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Manly Bands is a direct-to-consumer vendor of males’s rings. The corporate launched in 2016 after John Ruggiero, the co-founder together with his spouse Michelle, couldn’t discover a appropriate marriage ceremony band.
That is Ruggiero’s second look on the podcast. In April 2021, we discussed the corporate’s founding, distinctive ring supplies, and extra. Since then, Manly Bands has acquired its producer. The making of rings from, say, Jack Daniel’s whiskey barrels or Fender guitar strings creates compelling video, says Ruggiero, excellent for storytelling on social media and elsewhere.
Your complete audio of our dialog is embedded under. The transcript is edited for size and readability.
Eric Bandholz: Give us a rundown of what you do.
John Ruggiero: My spouse, Michelle, and I began an internet ring firm referred to as Manly Bands in 2016 to resolve an issue of marriage ceremony bands for males. We have been simply married. I’ve giant fingers and couldn’t discover a ring that I appreciated that was not overpriced. My choices have been ordering from a catalog or having one thing custom-made.
I ended up shopping for from an internet site. The ring arrived in a flat mailer, with no field or customer support. It was a horrible expertise by right now’s ecommerce requirements.
We received married, moved to Florida, and wanted a job. We informed ourselves, “We’re each entrepreneurs. Why don’t we create our personal enterprise?” We mentioned the forms of issues we’d seen and how you can remedy them. My ring expertise got here up, and we opted to attempt to remedy it for different guys.
Our aim after we began was to pay lease. We thought making a pair thousand {dollars} a month from this is able to be incredible. We thought-about it a way of life enterprise, not high-growth. It was simply Michelle and me in our storage designing rings and sending them out to prospects. We had hit on one thing. Our message resonated with prospects.
Michelle and I make a superb workforce. I provide you with concepts, and she or he’s the implementer. A variety of our success goes to her inventive thoughts. She names the rings and develops personas. She connects the rings to prospects. Describing a hoop solely as “eight-millimeter black” didn’t lower it.
We designed rings from distinctive supplies, similar to Jack Daniel’s barrels or particular metals. The enterprise took off. Since then, we’ve grown dramatically. We now have over 55 individuals within the Manly Bands household. About half of these are ring artisans who work in our just lately acquired manufacturing store in Utah.
Bandholz: When did you purchase a producer?
Ruggiero: A few yr and a half in the past. We had been their buyer for years, so we knew them effectively. Most of their enterprise was wholesale, which didn’t curiosity us — going to mom-and-pop jewelers. They retained their wholesale prospects and model title. We acquired a few of their property and introduced over workers.
Bringing on a producing workforce has been the most effective issues we’ve finished. It’s been unimaginable to go on the market and watch them make rings out of Fender guitar strings or steel from an M1 Abrams tank.
Bandholz: How does in-house manufacturing affect advertising and marketing?
Ruggiero: It’s been large. Taking a digicam to the opposite aspect of the workplace and filming the workforce utilizing lathes to chop the steel rods or whiskey barrels into rings makes for unimaginable video. Now we have our digicam crew on the market on a regular basis. We use that footage on our social media and in our adverts and newsletters. We attempt to promote that as a result of most corporations within the males’s ring area don’t manufacture. They drop ship or order from abroad after which ship it out. However we would like it to final a lifetime and be one thing individuals can take satisfaction in.
We’ve had numerous success with our army heritage assortment, the place we supply distinctive army supplies. Now we have the M1 Garand rifle inventory, the wooden half, from World Struggle I. Watching our workforce put that within the lathe and lower a bit out for a hoop is fascinating.
Our advertising and marketing for these rings talks in regards to the historical past, the troopers, the place the weapon was used, and issues like that. My spouse and I studied filmmaking in faculty. We use our expertise to educate and tell a story. As an illustration, I just lately obtained an electronic mail from a buyer who shared that his grandfather used to drive M1 tanks. The shopper gifted a type of rings to his grandfather, and so they had fairly an emotional trade. It’s good to assist prospects join with their previous and create one thing significant.
Bandholz: The place can individuals purchase a hoop from you?
Ruggiero: ManlyBands.com. Now we have footage on Instagram, too. I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn.
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