Manly Bands is a direct-to-consumer vendor of males’s rings. The corporate launched in 2016 after John Ruggiero, the co-founder along with his spouse Michelle, couldn’t discover a appropriate wedding ceremony band.
That is Ruggiero’s second look on the podcast. In April 2021, we mentioned 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 Ruggerio, excellent for storytelling on social media and elsewhere.
The whole 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 a web based ring firm referred to as Manly Bands in 2016 to unravel an issue of wedding ceremony bands for males. We have been simply married. I’ve massive fingers and couldn’t discover a ring that I favored 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 in the present day’s ecommerce requirements.
We bought married, moved to Florida, and wanted a job. We advised ourselves, “We’re each entrepreneurs. Why don’t we create our personal enterprise?” We mentioned the varieties of issues we’d seen and remedy them. My ring expertise got here up, and we opted to attempt to remedy it for different guys.
Our purpose after we began was to pay hire. We thought making a pair thousand {dollars} a month from this may be implausible. We thought-about it a life-style enterprise, not high-growth. It was simply Michelle and me in our storage designing rings and sending them out to clients. We had hit on one thing. Our message resonated with prospects.
Michelle and I make a wonderful staff. I give you concepts, and he or she’s the implementer. A whole lot of our success goes to her artistic thoughts. She names the rings and develops personas. She connects the rings to clients. Describing a hoop solely as “eight-millimeter black” didn’t reduce it.
We designed rings from distinctive supplies, akin to Jack Daniel’s barrels or particular metals. The enterprise took off. Since then, we’ve grown dramatically. We now have over 55 folks 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 nicely. Most of their enterprise was wholesale, which didn’t curiosity us — going to mom-and-pop jewelers. They retained their wholesale clients and model title. We acquired a few of their belongings and introduced over staff.
Bringing on a producing staff has been among the best issues we’ve accomplished. It’s been unimaginable to go on the market and watch them make rings out of Fender guitar strings or metallic from an M1 Abrams tank.
Bandholz: How does in-house manufacturing affect advertising and marketing?
Ruggiero: It’s been big. Taking a digital camera to the opposite facet of the workplace and filming the staff utilizing lathes to chop the metallic rods or whiskey barrels into rings makes for unimaginable video. We now have our digital camera crew on the market on a regular basis. We use that footage on our social media and in our advertisements and newsletters. We attempt to promote that as a result of most firms within the males’s ring house 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 folks can take satisfaction in.
We’ve had a whole lot of success with our navy heritage assortment, the place we supply distinctive navy supplies. We now have the M1 Garand rifle inventory, the wooden half, from World Struggle I. Watching our staff put that within the lathe and reduce a chunk 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 abilities to teach and inform a narrative. As an example, I just lately obtained an electronic mail from a buyer who shared that his grandfather used to drive M1 tanks. The shopper gifted a kind of rings to his grandfather, they usually had fairly an emotional change. It’s good to assist clients join with their previous and create one thing significant.
Bandholz: The place can folks purchase a hoop from you?
Ruggiero: ManlyBands.com. We now have footage on Instagram, too. I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn.