a really unique kind of look at jewelry engagement ring trends. And we dive into that to look at comparisons between rings that come with a natural diamond versus a lab grown diamond and how that affects the pricing of their ring settings. Devin's great on the mic. Their product is also available for free. And you can book an appointment to learn more at getjewelos.com. It'll be in the show notes below, and the report with their jewelry trends will also be in the show notes below. You can check those out and let them know what we sent you. And so it makes us look really good. Alright, thanks everybody. Enjoy the conversation.
SPEAKER_00:This episode is brought to you by Punchmark, the jewelry industry's favorite website platform and digital growth agency. Our mission reaches way beyond technology. With decades of experience and long-lasting industry relationships, Punchmark enables jewelry businesses to flourish in any marketplace. We consider our clients our friends, as many of them have been friends way before becoming clients. Punchmark's own success comes from the fact that we have a much deeper need and obligation to help our friends succeed. Whether you're looking for better e-commerce performance, business growth, or campaigns that drive traffic and sales, PunchMark's website and marketing services were made just for you. It's never too late to transform your business and stitch together your digital and physical worlds in a way that achieves tremendous growth and results. Schedule a guided demo today at punchmark.com slash go. And now back to the show.
SPEAKER_01:I'm doing great. How are you doing? Doing so well. A lot has changed uh since I last interviewed uh you. I think it was just about six months ago. I mentioned this in my end-of-year wrap-up. You are our uh number one performing episode of season six last year. And our tradition is we always invite whoever our number one episode was to come back and try to kick off the season really strong. So uh congratulations on that. How's the last six months been for you, Devin?
SPEAKER_02:The last six months have been uh crazy. And yeah, thank you for having me back on. It's it's a pleasure to get a chance to chat with you again. That was really fun being on last time. And I think you got a lot of really interesting stuff to talk about today as well. A lot of stuff's happened. So past six months, uh, I mean, as you know, we're a startup. So like startup culture is just crazy to begin with. But then you match that with a product that's growing really fast with a really lean team, and it's like all hands on deck 24-7. So, you know, the fortunate thing is that I've got really good people working on our team and they're committed to pushing the hours a little longer than you know what the typical employee of a big corporation would probably be comfortable with. Uh, so we've been able to maintain a really high standard while growing at a really fast rate. I think the first time we met was in Vegas at JCK. And that was right around the time that we came out with our new pricing model. And that's when things just kind of went bananas. So it was, you know, a tinkering system uh around price and what we were going to offer to the market. And we really cracked the code on what was the most jeweler-friendly way to present our system pricing-wise, which was to make it as low risk as possible.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and between the time that I met you in Vegas and today, we've grown almost 10x. Uh, I think we're right around 200 jewelry stores using the system. We only work with independent local jewelers, um, no major chains. Uh, so it's it's been a wild ride and it's been a ton of fun.
SPEAKER_01:It's really cool. I just to kind of like a super TLDR on it, uh, just this amazing um free-to-enter tool that is it's an AI-powered uh ring builder that uh, and the way I I described is it actually works. And what I think is very, you know, compelling is that you guys are very forthright with hey, like you know, one of our clients, they signed up and they immediately got this many leads and they closed this many. That's the kind of stuff that I find is so scarce in this industry, is everybody wants to um, you know, build and get more clients. But like I had mentioned before, some of these brands, they uh they require like a million or two million dollar purchase uh just to get them in the store and start carrying them. There's no, you know, try. There's just you're all in and this, you might lock up all of your inventory or all your um your cash flow in this brand. With you guys, it's more of like uh, hey, let's let's prove where we're at. And if you want to scale up or scale down, you can from there. Is that kind of attract a um a certain type of clientele? I'd be worried about getting some people that might not be all in, but it sounds like that's not the case.
SPEAKER_02:Churn has been incredibly low, meaning, you know, we haven't lost a lot of jewelers. Uh, the the handful that we have lost has predominantly skewed towards jewelers who are not what we call our our ideal customer profile, which I think is what you're alluding to. So our ideal customer profile is like an independent local jeweler, not downtown in a diamond district in a major city. We do have a couple that are and are successful, but you know, we're a typical average independent local jeweler who's on Main Street. They may have a handful of locations, they may be single store, they might be fourth generation, it might be a new, you know, first-time proprietor. So it kind of runs the gamut there. But we haven't had a churn issue. We are selective about who we take on. So we don't take everybody. Of the, I'm gonna stretch on this. So, like of the uh requests that we get for demos, I want to say we disregard 75% who are just not a good fit. And of the 25% who are a good fit, the conversion rate, the close rate on those demos is like 90%. Like if you take a demo with us, you sign up because it's just a really compelling product and a really strong offer. And the offer is essentially no contract, no sign-up fee. We do everything for you to get you set up and running. And then it's pay as you go for performance. So you're only paying when you get verified leads. If I could only charge when you get sales, I would do it that way. It's just like something we can't necessarily, we don't have line of sight on the register. Yeah. Uh, so we got as close as we could. But I'm a big believer in uh providing excessive value, and that's what we're trying to do. And uh we have skin in the game, and I think that helps us, uh forces us to build a better product.
SPEAKER_01:You know what? And that ties in really great with what I first one I wanted to talk about. So this term um qualified lead. Uh, so it's it can mean different things to different people in different industries. One of the things that I found is just this past uh Thanksgiving-ish area or Black Friday is punchmark ran a promotion where there were these uh we were given away a lot of stuff and it allowed us to get these qualified leads and then for our salespeople to follow up with them. And the close rate was just ridiculous because the leads were so qualified. And what's so funny is that like if you start thinking about your business in that way, if listener, if you're thinking about your business, think about the difference between someone who comes in and it's like, oh, this is obviously a slam dunk, and someone who you know is just window shopping. And like, how do you know that? And that's like this innate kind of business feel that I think a lot of store owners kind of already have because they've been in their stores for so long that you can kind of sniff out a, you know, a window shopper versus a um, you know, someone who is their anniversary's coming up, they're walking out with something, they're walking out with a box. And uh, I guess that kind of ties into this newest demo that you guys gave me. Two days ago, you guys gave me a full demo on your product, which I was very uh it was very gracious, very cool to get a chance to see it from you know the real kind of pitch. Um, this concierge chat. Explain for the people that are listening what it's like to take someone from a raw lead to someone who is a qualified lead.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, so qualified lead is definitely there's a sliding scale of what that can mean. You're right. But basically, it means somebody who's not a cold lead. Like think of it as a warm lead, somebody who's an actual interested buyer who's expressed some intent. So I think what every local jeweler has experienced, and you guys have the data on this, and your your end of your episode was fantastic, by the way. It's super short. If people haven't listened to it, the stats you were providing about what average order value is and you know what sort of like benchmarks you think are reasonable for a local jeweler in e-commerce, um, I thought was really, really interesting. Um, and that data is hard to find. So good good on you guys for putting that out there. But as you know, as local jewelers know, like bridal doesn't sell online. People want to have an in-store experience when it comes to a high-ticket item. Things that do sell online are things like Pandora Charms and things like that, which you referenced in that, in that uh podcast episode. And I mean, I that that podcast episode got my brain running in so many different directions, man. About like, I've never really even thought about the Pandora business. Uh, it's not what we do, it's not my you know, specialty in my universe. But the fact that they created a product that had recurring revenue on the back end of it, which is like you sell a charm and how easy it is to continue to sell that thing, even digitally. You don't need a physical in-store appointment because you've already experienced the quality when you bought the first bracelet, right? So now the brand speaks for itself. There's an implied guarantee that the quality is going to match up. She liked it the first time, she's gonna like adding to it over time. Genius product in general. I love that. Um, and it's all the same size and it's always a match. And it's like Legos. Like it as an engineer, my brain is like they they whoever came up with that product, and you know, I'm sure it's not hard to Google it. That that was a that was a very smart, savvy move. And products like that are interesting from a jewelry perspective, as are other ways to add recurring revenue to your business. And I, you know, I spoke to you a little bit about this a couple of days ago when we met, but like the average lifetime value of a jewelry store customer is$27,000. But 30% of jewelers do not even sell the wedding band to the person who bought the engagement ring from them. And crazy. You're breaking the chain there, right? So, like, what are the odds they come back for the next purchase when they need the bracelet, the necklace, the earrings? It starts to drop and decay. If you can keep the momentum going with them through a point system, like rewards or whatever it is, through giving them a discount when they buy the engagement ring to come back for the wedding band, whatever those promotional things are that you can do to build longevity, your profit margins going through the roof because the most expensive part of this whole thing is customer acquisition cost. And that's where local jewelers really struggle to sell online as well. Is like Blue Nile, Signet, they have a centralized engine that is managing marketing for 2200 stores. And if it doesn't, you know, if this customer is not right for Blue Nile, it might be right for James Allen. If it's not a digital customer, it might be a Kay's jeweler customer. So they've got a million ways to, you know, for lack of a better word, eat the eat the whole animal. Like they can service any customer. The local jeweler, like an independent local jeweler, has an ICP. They have an ideal customer profile. And if the customer is not matching that because the customer wants to buy exclusively online, there's nothing they can do. That person's going to Blue Nile or James Allen, right? So the struggle for the local jeweler and where we go from leads to qualified leads, is how do you take somebody who's doing research on the internet, which let's be honest, is 100% of consumers, uh, especially for high-ticket items. And how do you take that person and then win their trust enough to give you their personal information? And then you can nurture them to come and store and make a purchase. And along that sort of funnel, there's multiple levels of qualification. I would say, like the initial interaction with your website, like hitting the website for the first time, that's a website visit. That's no intent, low intent. They clicked on something that's, you know, piqued their interest. Them not bouncing is the first sign of interest. And I'm sure you know bounce rates are super high, super high. Uh astronomical. So, like, I don't have the trend data you do, but it wouldn't be absurd to say that more than 50% of people who visit a website when they're in research phase are just not doing anything and leaving, which is called a bounce, right? If they interact and proceed through the website, you're starting to get higher intent. If they leave their contact information and permit you to text them, you are getting really close. Like that is them saying, I want more information. I don't just give out my phone number to anybody anymore. If I do, I usually reply stop right away is to get 25% off something, you know? But what we're finding is that our product, when installed on a jeweler's website, convinces people to hand over their valuable personal information. And not only that, but we verify it. So we call them verified leads because what we're doing is we're collecting their phone number, their first name, and then we're sending a six-digit code to the person's phone number. Only if they type that code into the ring builder, which is installed on the jeweler's website. It's white labeled with the jeweler's branding. It doesn't say jeweler OS anywhere on it. Only if they type in that six-digit code do they become a verified lead. And that's when the jeweler is charged$25. And that's all they're charged for, is when somebody verifies. And then they get that information in the dashboard, which you saw. But taking it a step further, we realized that wasn't enough. So we had to build an entire concierge team which manages the relation, the initial stage of the relationship, which is texting with that customer to win their trust even further, warm them up, and get some feedback that says this person actually has intent to come in store. And then our concierge team hands over that customer to the jeweler's sales team or schedules an in-store appointment. And the jeweler can jump in at any time and take it over. It's not, it's their lead. They can do whatever they want with it. But our team is acting as an extension of the jeweler's team and that's baked in for free. And the reason we had to go to that extent and the reason we ended up baking it in for free as opposed to charging extra for it, which everybody I talked to was like, you should charge a fortune for this.
SPEAKER_03:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Well, we earn it on the back end because our jewelers don't leave, because our jewelers see sales. And if you can generate revenue for your partners, they can always afford to pay you. So that's our philosophy is like we are building a results-based system. And in doing so, we're earning the right to maintain these relationships for the long term, as opposed to being, you know, uh a little bit more aggressive on the front end of how much we earn and trying to be more profitable today. We're like, let's just let's build the engine that really helps these guys grow. And in doing so, we'll earn more money over the long term as a business.
SPEAKER_01:What a really novel way to look at it is that if they are happy with the product, then they just won't leave. And that's it seems so simple, but it is very overlooked by a lot of people. And I sometimes am wondering that can mean different things to different people. Like, what does success mean? Is it like closing them? Is it having them come in? Is it just having more profit?
SPEAKER_02:More people. You're selling, you know, when we're on a sales call. Yeah, when we're on a sales call, you're selling money, which is the easiest sale. If you can sell somebody five bucks for a dollar, everybody will buy five bucks. So, you know, when we get on these sales calls, look, not every single jeweler we've ever worked with is successful. We would have zero churn if so, but we have very low churn and we're very good at getting people to show up in the store. And the jewelers who drill through the data and you know, compare their point of sale data to the leads they're they're registering in our system, which you can do with Chat GPT now. Like you can download a report from the edge, download a report from jeweler OS, merge them via ChatGPT and say, hey, ChatGPT, find all the matching names across these two files, and then report back to me what the dollar value of purchases were based on the edge file, right? And you can do a reconciliation. We don't have any view on the point of sale. But when jewelers do these reconciliations, the numbers are crazy. Um, they're getting really great ROI.
SPEAKER_01:What a really interesting kind of look at it. And the fact that you're willing to kind of give them those instructions means you stand by it. But what are you seeing on the back end when it comes to these conversations? Because uh that's the kind of stuff I find fascinating. Is like, what do those early conversations commonly look like? Is it people asking? I mean, obviously it's about booking this appointment and this meeting. Are people uh generally very like very pleasant? I can be very short with um what I imagine is a robot, you know, a clanker, as they say. Um, but it's not a clanker on the other end. It's actual human. What are those conversations looking like on your end? So in the you're talking about concierge conversations.
SPEAKER_02:The concierge. Yes. So we've spoken to hundreds of jewelers at this point, and we understand the concerns of the industry. And I think they're valid concerns. There were three different ways we could have gone about the concierge service. So one of them was to fully automate it with AI, which a lot of modern tech companies are doing. You know, their chatbots will be AI-based. If they have text messaging, AI is the first line of defense. The second option was to hire people overseas at a really cheap hourly rate and have humans that can make human decisions. And every entrepreneur I spoke to said, this is the way to go. If you're not going to go AI, go cheat. You know, I'm a glutton for punishment. So I did the exact opposite. I went and hired the most experienced people I could afford to hire. We paid them a decent amount of money to come over and run this service for us. And they have a lot of experience. Um, so we hired top salespeople from jewelry stores. We hired people who are managing the custom engagement ring business within large manufacturing organizations. People who really understand what the consumer wants and knows how to explain it. You know, first and foremost, it's got to be somebody who can have a normal conversation with a person and not get frustrated because people are not always the most polite when they're texting, you don't know who's on the other end. You're right. Every line of text that we send is either written, written by a human being, or it's a combination of like a human with, you know, maybe AI doing a little bit of editing to help, but it's not written by AI. And we run our concierge service by sending out an initial text message that's automated, but it's written by a human. And when people respond to it, there are occasions where they're like, they're acting as if we're a robot. But when we have a quick response and it's clearly human, they'll usually apologize and be like, I'm I'm sorry, I thought you're AI. But that's rare. I think in most cases, people. Just have a feel for like if they're talking to a human or not, even though AI's gotten pretty damn good.
SPEAKER_01:It has. But do you find that that uh I you know you are probably losing some money on if you had gone the cheap route, like you had already acknowledged. Do you find that you're you're making up those um that difference in the experience in that in that change?
SPEAKER_02:There's no null hypothesis to compare to. So I can't say like if we did it the other way, what would our revenue look like? What would our profit look like? But what I can say is that I'm not concerned about profit maximization. I'm concerned about brand building and trust building. And, you know, I want ours to be the premium brand that provides the premium product at a really reasonable price that's low risk for the local jeweler. So they, you know, imagine the local jeweler who's in a small town in the middle of the country. They don't have access to the talent that I have access to because my people work remote, right? It's really hard to find super quality people locally. It's easy to find them if the world is your oyster. Yeah. And so we were able to find some really talented people in Canada that are coming over to the concierge team and helping out who are just like phenomenal, you know, way overqualified. And no, I think I think that paying for quality people benefits us on the back end because we maintain the relationship with the jeweler. They stay for longer. Even for us, like customer acquisition costs, the most expensive part, right? Getting a new jeweler signed up is expensive. So once we have them signed up, I want to keep them happy for as long as possible, ideally forever. And so to pay a little bit extra along the way to make sure that the quality of the product is outstanding, I think more than pays for itself.
SPEAKER_01:What a really cool concept as a whole, because I find that's not the norm, is that conversation about like if we make them happy, they just won't leave. And then we don't have to reacquire more clients because that's the expensive part. I heard that about um about land a landlord, and he, you know, owned a bunch of buildings. And his role was he would never raise the rent on a tenant who was a good, qualified good tenant, which is to say they never missed a payment and they never damaged and they never had complaints against them. Their thinking was, yes, I could raise it, you know,$100 a month, uh, which would make me$1,200 more. But theoretically, the cost of acquisition is much higher than that, that they would have to, you know, retain them for much longer. And when you raise it, suddenly they're more at risk for having to be, you know, turned over. And I thought that that was a really kind of similar kind of thought, where it's like, oh, you know, if everybody's happy, things do uh just swim a little bit easier. And I kind of find that with uh with Punchmark, like sometimes like there's an issue where like a client's at fault, a vendor's at fault, we're at fault, everybody's at fault on something. Maybe something was sold for like the wrong price. But if you look at it, it's like ah, it's like a it's like a hundred dollar discrepancy. It's like just hand wave over it, man. Just make everybody happy get over it, and then it's just like everybody's just a little bit easier. And I'm like, yeah, is a hundred dollars a hundred dollars? It is, but in the grand scheme of things, don't you want the sentiment? Sentiment isn't something that can be easily bought in um just a straight, you can't open up your wallet and buy it, but you can do it in other ways. And I think that that's something that's slept on a lot of the time.
SPEAKER_02:It's an easy thing to lose, you know. You build a reputation over decades, you can lose it in a single moment uh through one action. So yeah, being being really thoughtful and careful about those relationships. I think this is probably the area, and I don't have something to sell here, but like we are focused on this as like an initiative, but the continuity with the customer is incredibly important. Um, if you can maintain that relationship and if you have a direct line of communication with the customer, texting is free, you know, at least it is in our system. We don't charge per text message or or anything. It's the cheapest form of marketing. And you're talking about a qualified, there's no better qualified lead than the person who's already bought from you once. You're you literally have zero customer reacquisition costs because you can just text them and they're the most qualified lead because they've already bought from you, they've already shown intent. So yeah, do everything you can to keep those people happy and figure out whether it's like the Pandora charm or the equivalent of that, like curating a portfolio of purchases over their lifetime where you're like, you know, your wife got this engagement ring, she probably like one of these three wedding bands. Do you guys want to come in and you know have a cup of coffee and look at some rings, uh, have an espresso and look at some rings together? Just being able to curate and, you know, people want to be concierge, people want to feel sponsored.
SPEAKER_01:Increasingly, like, yeah, when it comes to like the dollars I'm willing to spend, if someone works for me, like I'm much more willing to do it. But I guess that kind of you know ties into this great partner that you guys have, is um the way I found you guys was through uh through Jewelcraft and uh Jewelcraft's friend of the show, we've had them on, they've sponsored our podcast before. And the truth is Jewelcraft doesn't actually have like anything really to do with us, Punchmark. Like we don't ever send them, you know, bills and stuff like that. But what's so cool about them is uh I just like them. And I I really like Steph and I really like uh her brother Ross. And it's because I trust them. They're the kind of people that I find that um we end up gravitating towards at the shows. And you guys have this kind of partnership that seems like it's built on that old style of business development, which is to say, like it's like trust, you know, the handshake agreement sort of thing. I'm sure you guys have more paperwork that kind of went into this whole thing, or we actually don't. You guys don't?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, great, classic handshake agreement. We're old school. I mean, when we got introduced to jewel crap, it was before we launched, we literally came in with like the you know, the earliest stage version of the ring builder. They were willing, they were willing to have us, they gave us the tour of the place. They we sat down in a conference room, we showed it to them, we uh you know, shared some sandwiches, and we walked out of there with like, oh, let's figure out how to make this work. And we we did Ross and Stephanie, the whole family are just good people. Like, I think contracts at the end of the day are only as good as the paper they're written on. Uh, in a lot of situations, like I've been screwed over so many times in my life by people who, no matter what, you have a contract, they don't pay you. Uh, what are you gonna do? Chase them down in court over$5,000? Like, yeah, you're gonna eat it. At the end of the day, you're gonna eat it. And, you know, obviously the dollar values flowing through this relationship are much larger. But um, I've kind of come to the realization that in a lot of situations, you just want to be in bed with the right people. And uh we don't have, I mean, we don't have contracts with our partners either. We have a terms of service where we're like, we're not gonna use your data in these ways and protects the jeweler, makes him feel comfortable. But at the end of the day, like, I'm not trying to lock anybody into an agreement that how am I even gonna is it's not gonna be worth it, you know? Definitely.
SPEAKER_01:Um, Devin, we're gonna take a quick break, and when we come back, I want to talk about uh some data about engagement ring styles and also where you guys plan to go from here. So everybody, stay with us. Hey, as we start a new season of In the Loop, I just want to say thank you so much for continuing to support our podcast. If you haven't already, make sure you're subscribed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast to ensure you're getting the newest episodes every Tuesday right in the inbox. It's the best way for us to grow is to have a great subscribed survey. If you want to give us the extra push, make sure you leave us five-star rating on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It helps us appear higher in the rankings and more people will find our podcast. If you want to leave us feedback, go to punchmark.com slash loop. That's L-O-U-P-E, and leave us feedback at the bottom of the page with the survey form and let us know what guests you want on, what series you enjoy the most, and how we can make the best podcast for the jewelry industry. Thanks so much for your continued support. We have another great season ahead of us, and now back to the show. All right, everybody. Still speaking with Devin Jones from Jewelry OS. Okay, I wanted to uh dive into uh the data that you were so kind to uh procure for me. I find it fascinating. Mainly because, again, like we alluded to at the start of the show, I find that data is just once it's out there, you can't take it back. So people play with it really close to their chest or vest, whatever the word is, uh the phrase is. And too often I'm like, guys, just like if we just shared it with each other, it would be really interesting and like we could learn something together. But too often people are afraid of um exposure and like, you know, maybe it biting them. Even myself, I find that I have a hard time uh displaying information too quickly because I I run it by my bosses all the time because I don't want to say anything that might uh look poorly on us. I never try to say um, I never say of any retailers' names because you know that's not up to them for me to share. But when it comes to this kind of amalgamized version of the data, which only so many of these businesses that are in the jewelry industry are even able to find, I suddenly think that there is something to be shared. I think that there's even businesses that have made their entire value offering off of interpreting this information and then reproviding it. I got a chance to look at this uh little report that you guys pulled from uh from your jeweler OS. Um, it was the 2025 engagement ring trends from July 2025 to December 2025. And it is really interesting. Maybe could you give me like um what are you most interested about and what are you guys paying attention to on your end when it comes to engagement ring trends?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think it's uh our perspective is gonna be different than what the jeweler is gonna be interested in here. So, but um the background on the data is this is real sales data on custom engagement rings that were ordered through our system by our partners that we work with, which is not required, by the way. They they can sell out of the case, they can do whatever they want, but a lot of jewelers like using our easy ordering system, which flows right to jewelcraft and makes their lives way easier and simpler for ordering custom. When it comes to what I care about as like an entrepreneur building the ring builder, trying to build a better system, is actually what's not showing up in this report. Like, where are we missing out on different ring styles and things like that? Like, where are their different styles that haven't been incorporated yet? Our ring builder covers like the 80-20 of what people want to buy. And you're gonna see in the report, like you see the major stuff. You know, cathedral shoulders are the most popular item or like aspect added to a ring, followed very closely by hidden halo. I think they're basically neck and neck. And we have halos and baskets and you know, pave on the band and the prongs and all that stuff. We don't have milgrain filigree. We don't have like these little details where the jeweler, once the lead comes into the store, can handle that stuff in person, run them through a full custom process. And that's why, you know, from my standpoint, I look at this and I'm like, where there's this old, you've probably heard this story at some point. If you haven't, it's fantastic. In World War II, it may be hypocryphal. Have you heard this? Is it about the planes? Yeah, the wings. Apocryphal story. So I don't know if it's true or not, but basically in World War II, they had all the planes that got shot down and they brought them in and they looked at them and they were like, where are we gonna put the armor? Because you can't just put armor on everything, makes the plane too heavy to fly, apparently. I don't know, I'm not a pilot, but uh, or that kind of engineer. But they were like, should we put the armor on the cockpit, on the wings, on the tail? And when they brought in the planes, what they saw is that all the bullet holes were in the wings and the tail. And they're like, that's where we're gonna put the armor. Yeah. And smart young engineer said, uh, well, you're not seeing the planes that didn't come home. And those planes had bullet holes in the cockpit. You know, they shot down the pilot. So for me, it's like, where are the bullet holes that I'm not seeing? And those are the things that lead us to product development. So we we're actually launching a new tool, which I gave you a preview of that nobody else has seen, which is going to give us even more data on this in terms of like full custom design. We're coming up with solutions that help jewelers not only sell rings that the ring builder can create, but work with any manufacturer they want and uh share files together for free. Um, just like a nice service that provides a better customer experience. But within this data set, what we're looking at here, and you can run me through some of the things you thought were interesting. I can share some that I thought were interesting. We've got uh six months of sales data, real sales data here across um hundreds of purchases that were made. And uh, we've got it broken down across lab and natural. And you know, the first thing I'll throw out there, Michael, and I know you know my team talked about this is like 65% of the sales were lab grown and 35% were natural. How does that line up with what you've kind of heard from from your partners in the industry?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, it depends on who you talk to, because if you talk to some people, it's like a hundred percent of sales are lab grown these days. Sure. And then if you talk to other people, it's like, no, I I uh it's more 50-50. I think that lab grown diamonds, in my very humblest of opinion, it seems like it's stabilizing. But then again, uh, I pay attention to the price of gold more than I pay attention to the price per carat for labs, is it feels like an opportunity to me. And this kind of is backed up by your data. The average cost on a ring setting from your system is uh almost$100 more for a lab purchase than for a natural purchase. And I guess it kind of to extrapolate that further and just kind of build a hypothesis off of it, it seems like people have this imaginary budget in their mind, which pretty much everybody seems to. And because less proportional amount of the budget is being taken up by the center stone, the rings can be suddenly nicer, more souped up, more options, that kind of thing. Whereas if they go with a natural, suddenly um the budget's kind of more or less centered around the center stone, yeah, concentrated on one point. And then they got to go with like, I don't want to say a strip down, but like a more kind of default. Simpler ring. That's what I see uh in what I found the most interesting is that average value for a lab versus a natural kind of ring.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I found that super interesting as well because in your head, in my head, you're thinking, you know, somebody's buying a lab grown diamond, they're a value shopper, they're gonna, you know, buy a less expensive setting as well. Um, and the data's showing the opposite. And I do think it it boils down to what you said, which is like, I'm buying an engagement ring for my future wife. I want to spend a dollar amount that represents how important it is, that this is not just like another purchase. This is her engagement ring. And so I've got a budget in mind and I want to hit it. And if the center stone's not gonna get me there, people will only go up so large and like no one's buying 10 karat lab grown diamonds on a normal basis, even though you could afford to probably, uh, given how inexpensive they are relative to to natural. So people are capped out on price in the center stone by the fact that they're not gonna go over a certain carat weight, which our data, if we look at this, if I filter for lab grown and look at that next line of data where it shows the uh centerstone carat weight, you know, there's not a lot of people buying over four carat. There's like uh 8.2% of people are buying in the four karat bucket. Most of the lab grown sales are gonna be two karat, which is like 30%, or three karat, which is like 23% of the data. And then two and a half carat is the next most popular. It's like that that bucket's like 12.5%. And um, it's probably hard to follow along on a podcast, but we can share this link in the show notes or whatever you want to do, might be.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, yeah. I might even turn this into a blog post because it's so it's so fascinating. I find that it does sort of coalesce around the center because if we were talking about like everybody has their own, their own tastes, and everybody has there's you know, different this is people all over the nation, and there's people uh with all sorts of finger shapes and stature and things like that, theoretically, it should be a very diverse kind of um sprinkling of all of the with no coalition around anything, but you find that that's not the case. There is a more popular thing, and I mean, obviously, metal selection, another very important one. And if this is not your cup of tea listening to people talk about data, no problem. We'll get to the to the end of this, but uh I'll make sure this is in the show notes. I think that 14th uh carat yellow being uh still so dominant, I had always guessed that the price of gold would drive down the selling of gold. I always thought that, like, you know, that's how um supply and demand works, is that as price goes up, demand probably goes down. And then in reverse, um, it probably will bring the price back down as the demand is lower. But that's not the case. People still want 14 karat yellow as their ring, which is uh, I don't know, kind of cool.
SPEAKER_02:I think. I think so too. I mean, it's um it's like 50% of sales that we saw were 14 karat yellow. Now we don't offer 10 karat yellow, so that's not gonna be in here, right? But it is something that I know some jewelers are are moving down in the the quantity or the percentage of gold uh composition. Another thing I thought was super interesting if you flip between lab and natural is the shape preferences. So when people are buying natural diamonds, round is still number one in terms of shape. But when you flip to lab grown, oval actually edges it out by a solid 4%. I think that's interesting because in like in my head, it's like someone who's willing to buy a lab grown diamonds, maybe a little less traditional, you know, just they skew a little more towards like the more modern consumer, and they're willing to do things with trend, like try out a different shape than you know, your traditional round diamond. And I think that correlation makes sense to me. Uh, I feel like the classic shapes, if you look at the data, the natural diamonds tend to steer more towards the classic shapes. And then the the lab grown steers a little bit more towards the trendier shapes, especially with oval.
SPEAKER_01:Really uh an interesting kind of point you make is that if people are willing to go with a lab, they might be more willing to kind of be sold on a an eight, I don't want to say atypical, but more like um a different shape, fancy shape. And I guess one last thing I'll point out that I I thought was very funny in um the demo that uh you and Bradley gave me on uh on Wednesday was it was like, okay, we're just gonna go through and we're gonna click the most popular ones. And if you're uh if this is where all the retailers they all roll their eyes, and he goes through and he clicks this selection of of stuff, and it was like 14 karat yellow setting with a uh what was it like a hidden halo, a hidden halo, and like uh this normal uh bandwidth, and like it was so funny. That's the one it was so funny. Like, wow, that is really popular right now. But what's been really nice is that one, there is data that shows that that is the most popular, but two is I've been in this industry. long enough at this point that I can remember when that that wasn't the most popular. I remember there was this big uh era when um when halos just uh full halos were really really really popular and everybody was getting them and now I kind of see it as like um an indicator fossil. If you got engaged during um you know 2017 to 2019, you probably have a halo on your ring. And uh now if you're getting engaged, maybe you have like a different shape stone, maybe you have a a hidden halo or a cathedral setting. I find that very um I don't know endearing about the jewelry industry.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah there's gonna be that Taylor Swift snapshot of people who got engaged in the fall of 2025 or the winter of 2025 that have that that same sort of composition as well. That's absolutely right. I think what's going to be really interesting is what we're looking at right now in this data is a snapshot, like you're saying it's a moment in time. And what's going to be really interesting is to see as we collect more data in the years to come, how do those trend lines start to form and you see sort of like breakouts. So lots to look forward to in in next year's update as well.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely yeah we we do that with uh with our platform data and um I talk about it all through my uh that one episode I did and I don't want to dive into it again, but it's uh it's cool to see these outside effects, you know, price of lab grown that were really high for a couple of years and it made the average order value really high. And then as they started to fall off and different types of metals started to come in suddenly the average order value is low. Now the price of gold is very high. So now everything is very high again.
SPEAKER_02:Things fluctuate and that's that's I liked that insight from your episode which was you saw the average order value increasing year over year or into the fall even of this past year. And your insight was well gold prices are rising. So even they may be actually buying less complicated rings or smaller carrot weights or whatever, but just the natural price you know increase within gold is going to force the average order value higher. And sometimes you see average order value and you think like it means it means one thing and it can mean something completely different.
SPEAKER_01:And that's a I have a limited view into what is going on and I think that all I can do is guess and extrapolate and hypothesize about these things. And I've been wrong before but I like to think I'm right more than I'm wrong. And uh that the coolest part is I get to talk with people like yourself that have data or or eyes on what customers are shopping for. And I guess maybe as we bring this thing home in the home stretch I would love to talk about like where do you go next? So you guys are working on engagement rings sounds like you're kind of trying to make it so that the engagement ring process is as you know flawless as possible do you do you get into like more uh like more different versions of this is it about making wedding bands is it about making um yeah anniversary rings or about making I don't know like earrings or something like that is that where you want to go or is it let's say there is value in doing something specific and just doing it really well just engaging rings.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah I believe that we're building a company that's going to last for a very long time and we are going to build solutions for all those different product lines but that it's really important that we get the thing that we're doing right now a hundred percent right before we earn the opportunity or earn the privilege of moving on to those other purchases. So my focus is engaging rings are the most important purchase for a jewelry store makes up a ton of revenue just the engaging ring uh sales themselves but then it's the first purchase made by a new customer who may end up having a lifetime value of$27,000 on average. So acquiring an engagering customer could bring in revenue for decades if you're able to maintain the relationship with them. So getting this right is critical to me for our partners to make sure that they're getting new customers, those customers are happy they're staying with the jeweler and the jeweler's earning more money for a longer period of time. So what we're doing currently is we're focusing on how do we provide a better solution for jewelers that covers even more of their bases for selling engagement rings. We've got some new things rolling out I gave you a private preview of something that's coming out soon where jewelers will have the ability to share CAD files between themselves and a consumer and manufacturers will be able to upload a CAD file that they can share with the jeweler and the jeweler brands it with their logo and then it gets shared with the consumer it's all encrypted. So we're making sure that you know the manufacturer's work is not at risk of being stolen. And I think that you know there's so many considerations to be made and like you're you've got three parties right there, you know, to worry about making everybody happy. And the thing that we're uniquely great at, I think, because it's our core DNA is building digital experiences for consumers. And if you can build a great digital experience for the consumer, it covers up a lot of other areas where you might not be as excellent. And so I think that for us it's it's about figuring out how to become excellent in all those other areas, the relationship between the manufacturer and the jeweler, how can we provide a lot of value there? How can we support full custom engagement rings, which is what we're focused on at the moment with that new tool, making ordering easier for the jeweler because as we scale up the number of sales they have, it will benefit them more so on the bottom line if they don't have to hire more salespeople to support the influx of sales. So if we can make them run more efficiently while we're generating more business, then it just flows to the bottom line. And so we're really focused on the engagement but yes, matching wedding bands have already been developed we already have a local version of that that you know I am playing with and just iterating on and improving. You'll have the ability to load an engagement ring and a wedding band side by side and you know make sure that the consumer can see that they're going to sit flush. Which by the way, if jewelers are still listening at the end of all this data, I think one of the best ways you can build in that recurring revenue from the wedding band on the back end of selling the engagement ring is to convince the consumer that because you sold them the engagement ring, you are the one who needs to fulfill the wedding band so that it can sit flush, which is what most consumers want, right? You're uniquely positioned as the expert to fulfill that. And by the way, it will need to be custom and that means it's gonna be a little bit more expensive, but it's gonna be high quality and we're doing a service we're a service provider for you we're concierge in you. And I think that's what the modern consumer wants and that's the experience we're helping to build.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah those custom things like my one of my best friends from college she just got engaged and she reached out to me and she has like a a very atypical looking um engagement ring and it's like very twisty and you know this kind of stuff. She's like man I got I got to get a a wedding band but you know I want it to fit snugly against it. And I was like believe me when I said you are not the first person to have this wants and issue. If you just talk to the place that you probably got or where your fiance got the ring from they can build you one that like you're not the first person to have this issue. Like you can just talk to them and they will do that for you. And she's like yeah but like I really want it to you know it bumps out like it's like one of those like antique style ones. And I'm like yeah this isn't unique. Like you're gonna be able to work with them and they'll get one it's gonna snap. You can even have a soldered on if you want you know for it to like really match. And uh she's like oh I didn't even know that that was like I thought I was gonna have to like buy one and then have it like customized from there. I'm like I mean you could but like probably they'll just help you. And it's kind of funny when you hear it from someone else you realize maybe we're too close to the subject matter. Maybe like when you start listening to the shoppers it's like oh this is a real concern. And if you start answering their questions like that, then suddenly you kind of learn even more about your own product. It's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah I think so I think tackling sales from the standpoint of solving pain points is a really strong concept in general it's the way we approach our product is like what what problem are we solving and how are we going to give the best solution and I think that you know the jewelers who recognize those wrinkles and can lean into them from a sales perspective as a reason you got to give a because what's the because for coming back in right um the human brain reacts really well to explanation like that. So um yeah I think those sorts of psychological you know triggers are just a great way to to maintain that business and get those people back in for that follow-up purchase.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. No Devin if people are sold and they're so interested and so fired up for uh for jeweler OS and Stone Algo, where should they go if they want to learn more?
SPEAKER_02:So our website that we use for scheduling demos and for accepting you know new interests is get jewelroas.com, which I know you shared in the show notes last time. We'll also you know I think throw in a link to the report they can get there from that website as well. Yeah and they can uh they can contact my team directly through the website we're always looking for great new jewelers to work with.
SPEAKER_01:Amazing well Devin this has been a fantastic conversation I really enjoy having you come on and it's so cool to hear uh someone who is yeah focusing on what is the experience going to look like for buying an engagement ring in 2029. You know, we always have this conversation at Punchmark you know what are we what are we building that's going to be existing in uh in five years and uh I don't even know what websites are going to look like in five years. You know, are websites going to even exist or are they all going to look like you know something you got to snap on a pair of glasses for that like are in an AR VR experience. It's like I don't know I I don't if I had that view I'd be able to make a bazillion dollars but if you start building in these kind of infrastructures and the the site for it suddenly you're prepared no matter what's coming. So uh it's really cool hearing someone that is uh preparing for that. So I really appreciate it.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks man thanks for having me on again. Uh we seriously appreciate it and uh it's always fun chatting with you. Awesome.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks everybody and we'll be back next week Tuesday with another episode. Cheers. Bye. All right everybody that's the end of the show. Thanks so much for listening. This week's guest was Devin Jones, the Stone Algo CEO and co-founder. Thanks for joining us. This episode was brought to you by Punchmark and produced and hosted by me, Michael Burpo. This episode was edited by Paul Suarez with music by Ross Cochram. Don't forget to leave us feedback on punchmark.com slash loop or on Spotify and Apple Podcasts it's the best way to help us grow. Thanks we'll be back next week Tuesday with another episode cheers bye
