E-commerce jewelry store listed on the US stock exchange

Prior to the IPO, the company had lowered its opening price from $14-16 a share to $12 a share and halved the number of available shares from 16.7 million to 8.3 million.

Brilliant Earth was founded in 2005 by Stanford Business School graduates Beth Gerstein and Eric Grossberg, neither of whom had a history in the jewelry industry, after Gerstein’s disappointing purchase of an engagement ring.

The company’s business model is based on simplifying the process of buying bridal jewelry, with the founders criticizing brick-and-mortar jewelry stores for “opaque purchasing practices and impersonal shopping experiences.”

Brilliant Earth offers customizable engagement rings designed through a digital ‘Create Your Own’ interface. Its products are set with diamonds sourced from what the company claims is a rigorously documented supply chain and held to a higher standard than the Kimberley Process.

It also offers an option to use lab-created and recycled diamonds in bridal jewelry.

According to the US financial publication ForbesBrilliant Earth has served approximately 370,000 customers; it posted revenue of $251.8 million in 2020, a 25 percent increase from 2019 and a profit of $21.6 million.

In the first six months of 2021, sales doubled compared to the same period in 2020 to $163 million.

“Last year was a real turning point for us and now with the IPO it continues,” Gerstein said Forbes.

While largely an e-commerce company, Brilliant Earth also has 14 showrooms in the US, with Gerstein saying, “Omnichannel is a winning model for us. Customers like having more than one way to communicate. Some may feel comfortable buying entirely online, while others may like to see the product.”

In the 12 months following the opening of a showroom, Brilliant Earth reportedly recorded an average 80 percent increase in sales for the area.

Although its physical presence is limited to the US, Brilliant Earth currently offers international shipping to a number of countries, including Australia.

Jewelry investment

Commenting on Brilliant Earth’s IPO, Marty Hurwitz, CEO of jewelry, watches and gemstones market research firm The MVEye – formerly MVI Marketing – told Forbes, “Traditionally Investors and Private Equity” [firms] weren’t interested in jewelry because it didn’t match their P/E [price-to-earnings] models. Now they look critically at jewelry, not because the jewelry space adapts to their models, but because their models change.

“This is just the beginning of many more investments in the jewelry world.”

Indeed, there are relatively few publicly traded jewelry companies, with the most prominent in the US being Signet Jewelers (share price $84.48 at the time of publication) – the parent company of major retail chains Zales, Kay Jewelers and Jared, and online retailer JamesAllen.com – the moissanite and lab-created diamond jewelry company Charles & Colvard (share price $3.02) and Canadian jeweler Birks Group (share price $2.75).

Prior to its acquisition by French luxury conglomerate Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton in January 2021, Tiffany & Co. listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Pandora Jewelry is listed on NASDAQ Copenhagen and traded at DKK808 at the time of publication.

Locally, Michael Hill International (share price $AU0.86) and Lovisa (share price $19.77 dollars) are the most prominent publicly traded jewelry companies on the Australian Securities Exchange.

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