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 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 Ruggiero, excellent for storytelling on social media and elsewhere.
Your entire audio of our dialog is embedded beneath. 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 had been simply married. I’ve massive fingers and couldn’t discover a ring that I favored that was not overpriced. My choices had been ordering from a catalog or having one thing custom-made.
I ended up shopping for from a web site. The ring arrived in a flat mailer, with no field or customer support. It was a horrible expertise by at the moment’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 sorts of issues we’d seen and learn how to remedy them. My ring expertise got here up, and we opted to attempt to remedy it for different guys.
Our objective once we began was to pay lease. We thought making a pair thousand {dollars} a month from this is able to be incredible. We thought of 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 clients. We had hit on one thing. Our message resonated with prospects.
Michelle and I make a superb group. I give you concepts, and he or she’s the implementer. Lots 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, reminiscent of 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 lately acquired manufacturing store in Utah.
Bandholz: When did you purchase a producer?
Ruggiero: A few 12 months 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 clients and model title. We acquired a few of their belongings and introduced over staff.
Bringing on a producing group has been top-of-the-line issues we’ve performed. 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?
Ruggiero: It’s been big. Taking a digital camera to the opposite facet of the workplace and filming the group utilizing lathes to chop the metallic rods or whiskey barrels into rings makes for unimaginable video. Now we have our digital camera 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 firms within the males’s ring house don’t manufacture. They drop ship or order from abroad after which ship it out. However we wish it to final a lifetime and be one thing individuals can take pleasure in.
We’ve had a variety of 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 Battle I. Watching our group put that within the lathe and reduce a bit out for a hoop is fascinating.
Our advertising 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 school. We use our expertise to educate and inform a narrative. As an illustration, I lately obtained an e mail from a buyer who shared that his grandfather used to drive M1 tanks. The client gifted a type of rings to his grandfather, they usually had fairly an emotional trade. It’s good to assist clients 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.
