I love that. Matt, what were your sales last year? Matt Lauzon : Correct. Month over month momentum was phenomenal. Throughout the year, we managed to double sales every month or two. Andrew Warner : OK. Now last month happened to be December of How was the month before that? Matt Lauzon : November was also a great month. We expect to have good sales there. So, even when factoring in seasonality, the growth rate is really exciting.
Matt Lauzon : I think we can say that there are millions of dollars in revenue in the first year. Fair enough. Matt Lauzon : We basically sell fine jewelry.
Every piece has multiple metal options — silver, various types of gold, platinum — and then every piece has many gemstones, usually over 20 varieties, all of the birthstones, then some more exotics or our semi-precious stones. Matt Lauzon : We did give a little extra special treatment with this customer. We wanted to give them a great experience, but they came to us because they wanted the highly personal customizable experience that we provide. Are you guys selling knock offs of celebrity jewelry?
Which is in an industry and a world that has been so weighed down by inventory. The other companies might be taking three, six, nine months to roll something out. We can roll it out in a matter of days.
Andrew Warner : Why? How can you roll something brand new out in a matter of days? So if you go on Gemara. There are some photos on the site, but almost everything you see is a realistic rendering of the piece. Andrew Warner : I see. So what you are basically saying, there are no photos because what you are doing is making up what the jewelry might look like, and the customer then gets to shape this vision of it.
Do I understand that process right? Matt Lauzon : Exactly. When did the idea come to you — how long ago? Matt Lauzon : I was an undergraduate student at Babson when I first started looking at the opportunity. Andrew Warner : Let me stop you right there.
Babson keeps coming up in my interviews with entrepreneurs. You and I talked about how Jason from RunKeeper went there. The guys from Grasshoppers went there. What is there about Babson that turns out so many entrepreneurs that end up here on Mixergy? Even the course load — you can tailor it to the business or the opportunity you are focused on.
At Babson, do you guys actually create companies? Or are you just learning, and it happens to sink in and somehow come out of you afterwards? Matt Lauzon : You do actually — every freshman student is required to take a course in which money is given and a company is started.
Andrew Warner : Wait. They give you money at the school? So how do you learn — what did you learn by using the money that they gave you. What did you create and what did you learn from it?
Matt Lauzon : For all intents and purposes, you went through the entire exercise of identifying an opportunity, vetting opportunities. You went through an exercise of modeling out the business, and thinking about what investments are required.
And then you actually build up the company. Somebody was literally the CEO. The different departments were built out, and everybody had a role to drive success to the business.
Andrew Warner : What was the business you created, and how much money did they give you? Matt Lauzon : We had a few thousand dollars, and the business was called Eventurers. What we did was host events on campus — whether it was a fund-raisers or events for different clubs. Andrew Warner : All right. So what stuck with you after doing that? But what gets me going every day is building an unbelievable team and tackling really difficult challenges every day.
And that experience at Babson taught me how important it was to work with a great team, and get everybody motivated to [interrupted]. Andrew Warner : How?
Can you give me an example? Well, what became clear was, the companies that were most successful — because every person, there were a lot of these classes going at once — were the companies that had the best performers and the best people. And they also seemed to be the people who were having the most fun and driving the furthest ahead. I think that really resonated with me about the power of having the right people on the bus. All right.
And I ask because I remember taking one entrepreneurship class at NYU where we were supposed to build a company together, and it was a team of entrepreneurs who were all supposed to collaborate to build a business. Now you have a team of entrepreneurs — each one is naturally going to want to have his own way of doing things. Perhaps that class at the very beginning of things helps people figure out which direction to go, and how to navigate that.
I think I figured out that I wanted to start my own thing. I think I get a sense of how it helped you. Can you continue with your story? You said you went to Babson, and what happened then? Matt Lauzon : Yeah, I was fascinated with mass customization originally, and then fell in love with trying to understand retail and the jewelry industry.
What I found was that the way things are done or have been done are sort of broken. What I saw or thought was what if you could give an experience where consumers could actually get exactly what they want? And that original vision — to be candid — was different from where we ended up today in that number one, it made the assumption that everyone wanted to customize, and number two, made the assumption that everybody wanted to be able to go to a store.
So we were going to give you the ability to completely customize and then choose between going to the store or going to the consumer web, where we were rolling out a site. And coming out of Babson, we were fortunate to get some attention — having gone through a business plan competition — and linked up with Highland Capital who was in the area. And they offered us the ability to incubate in their space.
They later seed funded us, and did our series A, along with another great firm, Candid Partners. But what we did was to roll out into fifty jewelry stores a web-based experience, where you could customize jewelry. And that was linked with an experience at home.
What we found as we were doing that, and in parallel we were building out the consumer site which eventually became Gemvara. What we found was the closer we could interact with the consumer, the better experience we could give.
And this is something that sells great for us. We sell it all the time. Another jeweler laughed at me. And the reality is, if you want to every jeweler in America, most would tell you that nobody wants an amethyst engagement ring, and that they buy diamond engagement rings.
Give you exactly what you want. Andrew Warner : Do you have diamond rings now? Matt Lauzon : We do. Matt Lauzon : OK. We do precious and semi-precious. The idea you had makes sense. I can understand the expectation that consumers want to go into a store where they can talk to someone about the ring that they are going to buy.
Where they get to get some feedback on it. I needed somebody there as a consultant. You have now this vision that makes sense. Do you raise money? Do you start building out tests to this idea, a prototype? What do you do? Andrew Warner : And this is before you even took it into stores? Andrew Warner : I mean, going back to when you had this idea that won the business plan competition. Did you have anything besides the business plan?
And actually the people that I worked with early on were not technical folks either. What we ended up having to do was raise seed capital in order to work with some folks that could help us build out the initial prototype.
So what we did when we moved in the incubator space, we found a bunch of ways to validate that the opportunity was there, and we used that to get a seed round done. And we used that leverage and we raised the money, and then we did that again. And then I think the other side of it is Highland as an investment firm and Bob Davis in particular — they look at team, market, and product. Maybe it needs a fresh look.
Maybe it needs a fresh way of thinking and we believe that Matt and his team have a way to bring on other people that can figure that out with them, and build a product that people want. I believe he can do it. Matt Lauzon : I think it was the constant process of — Bob and I never talked about it — a constant process of building credibility and building leverage. Andrew Warner : How did you build credibility and leverage before you got funded? What are you thinking? Andrew Warner : Which powerful people did you arrange to have call Bob?
Matt Lauzon : It was various people locally, and then business people, and a few people from Babson. Can you give me the names? Can you give me an example of one of the people? He was the founder of Jiffy Lube, and now president at Philadelphia University, who [interrupted]. Andrew Warner : Again, his name comes up. Matt Lauzon :. Andrew Warner : So he was a mentor to you.
The founder of gourmetgiftbaskets. So how do you get him to call up Bob on your behalf. Matt Lauzon : One sec, one sec. Matt Lauzon : That says [interrupted].
You now are going to carry on my name, my legacy, my reputation is in your hands. Go out there and make me famous. Why you? How did you get him to make the phone call to Bob on your behalf?
Our site is fully responsive, which allows you to customize and shop from your desktop, tablet or phone. We are built differently. Because we have no inventory and custom build every piece for you, our only mission is to give you a piece that you want and that has unique meaning for your occasion. Every piece of Gemvara jewelry has a story behind it.
We bring those stories to life. Serious craftsmanship means quality jewelry Our stone buyers search the globe to find perfect stones. Our jewelers handset each stone and handcraft each piece. Our GIA accredited QA team ensures that every piece that goes out the workshop door is carefully inspected.
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