Do Amore

We sell both. Financially, lab is the way to go. Natural may hold its value much (though massive loss in value last 4 years). If you’re gonna spend $20k on a natural versus $3k on a lab, you come way ahead on the lab because of insurance plus opportunity cost on that $17k.

Thanks for reading! If we can be of any help in designing a beautiful engagement ring, wedding ring, or piece of jewelry please do check us out at doamore.com :)

By no means is this model for everyone (and there are plenty of more successful companies out there doing the opposite of what we did). But I wanted to share because the barrier to entry isn't insanely high and you don't have to raise capital. $18,000 is what worked for me.

5. Obsessed with customer service: We really are obsessed (probably too much, but to be fair, it's a once-in-a-lifetime purchase and it deserves the best experience ever). In the early days, we ONLY got sales because people were impressed with our response times over competitors.

Side note: We directly prove our impact with the help of our partner @charitywater. By tracking our impact per-order, we can show each customer an actual photo and the GPS coordinates of the water project they helped make possible. This really helped with sharing and awareness.

4. Social-impact = Lower COA: I didn't expect this but our social-impact has played a large role in lowering customer acquisition costs. Our impact: Every Do Amore ring gives a person access to clean water. This way, a couple changes a life forever on their own special day.

3. I wanted to propose myself, so needed to launch @doamore quickly so I could make my own engagement ring. Having this personal urgency was very helpful in making things more efficient in the first few months (do you know how long I would have taken to pick colors and fonts)?

2. No discounts: We have never done a single discount or coupon code. Two reasons: 1. It felt weird to make people purchase and propose at a certain time of the year when "deals" are better, rather than just charging a fair price every day of the year. 2. Wanted to keep it simple

1. When starting @doamore, I chased profitability immediately because I had no more money. I was profitable by day 50. We've kept this mentality and have been profitable every year (some very profitable years, and some barely profitable years, but always profitable nonetheless).

I started my company with $18,000. I knew I would have to invest more or raise capital to make it succeed, but that $18k is still the only capital ever invested. We've now sold over $35,000,000 and brought 15,146 people clean water in the process. These are the 5 things I did: